My Recovery Story from Self Harm

Warning: It does get quite graphic and may be triggering for some people. 

I have told my recovery story from self-harm multiple times in rooms full of people, so this shouldn’t be so hard writing it down. It just seems so real written down.

Childhood

I grew up in a very chaotic family, my father and mother were born into chaotic families themselves and had very little skills in the way of parenting, loving, or emotional/ self-regulation. They did the best they could, but it left me and my brother very confused and unable to function in the world. My brother has had issues with substances most of his life. In those times life was hectic but I had a role. I was a peacekeeper, an emotional regulator, a person who came in after the storm and cleaned up. I was very good at this, except when it would become too much for me. That happened infrequently and I was quite happy.

Adolescence

As an adolescent, my friend group started to change. I was depressed and I saw no value in people. I started to isolate, at the time I felt abandoned. Everyone had left me and I was unworthy of friendship. My addiction to self-injury started when I was 14 years old. Everything was too much for me, my brother was in jail. I felt isolated due to the shame of the situation. Shortly after I was raped, my brother left home, and my father had a head trauma resulting in a hospitalization. When my father got out of the hospital his job sent him to a D&A rehab. They felt his “head injury” was actually related to benzo withdrawal.

Our whole family dynamic changed and I felt like I couldn’t handle it. I knew how to handle chaos, but only in the role, I knew how to play. Now I was being asked to be in charge. Now people were asking me to step back, being asked to not be a peacemaker. I didn’t know how to function in the world in that different dynamic. I was lost and confused.

The mentality I was raised with was to keep everything a secret, so I didn’t know who to talk to, or how to talk to anyone without telling secrets. People I could talk openly to was my family, but at that time they were the ones who were making me so confused. The only relief I got was from the sting of a razor blade or pocket knife. It was the only time I felt like I could take a breath. Self-injury was the answer to my calm! The rest of the time I felt like I was drowning in depression, anxiety, and isolation.

Early Adulthood

I left home shortly after my dad got back from rehab due to his inability to control his mood or temper. Moved in with a guy I meant online (should’ve tipped me off there). We were together for a year and a half and got engaged. All the while I had a pocket knife on my side, just in case it got to be “too much” I could self-harm. I spent most of those days depressed unable to get out of bed. At this time I dropped out of school and got my GED. I tried to work but was unable to, from the multiple psychiatric meds I was put on. During a hospitalization from an attempted suicide (one of many).

I thought the chaos would be solved by love. That’s what the fairy tales tell you, but the chaos followed me. Even moving to a different area, with different people the chaos followed me. One night during a huge argument we broke up. My immediate reaction was to try to slit my throat with my pocket knife. As I pressed it into my flesh I realized he wasn’t worth it and left a long scratch on my neck. Stating “this motherf#$k*r isn’t worth it!”

When my Self-Injury took off.

I moved back home and my addiction had taken off, in a way it had never done before. Woke up and cut my hands on a daily basis. Picked at my skin in an attempt to feel calm and okay. I started to become more severe with self-injury no longer making scratches but gashes. I was a mess, and being back in my family home with the chaos that I no longer could stand, it just wasn’t working.

So I lived in my car, I would park it at truck stops overnight. Stayed in a motel. All the while using my addiction to cope with the world. I was defective and this is what I had to do to survive. I am not cut out for this world. These are all the lies I was convinced of and told myself to fuel my addiction.

Tides are changing, slowly but surely.

I finally got a job that I kept for more than a couple of days, and it was springtime so it was nice out. Got an apartment with my mother’s help and had someplace to stay. But I still was living in chaos. I had different men over all the time, I had stopped eating, and I regularly watched myself bleed for hours at a time. Carved words into myself like “damaged” in the hopes that people would see that I was “f#$ked up” and maybe they wouldn’t contribute to the damage. I felt I needed to come with a warning, I felt like I was inherently the problem in my own life, and that I could do nothing about it.

I was convinced I had nothing to give, I was worth nothing, I was bad and disgusting and a victim to everyone and everything. All the things that were done to me, were because I somehow deserved it. I didn’t deserve to eat, or be happy, or be loved. I had a vagina and that’s all men wanted so I let them use me, telling myself that this was all I could get in life, so I might as well take it. My life was a living hell.

The beginning of the end.

When I realized I had a problem and needed to change was after a “boyfriend” of mine had told me he didn’t love me over the phone and didn’t see himself being with me long-term (can’t say I blame him now). At that exact moment, I was already in the act of self-injury myself from a previous “discretion” of mine. I cut so deep and so hard that my flesh broke open. It literally looked like someone was doing surgery on my leg.

I immediately panicked I didn’t mean to do this much damage. This is the moment I knew self-injury wasn’t the solution. I knew I needed to go to the hospital but I was scared they were going to commit me and I was not a fan of the psych hospital. So I put some duct tape on my leg, elevated it and went to bed. 6 hours later I woke up feeling wet like I had peed the bed.

I looked down and my bed was saturated with blood. It looked like someone was murdered. I ran to grab a towel and drops of blood flew off me leaving a trail (when I came back later I swear it looked like a crime scene). My best friend at the time and told me to go to the ER and just lie to them so that I didn’t get committed.

Going to the hospital.

So I went to the hospital. The staff didn’t buy my story. They also didn’t commit me, so it ended up working out in that way. A doctor told me I had to get staples due to the long time I had waited to come in. I was asked if I wanted novocaine for the staples. Emphatically, I declined with the reasoning that I deserved all the pain I could get. I ended up getting 27 or 28 staples in my leg (I can’t remember the exact number) although the doctor counted as she put them in.

Before leaving a very nice social worker told me that my story didn’t seem right, she told me that she was a mother and could sense I needed some help. She gave me her card and told me to call her if I needed anything.

I left the hospital and went to throw my beloved pocket knife in the river. I never used a pocket knife again to self-harm, but I cannot to this day own one. After I threw it in the river I called that social worker and told her I lied, I had heard about an intensive outpatient program (IOP) for mental health that I would like to go to. She put me on the phone with the director and I was able to get in the next week. At the time I was working and could only go 3 days a week.

Intensive outpatient.

I attended intensive outpatient for 5 months (usual stay is 3 weeks). I had become motivated and convinced that my life had to change. Or I would die, lose a limb, or worse. Those first months were tough, trying to struggle with not having the only thing I knew to use to cope with the world. At the same time being terrified of myself and what I knew I was capable of doing.

After I was discharged from the program my counseling staff recommended I go to a 12 step program in my area. This was such a relief to me because I was so scared of what I was going to do with no support in the “real world” I had learned to rely on people in the IOP for emotional regulation and stability. Learning that there was a place I could go multiple times a day with no discharge date was such a relief.

Recovery

My very first meeting was that night, and I cannot describe the feeling of belonging I felt, the friendship and fellowship were exactly what I needed. The guidance I found from my friends there, I still use today.

Shortly after my discharge, I started to date the man who I have been married to for 5 years. He was the most healthy person I had ever been with, and I found that to be boring. I had already experienced the alternatives which I learned brought me chaos and dysfunction. I enjoyed chaos because I was used to that, but I was no longer able to accommodate for it in my newly recovering life.

What it’s like today.

That was 7 years ago. I celebrated my 6th anniversary in March 2018 and I couldn’t be happier. I am a mom of 2 girls, I became pregnant with my first daughter shortly after my last relapse (she’s 5). Went to nursing school and became a licensed practical nurse (I have a career?!) I still have a support group of friends who I can call anytime day or night whenever I need them. My relationships with my family are fixed in ways that I have never thought possible. I deal with situations and relationships in ways I never could previously.

I also have made it my work to help people like me, I have worked in mental health/drug and alcohol the most of the time I have been a nurse. To this day I work with addicts and alcoholics like myself. Life is still hard, and I still have my challenges. When I was in my active addiction I felt like every day I was actively dying. Now that I am in recovery I feel like every day I am actively living.

How I cope today.

I try my best to remain in the present and when I fall short I accept my humanness and flaws. It’s not “perfect” but it’s way more than I ever thought possible. Most of the time I actually pass as normal! I am so grateful that I have been given the gift of recovery. Whoever reads this and finds themselves in this, I hope you realize you are stronger than you think. I certainly was. Looking back now it’s almost funny how many things I had survived and gone through. I never realized how strong I was, I never realized how that in itself was an amazing thing to accomplish.

Life keeps, Lifeing.

The struggles I face today are still annoying, I still cry, and I still sometimes feel anxious and depressed. Those things though I too am grateful for because they are stresses I never would’ve had in my active addiction. They are related to my girls, or my job, or my husband. All things I never saw myself having an active addiction to self-harm. I just can’t put into words how incredibly lucky I feel that my life is the way it is.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it! 😆

Check out one of my other posts about mental health!

https://mamaofthedrama.com/2017/08/01/why-do-we-hate-feelings/