How are you doing these days???? Whats your story??

Hey everyone.

I was just thinking, its been very quiet in this forum lately.

I mean, thats possibly a good thing, perhaps it means no-ones self-injuring! Or perhaps not. Perhaps some of the threads have got too clique and too exclusive. Perhaps all the old convos have simply died out.

So i just thought i'd start a lighter relaxed thread to everyone in general.

So how are you?

What have you been up2 lately?

Hows life?

If you want to tell us about it - hows your battle with self-injury going?

If you don't want to talk about that, just be yourself. Most people on this forum will probably have one major thing in common. (Not being exclusive to non-self-injurers) But the thing we all have in common if we're on this forum is a connection with self-injury for one reason or another.

Maybe you are battling with self-injury yourself.

Maybe your friend is, or your child, or someone you love.

Maybe you just want to offer support to your friends on this topic.

Self-injury is a lonely and very frightening battle sometimes.

Beating self-injury for a lot of people is one of the hugest goals achievable in life. It paraelles working for a career, or promotion, or working for a degree or GCSE's or other educational attainment. It involves working hard non-stop. Its never too far from mind. Its stressful. It dominates your thoughts. And its a gamble, there is no guarantee you can win, but if you keep trying hard enough you are bound to.

Its Christmas eve and in about 4 minutes it will be Christmas. You are not alone.

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Hello! well, eh, I always feel like cutting myself, even when I should be happy

Hello! well, eh, I always feel like cutting myself, even when I should be happy

Heyyy

Always feel like it? OR do you do it (if i may ask.)

Because i don't think the urge to self-injure ever fully leaves us. Its about learning to live with it, i think anyways.

girl friend

I always feel like doing it, but rarely accomplish it everyday

I slipped up today, but I stopped myself before I got too far. Last time I did it bad was a few weeks ago, I think... either 12th or 11th of this month.

Hey guys - Merry Christmas

Thanks for the replies.

musicguy, thats incredible that you don't let yourself do it - go you!

sarey, - wow, a few weeks ago! That is a great milestone. Don't worry about the slip-ups, they happen. Whats really important is how you pick yourself up and move on from that. Mb aim for 3 weeks now?

Jeen - hey! I don't think i knew you were 'in our family' so to speak. How are you doing. What made you do it that first time, at eleven? (If you don't mind my asking of course.!)

Love girl friend

xxx

My real mum killed herself when I was nine years old, never new my dad, well in the beginning I would say it was to feel something or to get attention.

Sheesh!

Thats one of those things that i really don't know what to say to, except that i'm so sorry, and i can not imagine how hard your life has been.

Who looked after you?

''to feel something or get attention'' ? to feel real right?

Did it get you attention? Was it a cry for help? Later on, what were the reasons u self-injured do you know (if you dont want to talk about this stuff no worries i understand.)

girl friend

Well if you want to keep this post as part of your thread you should quote it for sometimes I do get emotional and do delete my post.

Ok if you're sure.

Will I was adopted by friends of my mum, well they had the money and are both well educated, sow no one thinks twice about it and they became my mom and dad. Yes they loved me but it was more a way of trying to chance me into a genius, and to be someone who would fit in with there way of living and be there little angel in everything good in school and there way of carrying them shelfs in live. ( very stiff and never really showing any emotion)

 

Yes I did get more attention, in many ways it did help, but on the other side it made me become more distant from them( the way they treated me after this made me feel like I were damaged goods the same as my real mum was, it never felt like love, it was more a way you would look after a dog ), well I never did tell them any thing in life that really bothered me after that, it became something I would do to feel I had emotions, and to just feel alive.

Yes I was never happy at this stage of my life and did suffer from depression.

 

With the year I became a rebel and in many ways saw my mum and dad as the enemy and did things to just show them I didn't feel a thing for them or any one els. I ended up drinking and doing drugs,( my mum would cry but it was like it was more out of disappointment than it was love, my dad treated it as something that will pass it was also the time I was on university)

 

Well after a tragedy I don't want to talk about I ended in rehab and my live came to a stand still for a few years, and all I did in this time was study, and more SI. It was in this time I really thinked allot about killing myself and it was only the SI that kept me from doing it. It was also the time I really started reading about SI and how it works and how many people work to live with it and to stop doing it.

 

It was at the end of this time I became involved with the man I married. He always understand my emotions and never judged me for the scares, and what I did to myself sometimes, he never liked it and did everything in his life to keep me from it but in a way that I still did not have to feel guilty if I did fail and did SI. It was at this stage that I started feeling I could do more in live and wanted to move ( a better job for him and me he do also work in the same field as me) and he said it was a bad idea and it would make me do the SI more and it would take me from the stable environment I was in.

 

I turned into a crazy bi... and said and did things, and left him, We got divorced and he got married again. Well SI is still with me and I do get treatment for it, but never think I would ever be completely free from it.

Wow,

thanks for sharing your story with us hun. Thats incredible. Do you believe the self-injury all relates back to childhood then??

I'm so sorry about your parents.

You mentioned treatment for SI? What treatment is there available? Is it any good? What does it consist of? and which country is it in?

And has it worked for you?

girl friend xxx

Heyy

Thanks for sharing all that, its nice to hear someone else's story.

Is ECT the electric shock therapy - i never knew anyone who had that before, does it work? How does it make you feel?

Its great that you're working so hard on all of these issues, you're really turning it all around into something positive you know!

girl friend

Hey

Oh ok, thanks for telling me about the ECT. Its supposed to jolt the neurotransmitters into regulating emotion more effectively, and reduce the problems isn't it?? Does it hurt?

You said bipolar II in an earlier post. Is that a different form of bipolar disorder?

How are you doing?

girl friend

Yeah... ok that ''How i became a vampire short film'' What the...????

Lol, i didn't understand it i guess, or its relevance... clarify?

Well girlfriend her is a question I would like to hang in the air and would like you to think about, maybe have a look at!!!!!

 

This is a relationship advice forum.

1. What influence do medication have on a relationships? ( side affects good or bad )

2. Do the food we eat have any side affects that could influence a relationship?

 

Well it is something I could ask the op in nearly every thread that is posted here, not many think about it but I do think it is something every one should take into consideration when a relationship go's bad. It may have worked out but the side affects of the medication someone was on antidepressants, flu meds, pain killers, etc has made a bad situation even..........

 

Ok complicated issues there dude! Why did you want my opinion btw? I will certainly ponder them through, mb look up some stuff, to try and give a 'good answer'.

 

Its not just a relationship forum tho is it, these topic areas are not about relationships, well maybe everything that happens to us is about (at least partly) our relations with other people, but not romantic relations right?

 

Medication, well are we talking physical health medication, or mental health medication - of course it would have an effect, and that could be good or it could be bad.

 

The food we eat huh? Now that also made me stop and think. If things like fizzy drinks can make a child hyperactive, its bound to have an effect on our personalities, and consequently on our relations with our lovers. Why, what do you think??? This is very interesting.

Wow...

that article is incredible! I kept it for reference!

This quote really stood out for me:

It's harder to find helping professionals who don't take psychiatric drugs. When I worked in xxx clinic, I was one of very few staff who didn't take anti-depressants and/or benzodiazepine daily. Where would medicine be without Prozac? PM, San Diego, USA

So all psychologists are psychotic huh? Sounds about right tbh. Lmao.

Anyways, its a nice article... but what do you think Jeen?

I was reading up about Seroxat, a drug once viewed as the wonder pill, that could 'cure' depression, social anxiety, anxiety, compulsive disorders, etc etc.

New evidence suggests it makes adults suicidal.

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I'm glad u made me think about this stuff!

Wow yeah..., it really makes you think ya know. What could it do to you? Do the drugs change who you are? Which anti-depressant drugs have you experienced then? Which would you recommend and which would you indefinably not recommend?

You said that no human beings are the same. but you said earlier that your type of depression is an imbalance of neurostransmitters in the brain which regulate endorphines - surely a biological reason like that means that people are effectively going to be the same.?

I also re-read this thread, and wanted to pick up on something you said earlier, if you don't mind. You said:

...

 

I turned into a crazy bi... and said and did things, and left him, We got divorced and he got married again. Well SI is still with me and I do get treatment for it, but never think I would ever be completely free from it.

Its that last part that really shocked me. You never think you will ever be completely free from self-injury???? You can beat it. You must know that. So many others have. Do you want to beat it? It may have been with you for a long time, and it may be hard to imagine a life without it, but ask yourself, are you afraid of a life without self injury?

How often do you struggle with self-injury on a day-to-day basis?? How's the treatments going? You can be ok hun.

(Sorry about all the questons.)

girl friend

Well I didn't want to go for a long answer, if you look at it, no person has the same body mass, age, eating pattens, sleeping pattens, fiscal exercises, and other health issues, and factors like what happened in a persons life like accidents, memories, way we were raised, religion, job environments, etc, it all contribute to who we are. ( the way we relate and are in terms fiscally and mentally in the world )

wow... that was a terrific answer, i'll keep all that in mind. Lets move on from the drug chat now then, i can't even remember how we got onto it in the first place!

Well I do not do the same amount of SI as years ago and the severity of the SI is less than in the past. I cant and don't want to go into the ways but let me put it on average I braked skin less than three times a month for the last year, my goal is to stop completely but I do think if you have done it for as long as I did, it is the same as a drug addiction, and the craving to do it will be with me for the rest of my live. ( "cutting fear" again I don't think it will ever leave one's brain for you look at the memories everyday you see your body and the scares are there open and many has memories to them)

 

 

3 times a month, thats a brilliant cut down hun! You should be proud of yourself ya know.

 

Yes i entirely agree, i dont think the urge to cut ever fully leaves us. Its more a case of taking from it what it taught you, and learning stronger ways of coping. But in times of extreme stress, anger, fear, frustration, and other emotional peaks, the urge is very much still real and you and your body know how easy it would be to 'make it all go away, instantly.'

 

what i meant by cutting fear was being afraid of the insecurities of a life without self-injury i think.

 

Yeah the scars, the body can be read like a book. Do you regret self-injury?

Hey

Wow, thats deep. Thank you for being so honest in your answers. I do understand what you're saying.

It sounds to me like you were saying ''yes'' you do regret it, in terms of the shame and the scars.

But ''no'' as well, because it is a part of you and it gets you through.

Two more things you said to me there really stood out for me. The first was:

it is no when I am not myself and I SI.

You do not regret it when you are not yourself, and SI. does SI then bring back who you are?

Do you have the disassociation problem?

Where your sorta half in half out of your body, and can't feel real. But SI makes you real, it clears the emotional turmoil, it brings you back. You feel like you need it with disassociation and hyperstress.

and the second was:

I would have killed myself if I didn't SI.

Thats incredible too. SI can really get you through. Its a coping mechanism, a maladaptive, unappealing and potentially very dangerous one, but it does serve to promote life. If we cant cope, suicide becomes the answer. SI prevents this. So it saved your life sometimes perhaps.

the turning point to stopping SI permanently may come in accepting it as a part of yourself, in the past. A part of you that got you through, but that no longer benefits you. Try to take what you learned from it, hold no regrets as, like you said, it did save your life sometimes. But in order to properly move on from it, you have to genuinely want it to no longer be a part of you. And that can be frightening. If it has been a part of you for so many years, it can be frightening to imagine a life without the security that SI brings to you. You gotta want that life. What do you think? You wanna stop permanently?

girl friend

Ok, ive got another hard question for you here:

(with regards to SI) What do you want? For the future, what do you want to be different??

What do you want? For the future, what do you want to be different??

 

To live my life without thinking of SI, and to let go of this fear and guilt, what do people think of this freak and monster, but it is a dream and I am not nine years any more. For life do not work that way, it is easy to say we except you with your flaws, but as long as we don't have to see or have to be close to you, that is the reality. I can't change the future, I wrote it for the last 37 years of my life, and has to except the consequences for my actions, and try and live my life as normal as I can with it.

Hi Jeen,

You said there you want to be without SI, and then by the end of post you said you ''can't change the future.'' I don't believe that. The future is the one thing we CAN change. Our actions now change the future.

And i DO believe most firmly that SI is a battle which CAN be beaten. Sure its hard, possibly the hardest thing one will ever have to do in a lifetime. Perhaps harder following years of self-abuse. BUT it IS beatable.

Think of a life with no more fear and guilt. No more pain, cuts or scars. No more shame. You can't change the past SI, thats for sure. But you can accept it and move on. But in order to stop SI, you have to believe in yourself. Really really believe that you can do this, that you are strong enough. Then you need to start looking for some techniques to help you through. I believe you're strong enough to beat SI. Do you?

girl friend

So if you want to beat it, i'd say lets do it.

Are you ready do you feel? ready for a life without self-injury?.

What would the next step be in quitting do you think??

Ok, thats good. So ideally when do you aim to be self-injury free by?

Is the anger management therapy working for stopping self-injury?

Thats good, it helps to have a target physically written down.

The recovery bracelets (link removed) can also be a help to self-motivate.

SI to get control of yourself.

I can understand how that works, it can make things calm down and seem clear, and relieve internal turmoil and hyperstress.

Can you think of another way to get control of yourself? How about squeeing a 'stress apple'' or something similar. Or screaming. OR doing pressups or something. Have you tried replacing it in this way?

You also said you would say something in a time of anger that you regret and will SI.

So you SI to 'get even' with yourself, do you mean? Do you hate yourself?

How often does that happen (regretting something you said in anger and doing SI)?

Is there any way you can think of to stop yourself behaving in anger?

Are your emotions/actions unjustified when you get angry? Because we all have to allow for ourselves to get angry sometimes. People do. It doesn't always need punishing.

Is there any other way of making amends for what you have said?

Hey up mate!

So... i've no idea what your last messages said cuz you deleted them... I'll have to be quicker than that huh?!

I seem to recall we were talking about self-injury though...

How are you doing?

Sorry i missed the posts,

girl friend

Medications known as “mood stabilizers” are prescribed to help control bipolar disorder.

 

 

 

My psychiatrists helped me right today, it is not called antidepressants.

 

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Medical Dictionary

 

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Information on medication

 

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TOXNET - Databases on toxicology, hazardous chemicals, environmental health, and toxic releases.

 

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Wow that was interesting, the only treatment i had heard of was lithium salts for bipolar disorder.

Its important to know exactly what meds your on and exactly what they are doing.

After 7 years of being 'clean' as it were of cutting... i am struggling not to do it. I suffer from manic depression which as a teenager was hell, and in all honesty i dont think my severity is as bad as that which has been mentioned here... it was brought under controle finnally when people realised i wasnt just a moody teenager and alowed/supported me in getting help. I was just on some mild anti-depressents (so as i say my case was not 'accute') and i was on them for about three years. I finnally came off them when i was in a stable relationship and i reached a balanced state. During the depressing my arms looked like an excel spreadsheet with marks all over them. Always out of sight. Only the really deep ones left scares which i found comforting as i got older to look at and know how far i had come.

The only downside of learning to control my mood swings was to an extent it left me emotionally retarded. Although sometimes i had to let out the emotion somewhere and would just cry for no reason, it left me day to day not feeling either really good or really bad... just balanced. I would sometimes meet a problem in life but however bad it seemed it never seemed as bad as it did once and i could look at my arms and think... your okay, this problem is nothing. However this feeling of balance played havock with my last and most meaningful relationship beacuse i couldnt let go of myself. I knew i loved my partner but found it difficult to show beacuse i was terrified if i let myself go it would expose me to an emotional free fall, especially if anythign went wrong. It made it go wrong tho... in trying to save the relationship i let go and as it quickly fell apart so did I. Before Xmas for the first time in 7 years the blades came out.

I have tried to fight it and to an extent somehow i have only done it about five times. The pain inside of me feels as if i am buring up, i want to rip it out and i can be somewhere and will sit digging my nails into my arms just longing to slash them up. I know the biological reasons behind it... the release of hormones and adrenalin etc when the body is hurt makes you feel good and in a way its actually just an addiction no different to other drugs other than its your own natural ones rather than manufactured chemicals. Still it doesnt take away the longing.

At the moment i feel ashamed of myself for having sunk that low again. I thought it was something long behind me. I came accross a stash of razer blades when i turned out a wardrobe about a year ago and thought... dont need these anymore and out they went. Along with my diaries i used to keep beacuse i felt so good i was in a wounderful relationship that even where i didnt let myself go entirly i was actually happy and just didnt need my past to remind me how good it all felt anywmore. The only thing that holds me back is the thought that if my ex comes back to me, i dont want them to think i am pathetic. I dont want the conversation "what are those on ur arms." Im not even sure if they ever knew. They knew i had had problems with depression but i am not sure now if i even ever told them about self harm or even if they ever noticed the scares. It wasnt ever something i did for attention and i hated the attention it got. For me it has always been somehow a way or releasing the intence pain inside.

I'll try keep fighting the urge - it isnt easy though - it seems crazy that three months ago it was something i never imagined feeling like again.