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Question & Answer - Administrator (Gabrielle)

How well does therapy work?
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my parents want to send me to therapy because I cut and I have anorexia. I understand that you see a therapist. While I have never been to a therapist I have heard that it is some person who gets paid to sit there and listen and dosent really care about your problems. Is this true? how helpful has therapy been for you?

There are therapists who sit there and listen without caring but there are people in the profession who genuinely care for the well-being of their patients. Who view you as a person, as more than a mental illness or a series of complaints. It might take multiple tries to find that therapist but he or she is out there.

I had a therapist call me months after I quit therapy and moved out of the area asking for an update through e-mail. Nothing major, just checking in to see how I was doing. 

I was in therapy but after moving haven't gone to find a new one. In therapy I generally sit on a couch or chair and talk. My favorite therapist, the most special of them, would take me out to her garden and we'd drink tea. We'd go on walks at a nature reserve near her office or even up and down the streets near her place, just talking. 

My psychiatrist also sees me as a person. He asks about my website, asks questions that involve more than my behaviors or symptoms. 

So I know as horrible as some therapists can be there are some therapists out there who can make a difference, who make you feel a little more human even when it feels like the world is falling apart.

I've found therapy helpful, overall. I've said it before, I may be psychologicaly unhealthy but I'm a lot more emotionally healthy than I was at fifteen when I first started this site. I'm much happier.

How do you tell your deepest, darkest secret?
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My parents think they me from abuse... How do I tell them, or anyone for a fact, that I have been abused? (verbal, emotional, and sexual) How do you let someone know that you've been hurt and don't want to be hurt again. How maybe your pushing them away before they can push you away? How do you even deal with the fact you were hurt in the first place?

I'm not sure what your first sentence is trying to say so I'm not sure if you're living with currently abusive parents or were abused by somebody other than your parents.

I don't think I have a definite way of telling others. The first way I told my parents was by writing a short story about abuse and telling them I needed them to read it. I was pretty non-verbal about it at the time.

Can you write the person you want to tell a letter if you're unable to tell them in person? Tell them what you can in that letter, that you're pushing them away, that you've been hurt and don't want to be hurt again, etc.

It can take years for some people to deal. Some need therapy, others do it through supportive family and/or friends. I'd say therapy is a good bet, if you have the means to get into it through your family. Try to find somebody who has worked with abuse individuals in your age range.

Is it normal to cut yourself because you hate yourself?
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I have just recently started cutting myself due to an allergic reaction from waxing on my shoulders. There are little pimples that look disgusting and I just began to feel so ugly and unwanted. It didn't help that a girl at school was indirectly bullying me at the time too. I feel bipolar and I hope I can stop cutting before i get a habit.

It's not really "normal" in general, no. Many self-injurers hate themselves but, as you say, you want to not get into the habit. A lot of people, especially when figuring out who they are and/or going through tough times may hate themselves but for every person turning to self-injury there are ten others turning to other coping mechanisms, both good and bad. You don't have to continue if you don't want to.

The skin issues can be cleared up, certainly far more easily than scar tissue. 

You are at a crossroads and it's up to you to decide which way you'll go.

Craving to cut.
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Say when I have a..."episode" and i want to cut really bad and my arms and thighs go numb and my chest drops, and i wanna scream cause i want to cut so bad, what do i do? or what can i do to make that feeling go away?

I don't think you can necessarily make that feeling of craving go away. Usually you can talk to somebody you trust and who you can talk to about wanting to self-injure and/or distract yourself from it through the items on lists of distractions (http://self-injury.net/information-recovery/recovery/distractions). Basically, you've got to ride through it, find outside help, and/or distract yourself from it. You can't really turn it off though with things like therapy or treatment of the underlying issues you may find that they help with your triggers (by having them worked through).

How do you start a chat?
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You need to have a certain amount of points which is fairly easy to reach as long as you're an active member. However, I need to validate points so if I'm away for a bit it takes longer.

You usually see a bar at the bottom that says 'Who's Online'. Click on it and click on the name of the online member(s) you'd like to chat with.

What caused you to 'Self Injur' ?
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Me specifically? If you need to know in general it's here in the FAQ: http://self-injury.net/information-recovery/frequently-asked-questions

However, I started self-injuring because I was having a difficult time with my emotionally and verbally abusive father who also self-injured, sometimes even in front of me and my family. He self-injured during his first talk with me after finding out about my self-injury. I was also looking to religion for an answer to the reason I was having self-destructive and suicidal feelings and found a lot of blame rather than support. The going to hell sort of responses.

The first time I scratched myself I was at a religious retreat. The first time I cut myself I was listening to my dad scream at somebody.

How many points are needed to chat (not obsessed with point gaining here, just wondering)?
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I'll just answer between seven and fifteen. I don't want to to too specific since I don't want the wrong sorts of people to know what to aim for. It's pretty easy to reach after a few days and once I 'validate' the points for you.

How do you get out the anger without resorting to cutting? I try so hard and most of the time fail and give in
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That's a tough one and I'm assuming by putting it in this category you're asking what I do?

Around people I know I can be a grade-A royal bitch when I get into a rage. However, the rage has lessened  over the years and I've come far from the girl who threw an expensive and heavy glass pitcher across the kitchen or who would threaten her siblings or scratch them when she was angry. All things I'm not proud of but have learned not to do.

Self-injury used to be a way of controlling my anger and I couldn't even cry at a certain point or do anything but self-injure to get my feelings of anger and depression (note: not sadness) out.

Ok, so when I'm angry and I want to self-injure I usually find somebody to rant to about my anger (but not about the SI). Or I write a scathing post somewhere anonymous or away from the situation (message board not associate with the person/situation I'm upset with).

I remind myself that my dreams of private revenge on the person I'm angry at aren't going to be helped by self-injuring.

I've also talked out my anger with numerous therapists. It's taken me many, many years to let go of my anger at my father for being emotionally and verbally abusive (besides the fact that he has acted mentally unstable in the past and used to self-injure). I had so much rage in me about him and therapy helped. It didn't help in one year or three but it helped in the end. Other situations that have made me angry or full of rage... well, I'll bring it up and rant and rave and then the poison of it will be out in one session or however many it takes.

Why did you start cutting?
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It's rather complicated. I had vaguely known of self-injury in connection to schizophrenia and severe mental illness but had not connected it to something teenagers or those without severe mental illnesses did, not something I could do. Got the first idea from a Confirmation class (basically a religion class for those of you not familiar with Catholicism) in which the priest showed the class a picture of Christ with cuts and scratches all over his body and said said that's what we did to Christ when we sinned. Figured harming myself would help atone. I was intensely religious at the time in what I believe was an unconscious search for a "fix" of my issues so I took this all very seriously. Sort of funny considering I've not been Catholic since the same age this happened (15).

Also, my dad was going through a lot of issues and would take it out on me and my siblings. He would also self-injure -- punch himself -- in front of my family. In fact, when we first talked after he found out about my self-injury he ended up punching himself in the face and started bleeding. Constant fighting, he screamed at me a lot, put me down, lots of anger and verbal/emotional abuse. 

So, basically got the idea from religion and started self-injuring because of a mixture of religious guilt, stress from my dad's verbal and emotional abuse, and general self-hatred.

Do you believe you will someday quit SI'ing?
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I though so after stopping for two years but now I'm taking it one day a time. I believe I have the potential to be free of self-injury for long periods of time. Quitting forever is too big at this point, it sets me up for failure because SI is not made out to be an option and somehow that ups the stress for me.

Did you ever struggle with food?
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Did you ever have an eating disorder symptoms?
I know that self-injury and eating disorders are related somehow. Harm to the body, self-distruction. I can really relate to both, so I was just wondering.

I've dabbled with eating disorders. I purged off and on for over two years. Around ages 17-19 (20?) when I was hospitalized there were measures taken to keep me from purging and/or restricting. I did go below one hundred pounds at one point but the doctor at the psychiatric hospital put me on one to one and had the bathroom locked unless I requested it be unlocked, which led to my one one standing outside the door with the door partway open. Became vegetarian for about three years to hide any weight issues. It was never my main form of self-destruction, though. More an afterthought. When I wasn't self-injuring I might turn to purging. Stopped restricting because it led to a lot of stomach pain because of the regiment of medication I was on.

I still deal with body image issues and recently relapsed into purging briefly. It's been that way for years. Will start purging for about a week to a month when I start feeling insecure about my body.

However, I am no longer underweight or even remotely thin and I can't say I've ever had a serious eating disorder (or at least one that felt serious to me).

So what are the purposes behind your scars?
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What I mean is, that every scar has a purpose.

I have so many.

I know the one that came from my first cut. It's on my right forearm on the back, a couple of inches away from my wrist. It was fear, anger, and self-hatred that drove me to taking the plunge and cutting myself after doing things like pinching, scratching, and using needles to tear my skin. My dad was screaming at somebody in the background and I just wanted to have something I could call my own.

I have a number of scars on my arms but they have turned white with time so they don't get  noticed. It's funny, though, in the past month several people have asked about them or let me know they've noticed them. I don't remember where most of my scars came from. There's the largish ones from a night with a butcher knife on my upper arm. I wanted to see how far I could go. There's the one on my wrist. It's not large. I wanted to see if I could ever slit my wrists (this was before I learned the correct way) and be done with it. There's the ragged  one that makes up the word 'Dying' (heh, I was clichéd, wanted to write 'Dying is an art') and which I used my teeth to cut out a stubborn piece of flesh.

There are the ones on my breasts, so many of them they melt into one another that the flesh is strange and sometimes numb if you press down. Their purpose? Hiding the fact that I was still self-injuring, destroying my sexuality, comfort with that location, the looks on the faces of the nurses whenever they'd cry about how my future husband would be devastated by the scars.

All in all, there are so many things behind each scar and I can't remember the majority of my reasons. I don't try to count too often but my siblings have tried counting the ones on my arms with little success and in some places I can't even count because it's just one big scar. 

Fear, anger, self-hatred, self-punishment (when I was religious, like the time I cut a cross between my breasts when I was fifteen), dealing with the past. Some of it was sneering at the mental health workers dealing with me, see what you can't keep me from doing, that sort of thing. Part of it was seeing how far I could go. Not in terms of damage but in terms of chipping away at my body bit by bit.