Perhaps the biggest taboo of them all: Self-harm

I am going to try and not censor this blog-post, and I certainly don’t want to go back through it and edit out all the things I don’t want people to read. I am going to try to be as honest as possible. I will have to do another post on self-harm as there is simply so much to say, and so many different areas of self-harm to delve into. This post will deal with my struggle to open up about self-harm and why this is the time I am choosing to do it. 

So here goes. I am a self-harmer. And I have been since the age of 13. Not many people know this, and the people that do know know that I never EVER discuss this. I’m still in two minds about whether or not I will be able to publish this blog-post. This is a huge step for me. Even the majority of my family don’t know my dark secret. So to those family members that are reading this now I am sorry you had to find out this way – but for some reason getting my thoughts out in a blog seems the best way for me. I find it utterly unbearable to talk about this to people’s faces. Those who have tried will know this. I become overcome with embarrassment and brush off any talk of self-harm with empty promises and excuses. I can’t look people in the eye. I can’t even say the words ‘self-harm’, I have to use code words, or symbolic language. But not today.

Today I lay my secret bare for the whole internet. 

I have decided to write this blog post as I didn’t want to be a hypocrite. I have been writing in my blog about how important it is to open up about mental illness, as talking about a mental health problem prompts understanding and removes some of the stigma attached to it. Whilst I have happily written about my struggles with depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder and my constant battle with the NHS, I haven’t opened up about a very secret part of my life. I am embarrassed and ashamed to say that I still, almost ten years after the first scratch, self-harm. I don’t do it regularly. Sometimes months and months can pass before I make another mark on my body. However no matter how long a gap I leave between self-harming behaviour the urge always returns to me. Sometimes I think that I have been cured  (when a long period of time has lapsed), yet my urge to hurt myself always seems to return.

I’m still not 100% sure why I do it. It seems to me that now it is just a habit. I am locked in a habitual cycle that I cannot break out of. Today my therapist asked me why I first started. I thought back to the year/ years when I first started to hurt myself. At first I didn’t know what I was doing. I don’t even think I saw what I was doing as self-harm. I’d scratch myself in maths with a compass or peel away at the skin around my nails. It wasn’t until about a year later that I really discovered what self-harm was, and that a lot of people were doing it (or at least it certainly seems like a lot when you look at the youtube ‘self-harm’ community). It started to become more regular. It was my way of coping with negative emotions. I was never very happy at school and was often bullied by my peers (I want to do a separate blog post about bullying so keep looking.) I think maybe I had depression from that young age (13/14), but my teachers/parents just put it down to hormones and the bullies. In hindsight I am certain that I was experiencing a deep depression around year 10/11 (age 15/16). I felt hopeless and alone. However I passed my GCSEs with flying colours and things looked up as I entered the 6th form. There was even talk of me applying to Cambridge. However a few weeks in things started to take a turn for the worse. Once again I was bullied and the depression like symptoms re-surfaced, this time accompanied by panic and anxiety attacks. Although I went to an excellent school there was very little understanding of mental illness. I was fobbed off to the school counsellor who did very little to help me (all this school crap is to be saved for another blog post). When I was 18 I took the matter into my own hands and drove myself to my GP. She diagnosed me with depression and drugged me up. However nothing was done about my self-harm. Sure, drugs can help deal with the symptoms of depression, but they didn’t remove the urge to hurt myself. A habitual thing like self-harm is deeply engrained into a person. Just like a bulimic cannot suddenly stop making themselves sick, or an anorexic suddenly wake up one morning and deciding they are going to revert to  a ‘normal’ well-balanced diet (I hope those examples work…. ) I required long-term therapy but unfortunately I moved to university at the end of the year and any help I was receiving at home was abruptly stopped.

I blundered through university with several severe bouts of depression and self-harm. However I just blamed it on the stress of the work-load. I was convinced that the self-harm and depression would go away once I had graduated. I was of course in denial. No such miraculous recovery took place. I think I thought the same thing when I left school – I thought ‘yes, once I am at university I will be ok’. I was foolish enough to make the same mistake again – I thought ‘yes, once I am at Mountview pursuing my dream career I will be ok.’ I was of course wrong.

I am self-harming nowhere near as much, and it has become more subtle. However the urges are still there almost every day. It is a thought pattern that often consumes me. The urges boil up inside me and I have to do everything in my power to fight them. Self-harm isn’t something I want to do. I obviously don’t want to scar my body and upset my family and friends in the process. It devastates me that I worry or upset anyone. But I honestly can’t help it (that is the hardest thing for someone who has never done it to understand). It’s an obsessive compulsion, an addiction and a habit.

I hope by briefly sharing my experience I can show people that it isn’t just ’emos’ or distressed, attention seeking teenage girls that self-harm. You don’t have to have been abused or had a terrible life either. My family have given me an amazing life. I went on great holidays and I went to a fantastic school where I gained excellent grades. I went to one of the best universities in the world and now I am training to be an actor at one of the country’s leading drama schools.  However, although my life may look perfect from the outside, unfortunately it isn’t on the inside. Because I have a mental illness. I still don’t know why I have this illness and I don’t know why it just won’t go away. But I know that I want to help other people who are struggling by writing these blogs and opening up about my life with a mental illness.

Thanks for reading and I am sure I will write another blog about self-harm (dealing with things like triggers, and thought process).

Feel free to contact me if anything I have said has resonated with you/ if you have any questions.

(I hope I haven’t disappointed or upset anybody.)

x

 

PS: I wanted to add a little note. I want to say thanks to my special girls (Z10), who essentially saved me. They are my rocks and my best friends. They took me in when I was alone. I completely love them.