Admitting you are an addict
One minute everything seems fine and then suddenly...
You can't think straight, you feel like you are losing control, you need to self harm! You quickly tell yourself you can cope without hurting yourself but the more you try to calm down, the more the adrenalin pumps around your body. Your heart beats faster and you pace up and down trying to make the feeling stop. Your body is craving the one thing you have taught it to expect in these circumstances. The more you fight the urge, the more it builds. The more you realise how addicted you are, the worse you feel about yourself. It is like having two sides to your mind, one side telling you to battle your addiction and try to cope without it and the other side telling you this is all you are worth and to just give in and do it.
The minute you give in, you feel calm, you can feel again and for a while everything is back in control.
But before anyone thinks I am saying it is ok to self harm, I am not. I am also not judging anyone who does. What I will do is explain how self harm affected me.
When someone causes a physical injury to themselves, endorphines are pumped around the body, causing you to feel calm and also relieve pain, both on the inside and the outside. Therefore, when you self harm you feel balanced and back in control. What not many people realise is that these chemicals in our bodies and also this feeling, are addictive, so the more you use self harm as a way of coping, the more your body will begin to crave it.
At first I could go months between self harming episodes. Sometimes I only needed to use self harm if I was under a lot of stress or dealing with something quite major in my life. The other reason was because I found it impossible to cry so my way of dealing with upset or emotion would be to self harm. Lastly, I would self harm when the memories of my past (which at this stage I hadn't received counselling for) came back into my mind. Self harm would keep the feelings of guilt, disgust and self loathing under control and let me lead what I thought was an acceptable life.
I was slowly, but surely becoming an addict. What had initially helped me was now becoming a major problem. I needed self harm more and more to get through situations. I was extremely secretive and spent as much time as possible alone. My methods of self harming were becoming less affective, the more I got used to them and I was finding myself having to do more injuries to satisfy my needs. I also started to turn to other ways of self harming and whereas in the past, my self harm had been very much in control, I was starting to hate myself and didn't care how much harm I caused or whether I left myself with scars. My 20 year secret addiction was in danger of coming out as I became more careless with my excuses for my injuries.
The final straw came when I sat on the edge of the bed one day to self harm and didn't want to stop. The pain of the past was too much. The pain of all the emotions I had hidden was too much. I was again in that place where you had two choices. Thankfully, I made the right one.
That was one of the hardest days of my life. I rang my Dad and asked if I could go round and speak to him. I sat down and told him I needed his help, help with my addiction and help in going about telling the rest of my family. He listened without judgement and then calmly said "we'll sort it." At that moment, I knew I had made the right decision but also knew that this wasn't going to be an easy ride.
