Hurt on the inside and hurt on the outside (Self Harm)

Member Name: icetsunami

Product:	Self Harm
Date:	10/11/09 (51 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: none, very temprorary solution at best

Disadvantages: destructive, self isolating, painful, shameful

I have only just found this section despite being on Dooyoo a while now. There have been some moving and honest reviews. It is a very interesting topic to look at and one which will divide people and maybe inspire people too.

Being male I never really talked about how I felt when i was younger and this eventually became an excellent defence mechanism, if not a particularly healthy one. I had what I consider to be a normal upbringing with both parents present which included nice family holidays. I was in school for the whole time in mainstream education with a spell at a private school also.

In my teens I drifted in and out of profound depression with little understanding of what it was and how to understand it. I got to the stage where I would lie on my bed and stare at the wall for literally hours on end with no conscious thoughts passing my mind. I had a period where I could only sleep properly with loud metal music playing because it was comforting.

I don't know how my depression spiraled out of control or even how it first originated. My current psychiatrist thinks I probably had a childhood trauma which I have since blocked out but that it would be counterproductive to go chasing it. I don't when and how but I got into self harm as a way of dealing with how I felt. I made cuts to my arms with razors so I could bleed. I was never into big dramatic gestures of gouging out huge troughs of flesh for all to see, I preferred to be discreet.

I don't think I got what you would call a physical relief from it but it made me better in that I now had a reason to feel bad in the first place. You could say it was forming what would become a vicious circle of self abuse but at the time it was right. I became so depressed that I could not function at all and barely left the house at all having little social contact. It is a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy in that I continued on that path for quite a while. Anyway, whilst hanging out with some acquaintances, mainly disaffected girls, I heard about a medicative regime one person was on. This was the first time it clicked that there could be a medical reason for what was going on.

Bizarrely I ended up on some heavy dose tranquillisers which were obviously no good though my GP thought I had periods of psychosis. For what ever reason I ended up with a different, less helpful GP at a different practice who basically said I had to snap out of it. Needless to say I dropped into a deeper state of depression and started to cut myself more regularly. I usually bisected old scar lines which meant that they were confined to small areas which meant that a) they were discreet and b) they were more prone to scarring.

When people talk about self harm they tend to have ideas about a particular form of self injury which is typically cutting with knives but there are many forms of self abuse. I got into hanging which would make me hurt and near blackout and found it was helpful. I used it a similar way to the cutting and often used them together.

At some point I discovered more socially acceptable forms of abuse that nobody ever questioned. I ate and ate high calorie junk food and sat around doing nothing. Then I discovered the principle of binge and purge. I was able to eat large amounts of food for comfort and then throw it up for punishment. The purging gives a real sense of cleanness but in the end it just became habitual. My weight hovered for a while and then I piled loads on, about 70lbs. I followed this by barely eating anything and purging what i did eat for accelerated weight loss. I knew this was bad for my body but I didn't care. I ended up losing about 85lbs.

This came at a time that I decided to take up smoking. I could smoke all day long and nobody batted an eyelid. I never particularly enjoyed and I never actually seemed to gain a physical dependency. I could go for days without one, smoke several packs over a few days then stop. Which I eventually did, I just decided not to do it anymore. By this time I had tried several types of medication none of which ever worked for me.

I had a couple of years when I was just moderately depressed as the veil just seemed to lift slightly and I went out more. It was not a happy period but there were moments when I forgot about stuff for a while. I was in a relationship and working full time and things were going well. Obviously the relationship didn't last and I became more depressed quite quickly though I continued to work. I reverted to cutting and hanging and was profoundly suicidal but scraped by.

Moving onto another relationship helped but I never really got the right balance of love, work and me. It was more about me. During this time I tried to kill myself and took my first overdose. Two bottles of aspirin washed down with coke in a shopping centre toilet. I ended up walking around town wondering what to do and quite by accident happened to be outside the Samaritans which I didn't know was there. I decided to go in as this was perhaps a sign. I spoke to a lady who was lovely and she ended up getting an ambulance for me. Typically I ended up having my stomach pumped by unsympathetic A&E staff who have better things to do. I had an overnight admission and went to work as normal the next day.

Things were getting no better and I had by now tried over a dozen different combinations of medication. I split up with my partner and switched jobs and things picked up quite well. I ended up getting married to a woman I met a work and had an excellent honeymoon in Sri Lanka, just the place to wind down again. I thought I had turned a corner.

Soon after I plummeted into probably my deepest state of depression. I was cutting myself, vomitting and hanging myself. I tried to hang myself from the loft hatch to end it all but I ended up falling down. I was on an injection by now and taking major tranquillisers again as I was actively suicidal. One day I walked out and went to find the local train line but I ended up walking around in a daze and woke up my settee home again. I had no recollection of what had happened. I had a crisis worker coming to see me everyday to assess my safety and then one morning I got up and sat watching the tv later realising it wasn't turned on. I got to the stage where I physically couldn't self harm because I was almost catatonic with depression and prescription drugs. Shortly after I had two informal hospital admissions. I think one was only three days and the other just over a week. I was crawling the walls and just by a whisker avoided being detained under the mental health act after my wife begged the consultant to let me home. She was a psychiatric nurse and I had regular support from crisis and a week psych appointment. If I hadn't had such a good psychiatrist I don't think I would have made it out of hospital. I spent a long time building myself back up and it was a hard process. I was off work fully for nine months and left on medical grounds. It was seven years later before I was well enough to go back to work.

I still suffer from depression but have a better grip on things these days. I have a diagnosis of Ultra Rapid Cycling Mood Disorder. Usually this causes the sufferers mood to swing violently many times a day. In my case it can happen in a time frame of seconds. I take a sustained release mood stabiliser drug which I am going to be realistically taking all my life. I also take a triple dose of prozac every morning for depression and the component of my illness that is based in OCD. I also have Tourettes Syndrome which means I blink a lot and can say some bizarre and occassionally inappropriate things.

I still work full time and have been married for eleven years now which is a miracle as I'm not the easiest person to live with as you can probably imagine.
During the last few years I have had some wobbles and always will. I have self harmed from time to time and gone through periods of purging but it is much less frequent.

For those of you who are self harming you may be under a lot of pressure to stop or seek professional help but ultimately it is you who has the choice. I had psychotherapy and CBT and both were useful but it fell down in the end to the right medication and trying my hardest to get on. I know many won't agree but I do believe that self harming is a valid coping mechanism for times of emotional distress, it is just not a permanent solution. And in there lies the message really.

If you absolutely must self harm then do it. If it is between that and suicide do it. But it is in no way a path to better health or some sort of spiritual enlightenment. Self harm is by it's very nature destructive and becomes so routine that it ultimately fails to provide any relief and is just a habit. Get help when you feel able. x

Summary: May give shelter but there is always a storm big enough to bring you down