Trigger Warning: Self-Harm

When I was 18, my psychiatrist told me that there were two main groups of people out there, psychologically speaking, when it comes to self-harm. The first group, no matter what happened, no matter how bad things got, would never self-harm. It’s not something that would come into their mind as a way to cope. The second group, for whatever reason, finds causing themselves pain, watching themselves bleed, seeing themselves burn, and what have you to be an effective coping technique, maladaptive as it may be. There’s no real reason why, it’s just how they are wired. Unfortunately, I had shown myself to be in the second group. I have been secretly causing myself pain since I was 8 years old. For some reason, at 18, what made me feel alive, what made me feel real, was watching myself bleed. Obviously, this isn’t the best quality to have, but my psychiatrist said that the fact that I know this about myself as a teenager means that I can use it to help me. He could help me by starting me on medications that will help with my triggers to self-harm and I could tailor my therapy to these tendencies. When I first came to NOCD, the first therapist I worked with said that she wasn’t sure if she could treat me because I didn’t have harm OCD. I actually self-harmed. Connecting with a NOCD therapist who understood that my self-harm may only be tangentially related to my OCD and more directly related to my bipolar 1 was really helpful. I’m 27 years old now and I didn’t stop wanting to self-harm at 18 and I didn’t stop self-harming completely at 18. I had relapses and, to this day, I experience physical pain in my urges to harm again, but I haven’t self-harmed in over 2 1/2 years. I’d say I’m getting somewhere. Next up? Dermotillomania! Struggling for just as long, haven’t quite overcome it yet. Habit replacement therapy hasn’t really worked so I designed my own method of habit disruption. There’s nothing I can’t overcome with the right tools.