Lex,
I agree with acceptance being the key to stopping. It makes me wonder if by accepting this we are finally accepting ourselves and there by giving ourself the unconditional support that we didn't get when we were young. I started when I was 12, I am 36 now. That is a long time. I hid it all that time. I don't cut often but employ other methods that leave little marking so it was easy to hide, the occasional cut was easy to put off as an accident or to cover up if I did artistic designs. Because I kept it hidden I never got the help I needed. It wasn't until about a year ago that I really started trying not to hide the problem. It wasn't until december that I started talking about it openly with my husband. And now I have had a month free of SI. I have done a month before but don't remember the circumstances. I know I was eating a lot of chocolate but that is another addiction with chemicals thrown in. I am convinced that chocolate helps me but I don't want to trade SI for a chocolate addiction.

Kela,
Welcome to our little community. I am glad you found us and joined in our conversation. I totally understand the "right" feeling. I have described it in so many ways but what you said just about sums it up. It just feels right. How does one give up something that feels so good, so right and warm just because other people say it is bad to do? How does someone give up something that helps in a world that doesn't seem to care? It is a hard thing to do. I have come to believe however, that cutting covers up the problem, like drinking. It feels good, gets us through the day but it never solves anything so we keep cutting so that we can feel good just for a little while. But the things that make us hurt never go away because we never have to face them. Facing them hurts too much, so much more then cutting. But they will always hurt if we don't face them.
Carrie

<font color=green>But the implicit and usually unconscious bargain we make with ourselves is that, yes, we want to be healed, we want to be made whole, we're willing to go some distance, but we're not willing to question the fundamental assumptions upon which our way of life has been built, both personally and societally.--Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft