Hello everyone,
I’m here because I’m very worried about my girlfriend. She’s been kind of depressed for a few months but recently it seems to have gotten very bad. I don’t know what to do because most of the time she seems fine and then has violent outbursts of self harm. The past four days I’ve had to wrestle away neckties that she uses to self asphyxiate. When I get them away from her she is always mad that I was so forceful, sometimes I have to grab her wrists very hard to get the tie away. The whole time I am physically wrestling with her she is often laughing. After these episodes she goes back to studying for her finals and pretends like nothing happened or jokes about it. I ask her if she wants to talk about anything and that I am here to listen but she says she has nothing to say.
Right now she is struggling with her body image after having gained 15 pounds and is preparing for very stressful finals at the challenging university we both attend. Our school has free counseling for students which I have encouraged her to look into and she says that she might after finals which end Tuesday. I don’t want to push her to go earlier than that because not preparing would make her more stressed out.
Her behavior obviously terrifies me, I never thought tackling my girlfriend to take away ties would become a daily occurrence, but I don’t know what to do because when she isn’t trying to self-harm, which she says she would never so much it would really hurt her, she laughs and often seems genuinely okay. We are going to adopt a cat next week which I think will help her a lot because she loves them and she’s never gotten to own one before. I also think when finals are over she’ll e a lot less stressed and less inclined to hurt herself.
Please give all the advice you have. I just want to make sure she’s okay.