hi,

this is the first time i've checked out this particular forum, but i thought i should introduce myself.

just to warn everyone, some of the things i say might trigger. If you dont read below this, here's a quick summary: my name is Becka. Im 18 yrs old. I've been self injuring for most of my life. I have schizophrenia. and have also been depressed.

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I've been self injuring since i was about 6 or 7 yrs old. It started out with things like, hitting myself, and picking at my skin. Then, when i was about ten, i started trying to break my bones. I dont really know why i ever started doing this stuff. I wasn't depressed when i started, but maybe it's just part of my schizophrenia. My schizophrenic symptoms started when i was about 3 or 4

anyways..i didn't start cutting myself until i was about 14. I only did it every now and then for the next 2 years, until i was 16. When i turned 16, i got real depressed and suicidal and started cutting every day-mostly on my wrists. It wasn't a suicide atempt. I was just simply cutting.. I've never actually attempted to kill myself.
Anyways, this was the time when my schizophrenia started to get much worse (the hallucinations and delusions and paranoia and such) i was in and out of hospitals when i was 16 and in an outpatient day treatment for five months. I got on more medications and after about a year, the depression went away and i almost completly stopped cutting.

My depression has been stable now for almost a year and a half and i have only cut about 10 or 15 different times in the last year. My last time was about 4 months ago, so i am doing good with that. The problem was, was that i liked to cut myself. it had actually been strangly comforting to me, so it was hard to get over the fact that i had to give it up.

My schiz symptoms continue to get worse though. I was recently back in the hospital for a psychotic episode. Sometimes i feel like cutting myself for no particular reason, the way i feel like doing other strange things, like going outside and pulling all the grass out of the ground and tearing the bark off of trees, or painting the walls, or writing on the floors, etc. But i think this is just part of the schizophrenia (called a disorganized behavior, i think) and usually i am able to control these things.

sorry this post got so long. thank you for reading.

-Becka