[Archimondrix]

Hello, I found this site in my own personal research on self-injury recently and decided to create an account, it appears to be a very useful, supportive and helpful forum for those looking for help or doing research. I suppose I should start off by saying that I myself do not self-injure; but a person who was very special to me in the past did (cutting). She does not speak to me anymore, its been at least 6 months since I last heard from her in any capacity; I won't go into the details of that, but I still care, worry and think of her often. It breaks my heart even to this day to wonder that she still might be self-injuring. I work in law enforcement and they make us take training in various subjects. One of them recently was in suicide prevention which entailed noticing certain signs, symptoms, statements, etc that people may give. Thinking back at the conversations with my friend, its clear she was truly suffering. However back when we were friends, I didn't think much of it, I didn't have the training I now have, and thought that if she just talked to me that she'd be fine and would stop cutting (I'm guilty of having a big ego sometimes ).

Anyway, my only hope is that she finds happiness. The last I heard from her she was going through a very stressful time which is the last thing she needed. She's had a very hard life and yet is such a wonderful person; I tried my hardest to make her realize that but she didn't think highly of herself even though she has so much to offer the world. So I guess my questions are:

1. Is there any hope for her to get better and improve her life, or is it one of those things like "once an alcoholic always an alcoholic" (that's another thing too, she drank too much - even though I told her the dangers of drinking excessively through my own experience of seeing what it did to members within my extended family when I was younger).

2. Is it possible she can get better without the help of a psychologist? (I failed in my attempts to help however I was never qualified to help in the first place, in my opinion she needed professional help i.e. a psychologist, but she had bad experiences with them in the past and was reluctant to go even though I was willing to pay for her sessions since she didn't have the extra money for it)

The sense of helplessness I have when I think of her or if I'm reminded of her in some way really hurts. I know its not my problem whether she gets better or not, and the natural thing to have done is just to forget about her since she is never going to talk to me again, but at the same time its hard to just not care about someone who you once cared for (at least for me). It would be great to hear some stories of hope from those who suffered the same problem she has. I'm not sure if this is the correct specific forum for it but I'm sure I'm not the only person who has come here for a friend. Self-injury is a painful thing to see a friend go through, I'll never understand the reasons for it other than from a theoretical standpoint, but I hope that those who do self-injure find happiness and peace with themselves at some point, so that they can eventually stop

[Callmebj]

Thank you for being such a caring person. I believe if you will copy and paste this to the
SELF INJURY thread, more people will respond to you on it.
Welcome to PC
bj

[Archimondrix]

Thank you for the reply. I thought I had initially posted it in that forum but I either didn't or perhaps it got moved to this forum "Relationships & Communication". I re-posted it in the self-injury thread.

Originally Posted by Callmebj

Thank you for being such a caring person. I believe if you will copy and paste this to the
SELF INJURY thread, more people will respond to you on it.
Welcome to PC
bj