[tacoma16]

I've been cutting since late August and no one knows about it. I think my parents were suspicious at one point, as were a couple of friends, but I made up excuses to my friends and they believed them. I made excuses to my parents as well, and I didn't expect them to buy it, but I think they did. At any rate, I'm pretty sure that if they didn't buy it, they would have approached me by now or tried to get me help.

Anyway, I really want to get it off my chest about cutting. I've written some poetry and songs about it (I'm a singer-songwriter) but I've been too scared to share them with anyone. I fantasize about telling someone. Anyone. I'm more afraid of my parents finding out than I am about a friend finding out. Can anyone offer advice on how to talk to someone about your self-injury?

[loser_child]

I know how you feel. My parents don't know a thing, but my parents are just entirely too blind to me. At different times, my mom has seen 3 scars, but never said anything or done anything. If you feel like you need to tell some one about your SI, it really is a whole lot easier to tell a friend then your parents. Parents blow things so out of proportion. And, you like to write? For me, it's a whole lot easier just to write something down than actually say it to a persons face. If your friends are true, they'll support you and try and help you. It's not that bad. Besides, we're always here for you.

[armatage]

if you don't tell your mom you should. Keeping SI to yourself is a bad idea. If it gets out of hand and nobody knows about it, nobody can help you because they don't know about it. I got help and now I've stopped my SI. A psychologist can really help you.

<A href=www.freewebs.com/armatage>Armatage Music Streams</A>

[Zenobia]

Welcome to the forum, Tacoma. I am glad you have joined us. May I ask why you are afraid to tell your parents? My fear of telling my parents was that they wouldn't care. I couldn't bear that. This fear persisted into my marriage. My husband didn't know I did this even after we had been married for 12 years. I just couldn't bear the feeling of invisibility that comes when someone doesn't care.

I was afraid to tell my T because I was afraid that he would make me stop. Or make me go to the hospital again. But, like you, I wanted to say something. I needed to say something. I found that getting it out in the open was crucial in my efforts to get better emotionally because once I could talk about my self injury I could truely be honest with myself about what was hurting so badly.
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

[tacoma16]

To anyone out there - how did people react when you first told them about your SI?

[Zenobia]

My husband felt deep concern and total confusion. I had to try to understand that it was something that he would never be able to understand and his concern would have to be enough. That is why coming here is so important to me because the people here do understand.

With my mom I compared the struggle to stop with her struggle to stop smoking. That was something she could understand so it kept the conversation in the addiction arena and protected her from guilt feelings so she didn't get defensive. We haven't talked about it since.

My T got his concerned concentration look on his face and questioned me a little at a time about it over many months. He never freaked out on me or demanded that I stop. Instead he helped me work through the underlying triggers and then finally we talked about the addiction quality.

I told my new T in our first session. She didn't speak of it at all until last week when I told her that I was going to my sister's place. She then brought up the fact that it would be simular to an Alocholic with 3 months sobriety going to visit a relative who owns a bar and gets loaded every night. She asked me to promise not to hurt myself until after I saw her again. But other then that it has been a non-issue in our talks probably because I did so much work with my other T so she and I are able to focus on different stuff now.

In my "live" group I have brought it up in passing when telling about my "weather" but no one has pressed me for information or acted like it was bad.

I haven't told anyone else. I don't see the point. I have wanted too but I know to so many people it is incomprehensible why someone would do what I have done so I have kept it to myself.
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

[armatage]

My mom first found out about my SI when my school councelor called her because one of my friends had turned me in. I was talking to her over the phone and she sounded like she was gonna cry. When she came to the school she came in the councelor's office in tears. I felt so bad and at the time I didn't really think it as that serious. That was the worst day of my life, but for another reason.

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.freewebs.com/armatage/>My Site</A>

[Rapunzel]

***warning***contents include descriptions of SI***

People's reactions have varied. The first person I told was a therapist, and he didn't respond at all (I thought he didn't hear me or something), and then confronted me with it a few weeks later, like he really didn't believe me.

My husband saw me scratching my face (I didn't mean for him to see me) after he had been lecturing me for a couple of hours and I was pushed past my limit. That was the first that he knew of it, and he was very concerned - he probably would have involved some kind of emergency services except that we had two very young children in the house and it was the middle of the night. It always bothers him, and he tends to always assume that it is because of him (it usually isn't).

The next therapist whom I told about it didn't focus on SI unless I brought it up. I asked him if he was uncomfortable dealing with it and he said that he wasn't, but I'm not sure that I believe him. Another counselor (not a therapist) that I was working with at the same time was very uncomfortable about SI, considered it to be my main problem, and pushed me about working on that in therapy.

I never did tell my parents about it. They knew that I bit myself, banged my head, and sometimes didn't eat when I was a child and teenager. My mother was embarassed about the bite marks, but they ignored the rest. My father noticed the scabs running down my arm once when I was visiting (as an adult), and asked what happened, and I just said, "don't worry about it." He lives in his own little world anyway, and I'm pretty sure he didn't.

I told one of my sisters a year ago. I expected her to accuse me of just acting childish and being after attention, but she handled it very well. She is a psychiatrist now, and was pretty professional about it. I had never had a close relationship with her because we were always so competitive and she was always very critical of me, but she said she had been worried about me, remembered what I did in childhood, and wasn't really surprised. She has been pretty supportive, and sometimes suggests meds and diagnoses, but most of the time just acts normal and doesn't say anything about it.

Since then I have lost my inhibition and stopped caring about keeping it a secret. I told one of my psychology professors about it (issues like trauma in my background, depression, & stuff had already come up in my assignments for the class, so telling her about SI wasn't a huge jump). She wasn't surprised, and said that it was understandable, that other people use that coping method too (I already knew that, since I had found this site and other informational sites months earlier). She also said, "I just would prefer that people who have been hurt stop getting hurt."

Other people have just been curious, and have had lots of questions about why I do it, etc. Usually they are a little uncomfortable about it too.

I have been surprised how well people have generally accepted that I SI. Nobody has freaked out or rejected me or tried to put me in a hospital (well, except for the neighbors who saw the results and called 911 - I wound up in jail for a psych eval that time, but they let me go). Most people have been a lot more supportive than I expected.

<font color=orange>"If we are going to insist that people pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, we must ensure that they have boots."</font color=orange>