Note: This piece talks about self-injury in detail. Please use your discretion.
I used to hold on to nettles a lot. More often than I would have liked. But not on this day. My hand trembled slightly as I knocked on the lime green door. As I listened to the muffled, approaching footsteps of my teacher behind the door, blood ran silently down my arm and eventually dripped onto the tiled floor. When she opened the door and looked at me questioningly, I was silent. My wildly beating heart, however, was so loud that I couldn’t think straight. Her eyes rested on me, first questioning, then with growing concern. On that chilly day in April 2017, I wrote the following sentence in my diary: “I have to admit what I never wanted to admit. I am addicted.”
A few days later, I was sitting with the therapist I had at the time, whom I told in an agitated state what had happened at school. I simply hadn’t been able to cope. It wasn’t the first time that I had hurt myself at school, but before that, it had always just been “bridging injuries” to tide me over until I could “really” hurt myself at home. But that day, my body was shaking so much, my heart was beating so fast, and my emotions were so deafening that no bridging injury in the world could have calmed me down. “I told you so,” my therapist could have said (because he had).
Over a year earlier, he had explained to me the biochemical processes that are triggered in the brain by self-harm, which cause you to become addicted to it. But as I explained what had transpired, he didn’t say anything; he just looked at me with concern. And even without words, I understood that although there was no way back now, there absolutely had to be a way out. “You shouldn’t fall much deeper into this addiction if you want to get out alive,” he said with a serious look after the meaningful silence.
There is something our society generously ignores: Self-harm is an addiction, and stopping it means withdrawal.
The very first time I deliberately self-harmed and reluctantly told the therapist who was caring for me at the time (at the insistence of my soccer coach), I was given a list of skills. There were lists of skills, behavioral analyses, and workoutsheets where I worked out the short-term and long-term consequences of self-harm. I was warned, but I dove in headfirst. I easily pushed the lists of skills aside and instead dug sharp objects out of every conceivable hiding place. I always carried one with me—for emergencies. And even that wasn’t an indication to me that I might already be addicted. It wasn’t until I was standing in front of my teacher with vulnerable wounds that I suddenly realized I really did have an addiction problem. I couldn’t take care of myself, and I could only think of the next opportunity to hurt myself again. So I dug out the list of skills again. Chili, red pens, spikey massage balls, hair ties, ice cubes. I’d like to say this was the solution, that the application of skills was my way out, but it wasn’t.
Two weeks after the eye-opening incident at school, I left the classroom again in a hurry. My footsteps echoed loudly in the corridor, while it felt like I had been fitted with horse blinders. Again, hurting myself was all I could think about. About the sharp object waiting for me in my phone case. About freeing myself from the feelings that I couldn’t bear. From the fear, the powerlessness, the anger, the despair, and the hatred for myself. Just before I reached the toilets, my teacher stood up in front of me. I looked at her in shock and clutched the cell phone in my pocket a little tighter.
“Where are you going?” she asked with a worried expression. Even without an answer from me, she could see straight away that I was in a tunnel where I only had one thing on my mind. I would have liked to shout at her, tell her to let me through, that she couldn’t care less what I was doing now, that it was my business, that I was in control, that I could make my own decisions. I didn’t say any of that. Instead, I gave her what I had been hiding in my phone case. “You don’t have to make it yet,” she said, looking at the sharp object in her open hand. And she was right, I didn’t have to make it that day. I could have hurt myself and then gone back to English class as if nothing had happened. But I also realized it wouldn’t be easier on any other day. It would be just as hard to decide not to regardless.
When I sat with my therapist again that afternoon and told him about my decision that morning, he smiled mildly at me. He had already realized what I hadn’t realized for a long time. An addiction is not overcome with a single decision. The path out of an addiction consists of thousands of decisions, withdrawal symptoms, relapses, and new decisions. The decision to walk past the sharp objects in the store, the decision not to frantically search for sharp objects after an argument, the decision to sit with a feeling that seems unbearable, the decision to put up with another sleepless night, the decision to endure the shivering and cold sweats, the decision not to hurt yourself.
And above all, the decision to start all over again after a relapse.
An addiction stays forever, but it really is possible to stop listening to those urges and voices in your head. Even after years without self-harm, there are situations where it still seems like that’s the only way out. Relapses happen. They’ve happened to me. But in most cases, I make different decisions, and then I hold on to nettles again.
You are worthy of love and grace, from others and yourself. You are enough, here and now. If you’re dealing with self-injury or self-harm, we encourage you to use TWLOHA’s FIND HELP Tool to locate professional help and to read more stories like this one here. If you reside outside of the US, please browse our growing International Resources database. You can also text TWLOHA to 741741 to be connected for free, 24/7 to a trained Crisis Text Line counselor. If it’s encouragement or a listening ear that you need, email our team at [email protected].