bob and becstar77… only just spotted your comments. thanks. bless you.

and things have been painful recently… and i have failed myself

but just to read people talking about it, gives me a sense of not being completely alone, or at least gives me a hope that one day i will be able to talk openly about this addition …

it makes me cry, both sad and happy tears when i read some of this stuff …

thanks

I’m 30. I starting self harming aged 13, and started seriously cutting myself aged 18 until I was 26. I have to try, every day, not to do it again – it’s hard work. I would love to listen to you (Émie) any time – my parents were not pastors, but they were leaders in church and I was made to feel so disgusting and evil on so many occasions – I even had a forced exorcism which was frankly bizarre rather than scary! Someone in church found some bible verse where it said I was ‘of the devil’ for cutting myself.

But you know what – on my wedding day, I was proud of my scars, because they show exactly where I’ve been, and the journey God has led me through, and I’m coming out the other end now… I hope you do too, hang on in there XX

I really appriciate the care that people who have never done SH show to the ones who have. I know that my friends and family care about me, but they have a very difficult time learning anything about this subject. I especially like the second cartoon, because it’s very true.

eeeek. you are welcome. thanks for posting and for the links. bless you.

I feel the need to add something about how I understand self-harm, which is not very much, appologies though if this sounds out of tune with this conversation.

- if self-harm is somewhere on the scale of self-sabotaging stuff, which we all do in some way (at times) and, I think there is a logical reason why we get into self-sabotaging, it’s part of the amazing way we are made, (say for instance ‘depression is anger turned inwards’, anger is a good, solid, God given human response to something wrong,) then self-harming is understood by God.

I’m a Christian who is currently struggling with self-injury. If you want to get inside the mind of someone who uses it as a way to cope with overwhelming emotion, I have recently created a website with my poetry on the theme of self-injury:

http://poetryscape.wordpress.com/anonymous-poets-homepage

Something has gone a bit wierd with the font on the homepage sidemenu, but once you click on any of the poetry pages it becomes okay! I’ve probably written far too many poems! – so the ones that I think explain my self-injury best are ‘Struggling to say NO’ and ‘This is not just a cut…’. Several of them come from a Christian world view, eg ‘Where is God?’.

I also wanted to mention another christian website on self-harm: http://adullam-ministries.org.uk/ which I have found very helpful, especially their discussion forum.

Thanks for looking at a difficult subject