today is self-injury awareness day

Today (March 1st) is one of the most important days of the year in my opinion. It is "Self Injury Awareness Day" (SIAD). As I have said over and over in the past, I'm a "recovered" self-harmer. I use quotes because there are still a few behaviors I do that some people would consider to be self-injury.

For years, I'd use self-injury to deal with the stress of child abuse, seeing my father abuse my mom, and verbal abuse from my boyfriends, and overall stress from other areas of my life. I'd cut and scratch myself, pull out hair, bite myself, overdose on medications, etc. Of course, after meeting the abusive ex-husband, the self-injury got worse. I'd cut and hide it. I'd overdose on medications in an attempt to dull the pain of the abuse.

I haven't cut or overdosed on medicines in over 2 years, and most of the other behaviors have lessened, if not stopped, in the last year. I do still scratch myself sometimes to cause a sudden feeling of pain, but not to the point of any true injury. I pull my hair occasionally, but never hard enough to pull out hair. And I do like to bite my fingers a lot because I still really enjoy that small pain.

Self-injury is an addiction, and it's not easy to get over. Like any other addiction, recovery is a life-long process. Even though it's been over 2 years since I cut, I do still crave the cutting. When I get really stressed out, especially at work, I fantasize about going into the restroom to cut myself with one of the plastic forks in my desk (Yes, I know how stupid that sounds, but it's not like I have much at my desk to cut with). One time when R was down here for a weekend he gave me a pocket knife that I carry in my purse, but I actively forget it's in there. I probably should just take it out of my purse since when I do remember it's in there, I think about taking it out to cut with it.

For more information about what self-injury is, go to the FirstSigns main site or FirstSigns' blog.

Thanks to Clinically Clueless, I got to watch the video below which explains self-injury much better than I can. I ask everyone to watch this video and share the link with others to help with the effort to raise awareness.



Becoming Hannah has also written a blog entry about SIAD, click here.

A college newspaper reporter in Oklahoma shares her personal self-injury story in two articles on OUDaily.com: part one ... part two.

Differently Insane talks about self-injury... here.

My Thirteenth Sad Day: Another personal story.

Informative post on Shadows in the Dark.

More on SIAD on Survivors Can Thrive: click here.

And ~Enola~'s SIAD post: click here.

Healing from Addictions had this video posted in its entry about SIAD. WARNING: This one could be triggering...