Join Date: Jun 2006
I am currently:  
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One year free
Ok, so it’s just about a year since I last cut, I’m not sure of the exact date because if you’re counting then you’re just counting down the days until you next cut. Yes, cutting is a coping mechanism, but it is also a choice, you choose whether or not to do it.
There is a quote that’s helped me over the past year, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” It is from ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ by Dr Viktor E. Frankl. That quote is something I’ve tried to live by over the past year, I’m not saying that it’s that simple to stop cutting, but that space is something, a place where you can stop and think about why you feel the way you do, and whether your response is a suitable one before you carry it out.
Of course, that book isn’t the only thing that has helped me over the past year. Since this time last year, there have been a lot of changes in my life, the largest of which was that I took control of myself and took my life back. I have started to take responsibility for my actions, and realise that if I cut, it’s my fault and not the fault of any so called “triggers”. Triggers in and of themselves can only occur when you decide to let them trigger you. In other words, the only trigger there is, is you. The one thing I realised is that until you learn to recognise, accept, and take responsibility for letting yourself get “triggered”, you are never going to stop. Until you accept personal, individual responsibility for the harm you commit to yourself, you will not stop.
I’m not saying that I never get the urge to cut anymore, because I do, and I’m not saying that stopping has been easy, because it really hasn’t. If anything, it’s one of the hardest things I’ve done so far, but it was made a lot easier by accepting responsibility for my actions and by trying to live my life by what Frankl teaches in his book.
I’ve also had a great guy in my life for the past year and a bit, and that has helped no end. He doesn’t believe I need fixing, and he doesn’t want to try and change me. He knows and understands that my cutting used to be a coping mechanism, and that every now and again, I will get the urge to do so again. When I do, he will sit there and talk with me about whatever it is that’s bothering me, which really helps more than he could ever know. He supports me in whatever I do, and he was a definite catalyst to my change, although all the work has been my own.
I plucked up the courage to go to the doctors about how I was feeling, and recently got meds and a referral for CBT, both of which have helped so far, but I realise that if anything’s going to change in the long run, I need to do a lot of work on the inside so that I can feel better permanently and close the door to the chapter of my life with self harm in it fully and finally. Yes, I’ve been on the meds for a few months to help with my depression, but I’ve only been on the CBT course for 2 weeks, and so pretty much all of the work I have done so far has been without professional help, so for all you out there who are complaining that you can’t recover yet because you’re still waiting for therapy, what you REALLY want is someone to do that work for you, and you will be disappointed that even within therapy, you will have to do the majority of the work yourself, so why not stop wallowing in it, and start working on it now, and that way, you will be able to get much more out of therapy than you would have done otherwise.
Another one of the other major things that has helped me in stopping cutting has been leaving RYL. Trying to stop cutting while remaining an active member of RYL is like a junkie trying to quit heroin while still hanging around with other junkies, it just isn’t going to happen. There are people on this site who use RYL as a way to validate themselves, and what they’ve done to themselves, and that’s not what the site is here for, the site is called RECOVER your life, and that’s what people on here should be aiming to do, but in the time that I was an active member on here I saw precious little evidence of that. If you are serious about trying to stop cutting, you have to give yourself the best start you can, and you’re not going to get that on RYL. RYL makes cutting a normality, makes it seem like a way of life, another culture almost, and so no-one’s going to want to be the first one to take the step to change and recover because it means you’ll be the black sheep, and you won’t belong to the “special” group of people who cut. In order to stop cutting, you have to step out of your comfort zone, and make an effort, and yes, you won’t know what’s going to happen, but if you want to stop, it’s what you’ve got to do.
Also, another thing was that I started to re-evaluate the people I was surrounding myself with, and if necessary, remove them from my life forever. First was my ex-boyfriend, he kept me in a constant drunken stupor, and tried to control everything I did, and because I was always half drunk, I usually went along with it. Being in a relationship with him was like being chained to a radiator 24/7, and needless to say, I am no longer with him and haven’t spoken to him for over a year. Breaking up with him gave me a great sense of freedom, and I started to realise that what I had become was not who I truly was, and started the steps to discovering who I used to be before I got together with him, and who I could be if I started to grow in the directions I wanted to, not the directions I was being told I should grow in by him. Next was some of the other people I knew, so-called friends, and I started really looking at them closely, and realised that most of them were just bringing added drama into my life, a couple of them for instance were constantly manipulating me into thinking they were a danger to themselves, and had me running around like a headless chicken worrying about them for days on end. I began to realise that this is not the way a friendship should work, and so told them that they either stop bringing drama into my life, or they stay out of my life. These people, who seem to like wallowing in pity the way a pig wallows in mud, couldn’t manage to keep their self-created dramas out of my life, and so I had to cut them out permanently, and only once I had done that did I truly realise how much time I was wasting on them and their petty little soap operas, when I should actually have been using some of that time to evaluate myself, see where I am at, and where I want to be, and make sure that I am actually doing the best that I can to achieve that. In cutting certain people out of my life, I have been able to grow in the ways that I want to without being constantly distracted by some pity-seeking persons self-created dramas, and I have had the time to experiment with who I am, and to begin to see the person I could be, and work towards getting there. It has truly given me the freedom and space that I needed to evaluate my cutting, and work out much healthier ways to deal with the thoughts that used to lead me to that act, and it has given me the space I needed to start on my path towards recovery.
I’m not saying I’ve done that yet, I still have a long way to go and I realise and accept that, and I’m completely committed to continuing what I have started and see what kind of person I can become. The road is a never-ending one full of discovery and adventure. Yes, it can be bumpy at times but those bumps are always temporary and really are an opportunity to learn from the experience, and a chance to better the person we are.
I can honestly say that, with all the changes that have happened over the past year, both inside me as a person, and externally, I will not be going back to self harm. I am proud of what I have managed so far, and as far as I am concerned, things can only get better as I continue to learn who I really am, and can be, and as I progress through this course of CBT and any other therapy I may go through in the future.
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