How to stop being sad or my journey to happiness

Method 6: Draw flowers on your arms or sometimes I get like this

When I was eight I had a pink bunny I would cry to when I was left alone. Now I'm eighteen and I lost my bunny ages ago. Mind if I cry to you?

10.2.2k19

Self-harm. A word that makes me cringe, a word everybody here on Wattpad knows as it's been romanticized and used in every other fanfiction on this site. Even I used it in some of my works which makes me start to dislike them seeing all the comments talking about self-harm on those parts of my stories. I feel like I'm displaying self-harm to the younger and much more sensitive, innocent and easily manipulated audience. On the other hand, I don't think I'm displaying self-harm as something beautiful, something that will give you attention or even bring you love. Who in their right mind would even think that? 

My personal opinion is that self-harm is a topic that needs to be talked about and that needs to stop being a taboo. We also need to crack the stereotype of self-harm meaning 14-16 year old white, kind of popular girls cutting their arms and legs with razors and posting depressive pictures on Instagram (I don't mean to offend anybody). Of course, they are also important and valid, but self-harm is an addiction or at least I like to describe it that way, which can control anybody, old, young, men, women, those with mental disorders or even the healthy ones. 

How would I describe what exactly self-harm is? It is rather difficult because, like any other addiction, its symptoms are different for everybody. If we had to settle for the facts that would be generally held, I'd say it is a deliberate lust to make yourself feel any sort of pain. 

There are many different ways of self-harming and believe it or not, self-harming doesn't only have to be physical although in most cases, it is. You might not even realize it, but when you let yourself down, when you say something that makes you feel low, all of that is self-harm. You're causing yourself pain, emotional pain. I think all of us have at least once been in a situation when we said to yourselves: "Well, good job, you fucked up, dumbass." That is normal, what is not normal is to repeatedly drag yourself down for making a mistake. Yeah, it is important to acknowledge your mistakes but it is never okay to beat yourself up for it with your own doubts and guilty thoughts. 

And how to fight self-harm tendencies? 

I'm not a specialist, although I have my experiences which I will talk from, I suggest you see a doctor. If you don't want your parents to find out and that's why you don't want to go see a psychologist don't worry, your psychologist most likely won't tell anything to your parents if you tell them not to. My ex-girlfriend's psychologist suggested I pay her a visit and promised me she wouldn't even write my name down or anything like that. What I'm trying to say is, find professional help, tell a friend or parent, or somebody you trust, never be in this alone. 

The first thing you need to realize is that this is not a battle, this is a war. It can go on for years and years and even if you think you've won, and you've been clean for a long time, a day can come and you'll lose it in a snap of fingers. Do you want an example? 116 days ago, my count turned from 290 to 0. Just. Like. That. And I remember feeling even worse after, than I felt before. The feeling is similar to what I imagine an alcoholic to feel after being sober for almost a year and then relapsing. But that's it, we are human beings and we will relapse. And even though starting again from 0 is tough, we can't let the relapse kill our spirit. 

When feeling the need to hurt yourself physically, there are various methods I've tried over the years of my youth up until this moment. A very popular method being a rubber band which you snap against your skin to feel pain and even see the results of it as many don't crave only the pain but the visible results on their skin too. Of course, there are people for whom this method doesn't work and that's why I'm here to try out other methods and see if any of them work.