mkjt
June 22nd, 2013, 09:22 PM
Hi. My name is Kayla and ever since I was 12 (I'm 16 now) I have been a cutter on and off. Whenever I tell someone about relapsing, they're supportive for a few days and then everything is back to the way it was before.
My parents are divorced. I live with my little sister and my mother, who has been emotionally abusive and when I was younger physically abusive towards me. She has always had this jealous streak about her towards me; I am a straight A student attending Governor's school my junior and senior year, my sister being the exact opposite. Because of this, since I was in elementary school she always does her best to pick out every single fault of mine and exploit it. My mom barely made it through high school and is stuck in a tech support job, always worrying about money.
The first time I wanted help for cutting, about a week before my 13th birthday, I told my mom. She always made me go to therapists when I was younger, so I thought that this time I could go and actually talk this out with someone. This, however, was not the case. When I first told her she cried and said she knew some of the problem was her fault. Days later though, she asked if I was finally done with the 'screwy nonsense', and she was back to her old ways.
My dad and I are very emotionally detached. I stay at his house every other weekend and we have always had a very tough time trying to connect with each other. We have very different view points on a lot of things; he's a super right-wing conservative and is closed minded on a lot of issues, where I'm more down the middle in my thinking and just believe things differently than him and most people for that matter around where I live. He has a hard time expressing his emotions with me too, as I'm sure a lot of dads are. The only time I ever remember him telling me he loved me is when I was five I think; I was living with my grandparents after my parents' divorce and I called him screaming and crying because I thought I would never see him again.
Then there's my grandparents. My mom's parents are the ones who pretty much raised me. While my mom worked they took care of my sister and I during the day. Now that I'm older and I don't need babysitters, they resent me because I'm not with them as much anymore. They think that I'm lazy and never do anything but sit at home on the computer, which is actually quite the contrary. Every chance they get they try to change me and turn me into something they want me to be, and it really bothers me. My dad's parents are 84 and 73. My grandfather is extremely active for someone in his 80's and is retired but does yard work for people in the neighborhood with his partner 3-4 times a week. When my parents divorced, he tried his best to make me hate my mom. He used to tell me that I hated my dad and that I was going to go to hell, when I was just 5 or 6 years old. We've never gotten along and he resents me for being successful in my scholastic endeavors and learning to think for myself and make my own decisions that are different from the way he thinks. My grandmother also instigated this but not as bad, and now she's very sick and to be honest she probably has less than a year to live. I've tried to repair my relationship with her, it's been pretty successful but I'm saddened that I may not have that much more time to spend with her.
As I said before, since I was 6 my mom always drug me to therapists for no apparent reason, and I really didn't want to talk to them because I thought I was fine. It always made me feel like everyone thought there was something wrong with me. I believe this is where I developed social anxiety. I can't get myself to talk with anyone to try and make friends with them. I was a really fat kid, I mean it was terrible, and always would get teased because of it. I can't remember one friend in elementary school. Every year there was always at least one bully in my class during my elementary/middle school years that made my life miserable. In 4th and 5th grade it was this kid who actually was my dad's next door neighbor. Because of him I started getting debilitating panic attacks that I still get today for one reason or another.
In middle school, 6th grade, I finally found a friend, and we were boyfriend/girlfriend for about a year. He wasn't considered "cool" either, so we were both teased for being with each other. Beginning in 7th grade we drifted apart, he found tons of new friends and I was again alone. I was always the nerd in all of my classes, got teased for that and for just being a "freak". It was 7th grade that I began cutting. A very close uncle died unexpectedly the summer before I started 7th grade, and it totally tore me apart. I'd had family members pass away before, but this was way worse. To this day I still haven't gotten over it. That September was when I started cutting. It started with small scratches, barely breaking the skin, and progressively got worse. I felt like no body cared and contemplated suicide on a daily basis.
An old family friend and I connected over this time. She lives across the country from me, but we talk online every day. She remains to this day my only friend and the only one I can trust and talk to. She's been the only one thus far that I can talk to about my cutting, but like I said she lives across the country and she's no longer in touch with my family, so she can't do much to help me, just offer emotional support. She's trying to get me to get help, but I'm just so scared to ask for it.
High school has been a bit better as far as the teasing goes, although I still don't have any friends. Even when people try to talk to me, I get really anxious and can't talk. Everyone still thinks I'm super weird though. I don't fit in with anyone.
I am a super big perfectionist. If I'm making anything less than an A in school I beat up on myself for it. Whenever I do anything, even something I love, if I do the slightest thing wrong I feel like lashing out on myself by cutting. I know I put way too much pressure on myself, but I feel if I don't do this I'll fail at life. I feel like I'm already failing at life. I think that everything I do will always end in failure and I don't know how to stop this downward spiral. I get these moments whenever I feel like I've done something wrong, no matter how small. It's like I beat myself up with words until I can't stand myself anymore and I get really strong cutting urges. I have sleeping issues now too. I'll stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning just because I can't shut my mind down. Then, when I finally do sleep, I'm up a few hours later. I get anxiety attacks a lot too. I've tried different tactics to calm them down, such as breathing exercises, but I can't get them to stop.
I have cutting urges still, daily, and I don't know how to stop. I've tried using rubber bands, I'm a runner now, I draw and paint, but nothing seems to work. I need help trying to solve the problems that are making me want to cut in the first place; but I'm too afraid and don't know how to ask for the help. Sometimes I think that maybe if I just attempted suicide, then maybe the people around me would wake up and help me get help. I know I'd never have the guts to do it, but it scares me. I honestly don't want to die, I cut because I need to find some way to cope, and it's easier to manifest my emotional pain physically; so that I can control and actually see it.
I feel like I don't have anyone, I feel completely alone. I need to know how to ask for help. I spent a couple hours about 3 weeks ago trying to find hotlines for this kind of thing. I called a suicide hotline because it was the closest thing to self-harming I could find because there were no self-harming hotlines that I saw, and I asked the guy I talked to if I could have local hotlines close to where I live and talk to someone so that maybe they could find a therapist or something for me that I could talk face to face with. He gave me 3 numbers, and 2 were for rehab centers and the other was an actual therapist's office. That obviously didn't help. I then continued to search online for hotlines and found this page of numbers for my state. None of them worked except one. When I called the one that worked, this lady (who I think was just some secretary) told me that I had called an emergency line and said I'd have to come into their office if I wanted to talk to someone. After I told her this was not possible for me to do, she got snippy and said that I called an emergency line and blabla. She kept asking if I was ok though, she seemed freaked about the cutting, and I was scared she was going to call an ambulance or something.
What I'm really trying to say here is, I don't know how to tell someone I need a therapist, and quite frankly I'm scared to tell anyone. I just want help, I feel like I'm at an all time low and really just want to feel good. Sorry for this super long post.
My parents are divorced. I live with my little sister and my mother, who has been emotionally abusive and when I was younger physically abusive towards me. She has always had this jealous streak about her towards me; I am a straight A student attending Governor's school my junior and senior year, my sister being the exact opposite. Because of this, since I was in elementary school she always does her best to pick out every single fault of mine and exploit it. My mom barely made it through high school and is stuck in a tech support job, always worrying about money.
The first time I wanted help for cutting, about a week before my 13th birthday, I told my mom. She always made me go to therapists when I was younger, so I thought that this time I could go and actually talk this out with someone. This, however, was not the case. When I first told her she cried and said she knew some of the problem was her fault. Days later though, she asked if I was finally done with the 'screwy nonsense', and she was back to her old ways.
My dad and I are very emotionally detached. I stay at his house every other weekend and we have always had a very tough time trying to connect with each other. We have very different view points on a lot of things; he's a super right-wing conservative and is closed minded on a lot of issues, where I'm more down the middle in my thinking and just believe things differently than him and most people for that matter around where I live. He has a hard time expressing his emotions with me too, as I'm sure a lot of dads are. The only time I ever remember him telling me he loved me is when I was five I think; I was living with my grandparents after my parents' divorce and I called him screaming and crying because I thought I would never see him again.
Then there's my grandparents. My mom's parents are the ones who pretty much raised me. While my mom worked they took care of my sister and I during the day. Now that I'm older and I don't need babysitters, they resent me because I'm not with them as much anymore. They think that I'm lazy and never do anything but sit at home on the computer, which is actually quite the contrary. Every chance they get they try to change me and turn me into something they want me to be, and it really bothers me. My dad's parents are 84 and 73. My grandfather is extremely active for someone in his 80's and is retired but does yard work for people in the neighborhood with his partner 3-4 times a week. When my parents divorced, he tried his best to make me hate my mom. He used to tell me that I hated my dad and that I was going to go to hell, when I was just 5 or 6 years old. We've never gotten along and he resents me for being successful in my scholastic endeavors and learning to think for myself and make my own decisions that are different from the way he thinks. My grandmother also instigated this but not as bad, and now she's very sick and to be honest she probably has less than a year to live. I've tried to repair my relationship with her, it's been pretty successful but I'm saddened that I may not have that much more time to spend with her.
As I said before, since I was 6 my mom always drug me to therapists for no apparent reason, and I really didn't want to talk to them because I thought I was fine. It always made me feel like everyone thought there was something wrong with me. I believe this is where I developed social anxiety. I can't get myself to talk with anyone to try and make friends with them. I was a really fat kid, I mean it was terrible, and always would get teased because of it. I can't remember one friend in elementary school. Every year there was always at least one bully in my class during my elementary/middle school years that made my life miserable. In 4th and 5th grade it was this kid who actually was my dad's next door neighbor. Because of him I started getting debilitating panic attacks that I still get today for one reason or another.
In middle school, 6th grade, I finally found a friend, and we were boyfriend/girlfriend for about a year. He wasn't considered "cool" either, so we were both teased for being with each other. Beginning in 7th grade we drifted apart, he found tons of new friends and I was again alone. I was always the nerd in all of my classes, got teased for that and for just being a "freak". It was 7th grade that I began cutting. A very close uncle died unexpectedly the summer before I started 7th grade, and it totally tore me apart. I'd had family members pass away before, but this was way worse. To this day I still haven't gotten over it. That September was when I started cutting. It started with small scratches, barely breaking the skin, and progressively got worse. I felt like no body cared and contemplated suicide on a daily basis.
An old family friend and I connected over this time. She lives across the country from me, but we talk online every day. She remains to this day my only friend and the only one I can trust and talk to. She's been the only one thus far that I can talk to about my cutting, but like I said she lives across the country and she's no longer in touch with my family, so she can't do much to help me, just offer emotional support. She's trying to get me to get help, but I'm just so scared to ask for it.
High school has been a bit better as far as the teasing goes, although I still don't have any friends. Even when people try to talk to me, I get really anxious and can't talk. Everyone still thinks I'm super weird though. I don't fit in with anyone.
I am a super big perfectionist. If I'm making anything less than an A in school I beat up on myself for it. Whenever I do anything, even something I love, if I do the slightest thing wrong I feel like lashing out on myself by cutting. I know I put way too much pressure on myself, but I feel if I don't do this I'll fail at life. I feel like I'm already failing at life. I think that everything I do will always end in failure and I don't know how to stop this downward spiral. I get these moments whenever I feel like I've done something wrong, no matter how small. It's like I beat myself up with words until I can't stand myself anymore and I get really strong cutting urges. I have sleeping issues now too. I'll stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning just because I can't shut my mind down. Then, when I finally do sleep, I'm up a few hours later. I get anxiety attacks a lot too. I've tried different tactics to calm them down, such as breathing exercises, but I can't get them to stop.
I have cutting urges still, daily, and I don't know how to stop. I've tried using rubber bands, I'm a runner now, I draw and paint, but nothing seems to work. I need help trying to solve the problems that are making me want to cut in the first place; but I'm too afraid and don't know how to ask for the help. Sometimes I think that maybe if I just attempted suicide, then maybe the people around me would wake up and help me get help. I know I'd never have the guts to do it, but it scares me. I honestly don't want to die, I cut because I need to find some way to cope, and it's easier to manifest my emotional pain physically; so that I can control and actually see it.
I feel like I don't have anyone, I feel completely alone. I need to know how to ask for help. I spent a couple hours about 3 weeks ago trying to find hotlines for this kind of thing. I called a suicide hotline because it was the closest thing to self-harming I could find because there were no self-harming hotlines that I saw, and I asked the guy I talked to if I could have local hotlines close to where I live and talk to someone so that maybe they could find a therapist or something for me that I could talk face to face with. He gave me 3 numbers, and 2 were for rehab centers and the other was an actual therapist's office. That obviously didn't help. I then continued to search online for hotlines and found this page of numbers for my state. None of them worked except one. When I called the one that worked, this lady (who I think was just some secretary) told me that I had called an emergency line and said I'd have to come into their office if I wanted to talk to someone. After I told her this was not possible for me to do, she got snippy and said that I called an emergency line and blabla. She kept asking if I was ok though, she seemed freaked about the cutting, and I was scared she was going to call an ambulance or something.
What I'm really trying to say here is, I don't know how to tell someone I need a therapist, and quite frankly I'm scared to tell anyone. I just want help, I feel like I'm at an all time low and really just want to feel good. Sorry for this super long post.