It started earlier than I use to think. When I look back I think I was maybe 6 or 7 when I learned to use pain to help with pain. Physical pain, for me, was an easier thing to deal with than emotional pain. It slowly progressed with age. I started cutting at 14. I didn’t know that self-harm was a thing. I did not know a single human who did it. When I looked back and before I knew the neurobiology behind it, it was scary to me that a person’s natural response to intense emotional suffering would be to cause physical pain. I was actively engaging in harming myself for 5 years. I use to count injuries but I lost count after the first year. I tried to stop for other people but at that point I was addicted. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of college at around 20 when I chose to stop for myself. I went 3 years without harming. Since then I have messed up a couple times and relapsed once. The best part of the story though is that it has been a long time since I harmed last and now I am in my final year of graduate school! I am in my clinical year of school which means that I am now counseling people who are in similar places that I have been. God has really used my pain and struggles to then help me to help people in pain. I love that I now get to sit across the room from people who are so brave to allow me into their pain. Even if they are not able to see that it will get better, I get to hold the knowledge and experience that it does get better and that healing is possible.
I still have a long way to go but man I love to look back and see how far I have come. I just want you to know that there is hope and redemption is possible. It is okay if you can’t see it yet, just know that no matter how long it takes, it is just beyond the horizon.
