Time travelling at night….

The past week has been pretty rough. I’m struggling massively but doing everything I can in my power to remain safe. The past 4 nights have been a particular struggle as I have had to stay up until around 4am using skills over and over again to keep myself safe. It’s so draining as even when I do go to sleep I have nightmares so I’m not really getting much rest. I’m so tired and want to give in but I’m also determined to make a real change this time and to use my DBT skills effectively; however hard it may be. Durning my nocturnal endeavours last night I started to look back on some of my old art journals and diaries. The oldest ones being written when I was only 14 years old and the most recent ones I looked at being written when I was 18. I feel sad for my 14 year old self, I was so full of self hate and felt so alone. Reading back on the things I was writing it’s like watching my eating disorder develop right in front of my eyes. I was oblivious to there being a problem. I wrote pages and pages about how I wanted to be smaller and lose weight. I thought people would like me more if I was smaller, things would be better and I would be happier. It’s sad that 4 years later bulimia had it’s grips on me so tightly and there was now no denying that I had a full blown problem. I did come across some more positive things while flicking through, grains of hope in the dark. I read back poems that were so insightful and clear, I wrote about how I was starting to believe that I was actually more than my weight/size. I found pieces of art work that made me smile and reminded me that I am more than my struggles. There were pieces of writing that I was talking about taking the power back after years of feeling like an abuse ‘victim’ rather than a ‘survivor’. I will include some photos of the things I found, have a look if you’re interested and heres to hopefully a more restful nights sleep in the upcoming days.  

Tipping point…

I had a really tough therapy session yesterday. My therapist was quite real with me about how DBT therapy finishes in 3 and half months and the fact of the matter is, if my self harm severity and frequency hasn’t decreased by the time therapy finishes I’m not going to be well enough to go onto the next stage of therapy which is the trauma work I desperately need. I’m scared because once again I’m facing the reality that self harm is something I need to stop if I’m going to get the life I want. My PTSD is crippling and I need to do the therapy to lesson its effects. But I’m so so so scared to let go of hurting myself. It has felt like my identity for a really long time. Letting go of self harm means I’m also going to be moving on from this part of my life. I’m going to be moving on from hospital trips, stitches, operations, psychiatric admissions. I’m going to be moving on from a part of my life that all revolved around my self destruction. Change is scary for everyone but when you’ve been living a certain way for years change almost feels like the enemy. The people around me, the people I trust the most are all telling me that it is time, I am ready to let go of self harm and hearing that makes me want to cry because I don’t feel ready but honestly- I don’t think I ever will. Yes self harm has been a coping mechanism when I didn’t have anything else and was a friend when I felt really alone but I’m realising now that after all this time, it hasn’t fixed anything. Self harm has always felt ‘safe’ but my therapist pointed out that it feels safe but its probably the most unsafe thing I could be doing right now. Something I thought was my ‘friend’ is now stopping me from moving forward in therapy and that reality has really shaken me. All of this doesn’t mean I’m never going to hurt myself again because I think everyone realises that that isn’t realistic but maybe now these are my first steps to moving forward. To moving on. To getting better. 

Hope, comes around goes around…

You choose recovery over and over again, sometimes its a choice you have to make multiple times a day. There are days I find myself reaching out for support from others countless times. I’m fighting hard at the moment and sometimes it feels like a losing battle. From battling urges to not feeling like I deserve basic self care things can feel pretty bleak. But I’ve been thinking about how I’ve been asked if I want a good day or a good life? Do I want to satisfy urges and cravings or do I want to reach my long term goals? Because the harsh and painful reality is, I can’t have both. People on the outside might think it’s a simple answer- self destruction is harmful and not doing it is going to get you further. But the comfort of hurting myself is so familiar. It’s the way I have learnt to cope and its been my partner in life when I didn’t think I could possibly go on. It is not something you can give up or let go of easily. I’m trying my best to trust in my support system when they all tell me that I can get over this and move forward. That there is hope and a future for me that doesn’t revolve around harming myself but on dark days I do find this hard to believe this. Those are the days I let others hold the hope for me and just focus on getting through. I know I need to keep pushing through in therapy, keep using skills no matter how hard it is and how undeserving I feel. I need to trust that in time this will feel more natural and will get easier. Trust that there is always hope.