I struggle with self harming. It’s become a way to cope. Each time I do it I’m left feeling frustrated with myself. I don’t have a home church and I would rather sleep in on Sunday then find a church. So my relationship with God is rocky right now. I see a counselor but she leaves in 2 weeks for maternity leave. I’ve been seeing her once and sometimes twice a week. The replacement I will be seeing is every other week. It’s just a big change. I feel like I’m rambling but I have no family support. So I heard of this and thought I would try it out.
hi there friend,
thanks for reaching out! Heart support has a lot of resources (blogs, free booklets, videos, etc) about self-harm that i think you should check out.
Never be afraid to reach out to God, He stills loves you and cares about you. Just because you can’t "feel’ him doesn’t mean Hes not there. He wants to help you.
I can see you’re going through some changes in life and that’s ok. Changes can be good. Don’t be afraid. All will be well. Learn to rest and not quit my friend.
praying for you.
Hi there!
As someone who is struggling to stay clean from self harm, I very much understand how that part feels. I can tell you what I do and maybe that tool can also help you. I can’t for the love of me remember what it is called though, but it is basically a pros and cons list.
So to help visualize you draw a square and split it up into 4 equal sized boxes. (Like a window or flag or something) and then you write pro’s on the top left and cons on the top right. On the left side, first row you write ‘doing self harm’ and for the second row you write ‘not doing self harm’. Then you write down all the reasons for all the boxes that you can think of. And this can be anything, from pro of not doing it: people in my life will be proud of me (or heartsupport surely will) and con of doing it is that it makes you feel frustrated. Just spell it all out and then look at it.
I can almost guarantee you will find more reasons for not doing it than doing it because it does not help with anything in the long run. And every time you feel like doing it, you write one of these again or visualize it in your head if you don’t feel like writing.
I hope this will help you; it sure helped me to stop doing it! And know you are loved and supported here, always <3
@Breathe Thanks for reaching out! It can be hard to deal with things like self harm and depression. And then on top of it your counselor is leaving for maternity leave, so the one person you’re used to discussing things with won’t be there on a consistent basis. That is hard. If you can muster the energy to check out a church, I think that would be beneficial. It may be challenging because you just don’t feel like getting up and going to church. It is much easier to just sleep the morning away. But I challenge you to try it. Who knows what finding a new church could lead to! If anxiety is stopping you, try to remember that God sees you. He sees how hard it is to get up, to step foot into a church. He sees it all. And he is all the more proud of you because he knows how hard it is. Don’t give up. You can get through this!