How I Told My Mom I Self-Harmed

I told her about three years ago I self-harmed. My mom is a therapist as a profession so she was really educated on self-harming behavior.

Some people may say it would make it easier to tell her because she knows all the myths not being true at all—like doing it to kill yourself or doing it for attention. I knew she knew all those things aren’t true. So it should be easier for me, right?

Well no… it was really hard to tell her because she had seen people harming really bad. Those people were really ill as well. I was scared she would get mad. She would demand me to stop even though I wasn’t ready for that yet.

At the time I self-harmed for two years already and I was able to keep it a secret from her all this time (which is quite impressive because we were so close I even slept in her bed with her regularly). We did everything together so the fact that she didn’t notice was a bit of a wonder. How I hid my self-harm I cannot tell you because I’m a pro about being open about it.

In that period I was learning to take time for myself. My therapist told me to go to my bedroom every day for an hour to just rewire. I used that time to find support about my self-harm because that was a big struggle at the time. I’ve seen a video about someone telling her parents about her self-harm. She said it was much easier than she initially thought. It made me realize I didn’t want to have secrets from my mom either.

So I decided to write a letter to her and I wanted to read it to her. So I didn’t have to improvise while being extremely nervous. When my letter was ready, I told my mom I wanted to tell her something serious. She went with me to my bedroom and I started to read the letter.

In the letter, I said a couple of things. I started with telling her there is no need to freak-out. Then I told her I self-harmed. I told her how long I already was doing it. I was very honest about how bad it was; at that point, it wasn’t “that bad” (please remember self-harm is not a competition and it’s not about how deep, often, or bad it is!). I told her how I felt about it, how hard it is to stop, and that I really didn’t want to do it. I told her what I expected from her now that I had told her. I needed her to support me, and for her to know that if she would see something, it wouldn’t be a surprise for her. Then at the end of the letter, I told her I was really sorry and if she had any questions I would try to answer them.

At this point, I was crying.

At first, my mom cried as well and asked me why. She got really sad but then she got “disappointed,” which means kind of angry. She said things like, do you want to be sick? Do you want to have arms covered in scars? Those were hard questions for me at the time because something in me did want those things even though my healthy mind knew I didn’t.

Then she asked me every two weeks how I was doing. I always told her I was fine and hadn’t done it since the letter. I was lying to her… She did help me with resisting the urge to self-harm. Things like using a rubber band to release tension. Sometimes we did have arguments because my mom reacted with a lot of emotion. I guess that’s part of the process.

Somehow we got better at communicating about self-harm. I was more honest with her about my self-harm, which was hard because that often was what our arguments were about. My mom got better at accepting it isn’t something she could control. And I even told her one time about how hard it is to be honest if she got angry at me when I told her something. Those were heavy conversations.

Now she asks me once every two months. She knows I'm doing better now but I never tell her when I relapse. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I don’t want to hurt her and I'm afraid she thinks I'm as bad as I was before? But I do tell her I still have urges and I still have to fight to stay clean. I have the feeling she understands I'm trying and she is proud I’ve (almost) stopped completely.

I'm telling this because you need to know that telling others about your self-harm issues isn’t easy. It isn’t “romantic” or “movie like” at all! We go through different phases and so do our parents and friends. The only thing you need to know is if you tell your parents or anyone (which is definitely better), you must understand you need to tell them some details. Because they need to know what to keep in mind such as seeing a lot of blood and the risk of going to the hospital or seeing many unexplained bruises. Maybe they won’t see it at all but you just want their support. Be clear about what you expect from them. Maybe they think you want to stop and you’re not ready for that at all, so be clear and say, “I want you to help me stop” or “I want you to just know and support me.”

Remember it’s hard for you but for them too. Give them some space to find out how to deal with this information.

My advice is that you should definitely tell someone. You don’t have to go through this all by yourself. You can stop the self-harm behavior but you still deal with the trauma. And that’s something that requires help and support most of the time.

~written by Namasté allday~