I relapsed and I'm terrified of losing my boyfriend

[pyjamarama]

I'm 19 and my boyfriend has been living with my family for about a month or so now due to his home life being bad. There was an incident early on into this where i hurt myself after he stopped talking to me because he saw pictures id had in my locked folder of some self harm from about 6 months ago when i accidentally opened the folder in front of him. id been clean for about 6 months previous to this and when he found out I'd started hurting myself he lost it and tried to hurt himself in front of me and wasn't able to forgive me or himself for a couple of days. I promised him i wouldn't do it again I had an argument with my mum this morning and she threatened to send me away to live with my dad and call the police and the hospital on me, ive never had an argument this bad before with my mum and i hurt myself again and I'm really scared he's not going to take it well. i feel so awful because it never used to be an issue since noone would see it, but now i have someone who does notice and i know by doing this I've directly hurt him and I dont know how he's gonna react, i really love him and i dont know what id do if i lost him because it feels like he's one of my only friends sometimes.

[Croix]

Dear Pajamarama~

Welcome here to the Forum, I think it was a good idea as others coped with similar problems and if you look around you may see how others have coped using self-harm and found it not to be a good thing, one reason being one can make a mistake or have a mood shift and take one's life.

I know about mood shifts suddenly coming on, they are frightening.

I guess I can understand you saying it never used to be an issue because nobody knows, however even then you do, and I'm not sure that makes you feel that great after.

Being clean for 6 months is a pretty good achievement -and it has only been broken now by your mother threatening police, hospital and sending you away to live wiht your dad. If anything was going to make you relapse that would. Even in an argument parents are never supposed to go over the top like that.

I know you love your boyfriend and feel you have let him down -and are frightened of what might happen as he is your only friend at times.  Do you think he might consider that you are his only freind at times? He self-harmed, and cannot live at home, so there is understanding between you. His reaction to those pics might have been due to fright -he did not want to lose you.

Friends do forgive, and that includes a broken word, if the situation was reversed you would forgive him.

Please bear with me for saying this, I'm worried about the pair of you, and I think you  both need outside help to overcome the habit of self-harm. Even after 6 months it was still there ready to be used to cope wiht a really bad scene. It needs to be quite gone and another non-harmful method of coping substituted.

If you have already had a medical team to help with this please go see them and say their  treatment  is not working. If you never have then I'd suggest giving the Kids Help Line a ring or web-chat, they are there 24/7 and understand the problems people under 25 face, they can be a comfort and are realistic too.

If you felt like saying how you get on after your BF finds out and after your mum calms down I would like it if you let us know.

Croix