My wife self harms and I feel helpless

[Mr_E]

How do I say this...

My partner (married 12 years) has always struggled with depression, and they have self harmed in the past.

But recently, these past months things have gotten bad. They have a lot of pressure on them from family troubles, and they are seeing a counsellor about past trauma they have had as well (had been groomed as a child) they are unpacking those feelings. But it has opened them back up to self-harming. 

On the outside they usually seem fine, they function and otherwise act normally. Sometimes they reach out for extra hugs and love and I try to be there for that. 

Admittedly I haven't been the best support person in the past, and this has caused them to hesitate asking me for help. 

I'm working on getting better, cooking more and cleaning more. Their mood is directly related to the weather and how clean the house is. 

They have asked me to take their means of self harm and keep them so they have less access. But they end up just going out to buy more secretly and use those instead. 

I've given up hiding them

The part I'm struggling with, is every time I see their legs, and see the damage they have done to themselves... I despair. Not openly Infront of them, I realize that if they see how much it bothers me it will not help them heal from it. 

But I can't help but feel disturbed. I fool myself to thinking things are getting better and then I notice the cuts have spread onto their other leg as well.

We have carefully talked about it, and they have told me they do it to help them function, to remain in control. They call it a symptom of depression that will go away on its own. 

But this time it only looks like it's getting worse and I don't know what to do. 

They want intimacy from me, they want to feel loved and wanted. 

But I find my attraction flagging when I see that kind of damage. I don't want to be sexually intimate after I'm visually reminded... I mean, it's not that I don't want to, but I can't keep my head from spinning out and losing any arousal I had. 

I am talking to a counsellor, and my partner is too.. even so. I don't know what I can do. I don't feel like it's helping me find solutions. And maybe there isn't a solution necessarily? Maybe it's just a matter of time and effort and eventually it will stop on its own like they say if I try for long enough. 

I'm feeling very helpless. I know it's not my fault, but I do feel like I have contributed to their actions by not being supportive enough. 

If anyone has suggestions of what I could try.. out even if you just want to read and tell me your own experience too. 

I'm lost, I want to help them, but how do I help if they don't help themselves? I want to be supportive, which is why I'm coming here. But part of me wants to give up on them... and I feel ashamed to think that way.

Thank you for reading

[Croix]

Dear New Member~

Welcome here ot the Support Forum, a good place to see how others have handled similar circumstances.

I think you already have the right idea and have nothing ot blame yourself about. You try to be reassuring and give a hug, you are both seeing councilors and have down you best to remove means (please do not give up on this as lack of means can sometimes make a difference).

The fact that you partner has asked you to remove means is a very hopeful sign, it show the problem is out in the open, that mostly your partner wishes to stop coping this way, and that you are seen as a trusted ally.

As I'm sure you know it is a means of coping with life, even if a bad one. One avenue used to curb this tendency is to substitute other methods of coping, however this is something done though a professional

There is a fact page with resources at

https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/self-harm

which may be of help as may calling our friendly councilors on our 24/7 help facility.

I do believe that if the urge to self-harm becomes overwhelming calling a trusted person straight away and talking or being them them can help, as can praise and encouragement.

In relation to intimacy is it posssible you and you partner can arrange things in such a way that you are not reminded?

Self-harm, as you will have read in that HealthDirect page is treatable and results can be very successful. You partner is lucky to have such a caring and understanding person as yourself.

You know you are welcome here anytime

Croix

[therising]

Your wife is so blessed to have you in her life. The fact that you're finding the self harm so hard to cope with is understandable. It would be very confronting, triggering and emotional. Try not to be so hard on yourself, given the fact that no one ever prepared you in life for this kind of challenge. While the self harm is nothing new to you, the degree of it sounds like a first time challenge you haven't faced before. First time challenges can be so hard, upsetting, confusing and more.

As a 53yo gal, I've had plenty of time over the years to make sense of self harm in my own life. While it began at around 16 with the kind of self harm your wife turns to, this eventually stopped after a few years. It was replaced by alcohol and the kind of harm that can do to a person and the people around them. While that stopped at the end of long term depression at 35, the next form came along and is one I continue to struggle with. It involves what I eat. So, from emotional cutting to emotional drinking to being an emotional eater, part is about emotional regulation and, to some degree, habit. These are 2 things that go toward forming an addiction. Like with most addicts, there'll be triggers that explain the need or increased need for a 'fix'. Btw, all 3 forms of self harm do harm to the self or body (cutting, drinking and the wrong kind of food).

I heard someone once explain that emotion is energy in motion, that you can feel within yourself. Every energy has a name. Whether it be named joy, rage, excitement, peace or something else, all these things can be felt. Whether we identify them as chemical energy (dopamine, serotonin, cortisol etc) or identify them as a more natural kind of energy in motion (excitement, happiness etc), doesn't necessarily matter in some cases. It's about the trade. 'If I do this (some form of self harm), I'll be trading a sense of sadness for a sense of relief'. If I do that, I'll be trading a sense of stress for a sense of peace'. The addiction is was allows for the trade to be made. Hope all that makes sense. Finding different resources, other than self harming ones, that allow for the emotional trade to be made could be something worth exploring.

If your wife's counsellor is opening up a Pandora's box of emotions, I'm wonder whether they've prepared your wife for what she's going to find/feel. Some emotions may be completely new to her, ones she may need to make better sense of. I think sometimes it's not enough for a therapist of some kind to say 'Now, have a think about what we've spoken about today and I'll see your in a month's time'. That's a whole month to be stuck with confronting, intense and confusing emotions on your own. I have a few key people in my life who help me explore feelings or emotions. Stuff like 'Do you know what it is you're feeling (what emotion)?' or 'Do you know what's led you/triggered you to feel this?' or 'How intense is the feeling?' are just a few key questions that can go toward exploring what can feel so overwhelming. I'm wondering whether a kind of emotional detective could make a difference to your wife. Could you be that detective, helping her detect what it is she's really feeling. The encouragement or invitation to vent at times (whether through words or tears or something else) can go a long way. This way she's not left sensing what she's feeling on her own. She has someone to sense or feel with her, a sensitive or deeply feeling person.

[Mr_E]

Thank you Rising for taking the time to reply to me

I do wonder how much the therapist prepares and guides them. But they at least have sessions every week, and we do a kind of debrief where she will talk about how it went and how they feel.
Possibly, I can do this more often, check back in every couple days.
I like how you explain the emotional detective, i'll try this. is there anything more you can tell me about what you mean when by detective, did you have someone who filled that role? what did it look like? 

Finding different resources to do the energy trade is a good idea, though I am at a lost as to what that could be... they have mentioned noticing they will drink coffee as a form of self medication, and the reason things might get worse at night is when they are unable to do that. Though, I suspect it has a lot to do simply with night is more intimate in general with our own thoughts, less sounds and less around to distract ourselves. 

Thanks again for your words, it helps

[therising]

Hi Mr_E

Three of my greatest detectives are my 2 kids (18yo son and 21yo daughter) and my mum. They can easily sense when something's off with me and will usually prompt me to explore what it is I'm feeling. It then becomes about looking for clues through questions like

• Do you know why you feel this way? Do you know why you feel so depressed/stressed/anxious/lost/confused etc?
• Have you ever felt this way before?
• Do you know what this feeling is trying to tell you?
• Do you feel it could relate to...

and the list goes on.

I think a part of what makes them all good detectives is partly based on wanting to make a positive difference to me and partly because they're just wonderful or wonder filled people. They can't help but wonder. My daughter would have to be the most intense detective/wonderer out of the lot. She has to solve the emotional mystery. I smile when I consider how intense she is at time. She is known to stop me in my tracks and say 'Okay, stop what you're doing, sit down and tell me what's going on. I'm not letting you go until you tell me what's upsetting you'. I think all 4 of us got each other into the habit of being curious, caring, wonderful and loving in the way we lead each other to evolve, especially through emotional challenges. It makes a big difference, having someone to wonder with. I'm glad to hear you're like this with your wife. I've found that going from basic emotional detective to next level helps strengthen intuition and connection. It becomes about exercising feeling for someone while gaining a natural sense of what they're struggling with.

When I was younger, I used to wonder why nights were so hard when it came to managing depression. I found the triggers help explain a lot. 1)It's quiet enough to hear your own thoughts or inner dialogue. 2)The day's list of things to do has ended, so there are no more distractions. 3)The end of the day is naturally a time of reflection for a lot of people. 4)There's more emotional meditation, you could say (time to sit and fully get into how you feel). Going over that list again, the same applies for a happy person who comes to the end of their day. So, you could say this time of day naturally offers 2 sides of the same coin, the light side and the dark side. Learning to tap into the light side while in the dark (a depressed state) is a major challenge I'm determined to master. Takes a lot of practice and doesn't necessarily work when things are extremely dark. This is when key people in life can make the difference. They lead you to hear (internal dialogue) and see (the way forward) differently. Everyone needs leaders/guides at times. Can be hard to live without them.