When boys started causing me pain instead of safety, I turned inward.

Self-harm didn’t enter my life as rebellion or attention. It entered quietly — like a solution. Like something that finally gave me control when everything else felt unmanageable.

I didn’t have the language for it then, but I know it now: I was trying to regulate pain in a body that had never learned how.

By that point, I had already learned a pattern. When the world felt too loud, I needed something to make it quiet. When emotions felt too big, I needed them to shrink. When fear and grief crowded my chest, I needed release.

People had been my first way out. When connection fell apart or felt unreliable, I needed something that didn’t depend on anyone else staying. Self-harm felt contained. Private. Predictable. It answered me immediately. That’s what made it addictive.

It gave me a sense of control when my life felt chaotic. It created relief when my emotions felt unbearable. It turned invisible pain into something I could manage. This wasn’t about punishment. It wasn’t about wanting to disappear. It was about wanting the pain to stop — even briefly.

I didn’t have adults helping me process grief. I didn’t have guidance for the fear that lived in my body. I didn’t have words for trauma or abandonment. What I had was a nervous system stuck on high alert and no safe outlet for what I was carrying.

So my body found one. Self-harm worked — until it didn’t. Like every addiction, it asked for more over time. More secrecy. More isolation. More energy to hide what I was doing. What started as relief slowly became another thing I had to manage, another weight I carried alone.

And the shame that followed only made it worse.

I learned to hide well. I learned to smile when I wasn’t okay. I learned to disappear in plain sight. That’s the part people miss. Self-harm doesn’t happen because someone wants to be broken. It happens because someone is overwhelmed and doesn’t see another way through. It happens when pain has nowhere safe to go.

Looking back now, I don’t see a teenager who wanted to hurt herself. I see a child who needed help regulating emotions she was never taught how to handle. I see someone who had already learned that relief mattered more than longevity. I see a nervous system doing whatever it could to survive another day. Self-harm was my second addiction — not because I was weak, but because I was desperate for relief in a world that never slowed down for my pain.

Healing has meant learning new ways to feel without destroying myself. Learning how to sit with discomfort instead of escaping it. Learning that pain doesn’t have to be managed through harm — it can be met with care, support, and truth.

I don’t tell this story to glorify where I’ve been.

I tell it to show how addiction forms — quietly, logically, and long before substances ever enter the picture.

Closing Prayer

God,

I bring You the pain I didn’t know how to hold.

The ways I tried to manage what felt unmanageable. Thank You for meeting me where I was — not shaming me, not turning away. Heal the places where relief came at a cost. Teach my body safer ways to release what it carries. Help me remember that my pain always deserved care — not punishment. And thank You for walking me out of survival and into healing, one step at a time.
Amen.

XOXO, The Healing Wildflower