Relapsing from self-harm

Relapse is defined by the free dictionary as:

1. To return to a former state. 

2. a. To become sicker after partial recovery from an illness. 

b. To recur. Used of an illness. 

3. To slip back into bad ways; backslide. A return to a former state, especially after apparent improvement.

You can relapse from anything. Eating disorders, self-harm, depression, drug addiction just to name a few are easy to relapse into.

Things were going better. You were improving. You were clean. You hadn't self-harmed in so many days, you don't think you've ever been clean for this long before. And then one day you self-harm again. Sounds familiar? Well, that's relapsing.

You may feel like a failure if you have relapsed. I know that I do feel like shit every time I relapse after having stayed clean from self-harm for a while. 

And it feels like I just keep going back to it, like there is no end. Why keep trying if I know I'll end up doing it all over again?

Well, folks, that's the whole point. Your depression, your ED or whatever it is that you're recovering from, wants you to think that way. 'Stop trying, why try again?'

 'I'm so tired of fighting when I keep losing'. 

I tweeted something like that a couple weeks back because that was exactly how I felt. And even though I still feel like that a lot of the time, I've had time to reflect on that thought. If you stop fighting, then you let that voice win. You let your depression win. 

If you stop fighting, that's when you lose. You haven't lost if you're still fighting, you're just finding obstacles in your way. 

Relapsing is normal on your way to recovery. 

You don't have to use that as an excuse to keep self-harming because 'hey, it's normal'. 

But you have to know it so that you realize that relapsing is not a failure, it's only part of the process. You have to accept it in order to find the motivation to keep fighting, because relapsing isn't losing. You'll only lose when you give up. 

So don't give up.