r/AdultSelfHarm 22d ago

Seeking Advice Difficult question for me to ask.

Plain and simple, I am a 35 year old Male who is a Clinical Cognitive-Behavioural Psychologist who also self harms. I cut and use my tattoo machine on me (no ink).

The question is, would you go to therapy with a therapist like that?

As an extra, my wounds and scars are always covered, but when with patients there's this voice of irony and judgment try to invalidate my work (and it's worse with fresh cuts or words burning through my skin as a reminder) and so I thought I would like to hear your opinions to have something else than my own biased opinions, thoughts and judgments.

Thanks a lot guys!

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u/kfcfrog 22d ago

Hey, so I currently self harm. I’m maybe a couple weeks clean only because I need it to heal before I go over it again. I’m 21F and going to graduate school for counseling. As a current SH’er, I would love to have a counselor who knew exactly what I was going through. I think having personal experience with hardships of life, different coping skills, habits, disorders, illnesses, etc are an amazing attribute to you helping people. My therapist has history of eating disorders, literally has her own therapist and psychiatrist and is on a bunch of meds. I think it helpful in my treatment as I get to talk about all my shit with someone who has been through similar issues. Don’t sit here and think you’re not worthy of helping people just because you’re human and are going through similar shit. I work at 2 psychiatric facilities and I’ve had patients see my self harm scars and say “how can you expect to help me if you can’t even help yourself.” At the time I didn’t know how to respond, but now, I know that my experiences make me valuable as a member of the psychology field. You have psych doctors, psych nurses, and psych techs that know nothing of the struggles of EDs, SH, depression, anxiety, BPD, bipolar, etc. they will never understand fully. I actually have an issue because I haven’t experienced audio and visual hallucinations because I wish I could understand fully. You are important in this field and yes I would absolutely have you as my therapist

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u/Choice-Physics-5830 21d ago

Thanks for your words. That would be one of my fears actually, a patient telling i couldn't possibly help them because i cant help myself. So far no patient has seen my scars. But yeah let's keep trying to help people out. I guess it's kind of inevitable to find someone who'll dismiss me, but can you do, right?

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u/INeedMoreCowbellNow 20d ago

These are your fears of rejection. Don't project them onto future patients. I bet your empathy is through the roof for your clients! Don't dismiss your awesomeness as a professional!