Recovery Milestone

[RedRose98]

Hello, I'm new here and I just wanted to share my own blip into the abyss. Hoping someone reaches out again and I'm not alone in my humanity. 

Today my partner and I made it to 2 months clean from meth use. It's been our umpteenth time and instead of being positive and celebrating, I was traumatised and downhearted. 

We fought and I returned to self-harm. I still don't understand why I do it, except that I get overwhelmed and triggered. And once it's over, I feel bitter grief at the way I treat myself. 

I need to be supportive of my partner, but instead I'm so overcome with my resentments and shortcomings. How do I maintain recovery from addiction AND mental illness, as well as self Harm? 

[holdinghope5]

Hi @RedRose98 and welcome to the forums

Well done on reaching this 2-month milestone. I hear that it didn't feel like such a positive event. When you say you were feeling traumatised, was that from knowing that you'd reached this point before, or was there something else on your mind?

Changing any behaviour can be difficult, but even more so when it's a behaviour that we use as a coping mechanism. Sometimes if we try to tackle too much change at once it can become too much and we're more likely to want to just give the whole thing up. So maybe while you're still working on remaining clean it might not be the time to remove any other coping mechanisms healthy or not.

If it is something that you really do want to work on now, a helpful place to start might be on finding a replacement behaviour that's not harmful but still offers a release, such as some of those suggested here.

Another thing that may help is to get some additional support. It's great that you're reaching out here, have you sought support from any other avenues?