Petrichor
Member
- Jul 2, 2023
- 22
In the past recent months my friend has been doing increasingly terrible.
Previously the extent of his sh was him pinching his arms until he bled and constantly picking at it all through the day and now he's started cutting, picking still, and throughout the day he will be scratching at himself or trying to cut off the circulation in his arms etc. Even in his sleep he's started scratching at himself and hurting himself.
As someone who self harms myself, rather than taking measures to stop him I took measures to educate him on things I should've and still don't do. Important things like cleaning and caring for the wounds and when I first learned he had body image issues and wanted to lose weight, I made him promise to never count calories and never expose himself to something like EDblr or EDtwt as the exposure to everything there just makes everything so much worse.
As of the past week he has been doing increasingly worse, many factors have sort of amplified how bad he's doing, but I fear he's starting to develop (or has developed) an ED of some kind and I do not want him to have to go down that path. I know he has very little confidence in his body and has had binging episodes in the past. I learned earlier today that he has been restricting how much he eats everyday and I already know he does an absurd amount of physical movement.
Is there any words of advice for helping push him in a better direction and support him? I can't stand being here and constantly watching him worsen and not really knowing what to do.. I feel like because of me, I might've normalised it for him too much and so he thinks the direction he's going in is less extreme then it really is..
Previously the extent of his sh was him pinching his arms until he bled and constantly picking at it all through the day and now he's started cutting, picking still, and throughout the day he will be scratching at himself or trying to cut off the circulation in his arms etc. Even in his sleep he's started scratching at himself and hurting himself.
As someone who self harms myself, rather than taking measures to stop him I took measures to educate him on things I should've and still don't do. Important things like cleaning and caring for the wounds and when I first learned he had body image issues and wanted to lose weight, I made him promise to never count calories and never expose himself to something like EDblr or EDtwt as the exposure to everything there just makes everything so much worse.
As of the past week he has been doing increasingly worse, many factors have sort of amplified how bad he's doing, but I fear he's starting to develop (or has developed) an ED of some kind and I do not want him to have to go down that path. I know he has very little confidence in his body and has had binging episodes in the past. I learned earlier today that he has been restricting how much he eats everyday and I already know he does an absurd amount of physical movement.
Is there any words of advice for helping push him in a better direction and support him? I can't stand being here and constantly watching him worsen and not really knowing what to do.. I feel like because of me, I might've normalised it for him too much and so he thinks the direction he's going in is less extreme then it really is..
