About Kalie Gipson, Author of "Speaking Out About Self-Injury"

My name is Kalie Gipson, and I am a college graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in History and a minor in Psychology. Simply making it through middle school, high school, and college was an excruciating task for me, since I suffered from self-harm for seven of the past 10 years. It all started when I was 13, after a rather nasty argument involving my entire family. It quickly escalated into a psychological addiction to self-injury, one I had to answer to every time it called. After a few years, hiding the self-harm scars on my arms and legs became an exercise in futility.

Self-Injury and Mental Illness

I was diagnosed with bipolar II when I was 15 years old. This drove me to cut more, as I tried various cocktails of medication that intensified my moods. Itching for control, I resorted to cutting myself more frequently. After discovering a combination of pills that worked, the cutting went from an everyday occurrence to a reaction to extreme stress. Eventually, I stopped cutting completely. Unfortunately, due to repressed memories resurfacing from my childhood, I began cutting again after my sophomore year of college. Eventually, I was diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder on top of having bipolar II. The cutting became a way to be in control again. It was my familiar, it had been uploaded into my hardware.

Self-Injury Recovery

Learning to use healthy coping techniques when life becomes overwhelming and stressful is difficult, but with help from therapists, psychiatrists, and other members of my support team, I am proud to say that I am now four months clean of self-harm. By writing for this blog, I hope to be a form of self-injury support, hope, and compassion to those suffering from self-injury, as well as a crutch for those who are in recovery but are in danger of relapsing. I have always dreamed of helping others in similar positions as myself, and my only hope is that people can relate to what I write and take something from it. The desire to self-harm is one we feel every day, no matter where we are in our journey, so we are all in this together.

More About the New Author of "Speaking Out About Self-Injury," Kalie Gipson

https://youtu.be/HleQV9zWkRg

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