Contact
The email address for this site is made up of the identifier floor_sitter (note the underscore), followed by the @ sign, followed by the domain yahoo.co.uk.
If that doesn’t work, you could contact me through my
BUS account or comment (appropriately!) in my 
.
Think you might know me?
I am known to various people as Snail 
(I chose that partly because I
rather like snails, particularly the logarithmic spiral on their
shells, and partly because at times I feel that I am slimy and slow
and live in a shell), or as Floor_Sitter 
(because I usually
prefer to sit on the carpet rather than a chair) or as Laura
(because that’s actually my name). The images in this paragraph
are avatars I often use. (The snail was kindly drawn for me by
Michelle from BUSBoard).
I am an admin on BUS Board, a large online support group for people who self-injure. I also belong to various other online communities relating to self-injury or to my other interests, including mathematics, Apple Mac computers, menstrual cups, sibling bereavement and distributed proofreading. (Some of these communities are listed on my LiveJournal userinfo.)
In real life? I’m Scottish, live in the UK, work in higher education, and in my spare time I take part in church activities, musical activities and volunteer on a mental health helpline. If you do know me from real life, and you didn’t already know about my mental health history, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know that you found this site. Thanks.
My mental health
Although this site is intended as a resource for others and not merely as a place for me to express myself, it is important to note that I am not writing as a professional but as a service-user. However, I have received formal training in mental health in a short distance learning course I took, and as a helpline volunteer, and of course belonging to online communities, particularly BUS, for a number of years has given me further insight to add to my own personal mental health experience. Nevertheless, the opinions and advice on this site are mine and are not official in any way whatsoever.
I self-injure (usually by cutting or burning myself) as a way of
relieving depressed moods or of stopping disturbing thoughts.
However, I am trying to stop, and did manage a run of 491 days
without. Here is my “One year self-injury free” token. I
showed it to my GP, and he was amused but kind of pleased, I think.
There has been something of a relapse in the past year, but (as of the
time of writing) I am now
The self-injury began in my teens, although it worsened considerably in my early twenties, which was when I first sought help. My diagnosis is depression, although bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder and schizotypal disorder have also been suggested. I wrote more about my history in my submission to the National Inquiry into Self Harm in Young People.
My faith
If you’re looking here to find out what denomination I am, the answer is “I’m not”. When I move to a new home, I simply join a local Christian church. In the past these have been Presbyterian, Baptist, Anglican, Independent Evangelical, and Salvation Army. If you’re noticing that these are all “Protestant”, that’s not important either: I might not join a Catholic or Orthodox church, but that’s for reasons of what I’m used to and comfortable with rather than doctrinal issues (all denominations have their doctrinal quirks, but the important stuff is the same). I definitely do consider Catholics and orthodox believers to be Christians.
I was brought up in a church-going home, although faith was never talked about. I attended Sunday School, but found the whole thing rather boring and aged 10 rebelled and became a fairly vociferous atheist. However, aged 14 when my brother was dying of cancer, I developed a strong sense of my need for forgiveness for many things, particularly for intense feelings of hate and anger. Instinctively I turned to the church—but a different church: not my parents’ “boring” one, but one talked of by a friend at school who had struck me by the way she was so open and natural about her faith. I knew I needed there to be a God, so I turned up at her church one Sunday, and the following week, Easter 1991, I gave my life to Jesus.
Immediately I felt an amazing sense of forgiveness and lightness—the cliché about a weight falling away. And joy, and peace which lasted even through my brother’s death and the difficult months that followed. Of course, I had much to learn about the Christian life—the importance of prayer, Bible study, and meeting in small groups, for instance—and am still learning. Sometimes it’s only on looking back that I can see that God has been shaping me after all, and that everything that has happened to me, including my mental health problems, has been for his loving purpose.
The aim of a Christian self-injury site is certainly not to say “I used to self-harm but then I gave it all to God”—no, since my mental health problems developed after I became a Christian, and are not over yet. In fact they have probably shaken and threatened my faith more than anything else. This site is intended to help and encourage other Christians who are having that experience, and also for anyone reading, who perhaps self-injures and is not yet a Christian, to let you know that God loves you and will accept you, just as you are.
