So, I’ve (29f) been self harming on and off since I was about 14. It has taken lots of different forms through my life, but that’s beside the point. 

I’ve really struggled since my mum died 3 years ago, and it ended up being my go to way of coping. I had some dialectical behavioural therapy which really helped, I’m also an assistant psychologist so I’ve started to look more into self harm and understand better now days too. 

I guess I’m looking for advice or support: Yesterday I had a relapse after 7 months. 7 months ago I only did it once and that was a relapse from being clean for 8 months. So basically it’s happened twice in the last year. When I was struggling the most it was probably happening twice a month at least. 

Everything I’ve come to understand about mental health has led me to understand that regardless of my relapses I’m still doing really well! Beating myself up will just increase the guilt, shame and negative feelings about myself that reinforce my self harming behaviours. My husband however doesn’t feel like same and is threatening a divorce if I do it again. My understanding is that ultimatums don’t help self harmers or l people with BPD. In fact putting them in a position like that is almost certainly going to fail and reinforce the harming behaviours. 

I’ve tried to explain these things to him, but he basically said that he can’t cope with me doing it. These are his boundaries and I need to respect them. I tried to suggest we could have some therapy together - to gain a better understanding of each other world. But he says it’s my issue that I need to work on. 

Most of the time when I self harm it’s due to us having an argument and me not coping with the rejection. I haven’t been diagnosed but I have traits of Borderline personality disorder, I talked to my doctors and they couldn’t see how a diagnosis would help me. But basically I really struggle with disagreements and feeling abandoned and have massive dissociative meltdowns. 

We were fighting yesterday because he really hates my brother (And I was sticking up for my bro). I tried telling him several times that I was feeling unstable and stressed and the urges for self harm are there. He told me that it’s just me being a psycho manipulator and that he thinks that me saying this is just an act to get him too agree with/ do everything I say. This make me lose the plot. We got in a really heated argument I was self harming a lot and I ended up accidentally scratching his eye with my hand. This was an accident, I never meant to hurt him! He doesn’t see it like that. 

His comments and what i’ve done resulted in me harming myself more dangerously than I usually would have done. This led to him having a melt down, hyperventilating and crying after I’d done it and the divorce comments from him. I 

I don’t know if it’s possible to change how he views self harm and mental health. Probably not. I guess I’m just gutted because I obviously married him because I love him and thought he felt the same. He promised to love me through sickness and health, but he doesn’t see this as a sickness but a choice I’m making. I understand that he’s got to look after himself as a priority and I should be doing the same. I genuinely didn’t mean to hurt him and have apologised profusely. 

I’m not really sure what to do, any love, comments or advice is welcome.