Honest Christian Conversations
A weekly podcast dealing with cultural and spiritual issues within the Christian faith.
Honest Christian Conversations
How Do You Handle Your Tough Emotions?
Brittany Tinsley shares her powerful journey through self-harm, offering hope and practical wisdom for those and their loved ones who are struggling. Her testimony reveals how even our darkest moments can become platforms for helping others.
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Hey friends, today's episode is going to be very triggering, I'm not going to lie. This episode deals with the idea of self-harm and self-injury. If this is something that you are struggling with, I do suggest you stay here and you listen to the episode. However, if you think that this is not going to be helpful for you right now, then maybe you should take a pause and pray about it first or come back at another time. But this is going to be an encouraging episode for parents who have children who are doing this, for people who are doing this, for teenagers who are doing this. Everyone needs to hear this episode, because I'm pretty sure there's someone in your life who is doing self-harm that you may not even know is doing it, because that is the thing with self-harm is they are trying to keep it secret. They want to feel something or they don't want to feel something. They may be suicidal, they may not be, you never know. So we have to have grace and we have to have unconditional love for those who are struggling with this, and this episode with Brittany is an amazing testimony to healing and gives great opportunities of how to see when it's happening triggers and how to stop those future triggers from taking over again. You're going to really enjoy this episode.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Honest Christian Conversations. I'm your host, anna Murby. Let's get to it Before the episode starts. Make sure you follow the show so you never miss another episode. Hi, brittany, thank you so much for coming on the show to talk with me about this very delicate situation that you found yourself in, and it involves self-harm. This is something that I know a lot of teenagers have dealt with. I know for a fact my daughter has, and my first husband also in his youth. So this is something that hits close to home and that's why I wanted to interview you, because I'm sure that they aren't the only ones and you aren't the only ones who have ever dealt with this. So, before we get into that, give us a brief overview of your testimony, how you were raised and how you came to faith in Christ.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. I grew up in a Christian home. I'm the oldest of six kids and my dad was in the army, so we moved around a lot and the thing that we always established really quickly, anytime we moved somewhere new, was a church home.
Speaker 2:That was always part of my upbringing and so I really grew up even though I grew up in a lot of churches, I grew up in the church and I came to faith at a really young age five years old and it was just always something that was really a big part of my life. And then, as I got older, I started to understand that faith more and in a different way, and so really I would say my faith sort of became my own and became more about the relationship aspect of faith. About the time I was in fifth or sixth grade probably, and my church community just became the most grounding, important force in my life and my relationship with God was the thing that, amongst all the instability that my life sort of entailed, with all of these constant moves and upheavals, that was really the stabilizing force, and so it has always been a major part of my life and I don't have some really great before and after story because I was just raised in the church and that's just the only thing.
Speaker 2:I've good church foundation.
Speaker 1:Not too many people have that especially nowadays, because there's a lot of churches teaching things that aren't actually true and you never know who you can trust anywhere. So for you to be able to grow up with that, that's very important, so I'm glad you had that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I was really lucky to have parents who believed and who made it a point to get us in church, because it would have been really easy with all the moves just to think, oh well, just that piece is an added complication. And so I think that I was especially lucky, given everything else, that I had that sort of fall back on when things got hard later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they taught you the importance of making God first, and that is definitely a life lesson that a lot of people could use nowadays, especially. So you said your life got hard. How did it get hard? To the point where you felt self-harm was necessary?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. So my family moved from New Jersey to San Diego right before my freshman year of high school and again we got really quickly plugged into a church. I made really good friends. I had some of the best friends I'd had in my life my freshman year of high school.
Speaker 2:And then at the end of my freshman year of high school one of my friends died by suicide, and that was devastating to me. I didn't see any signs of it coming. I didn't expect it to happen. He hadn't really given any warning that that was even something that he was considering, and so when it happened I was totally caught off guard and decided pretty quickly that it was probably my fault, that if I had noticed something I would have been able to save him, and I just started carrying a lot of guilt. But my family wasn't necessarily one where we talked about things like that, and so I just sort of hit it and kept it pressed down and thought, well, if I'm guilty of this, then I don't want anybody to know that. What a horrific thing to feel guilty about. And so I just hit it, and the more that that guilt and the grief of his death in general sort of ate away at me. The harder things got and the more complicated things became, and so over that summer he died in May.
Speaker 2:Over that summer, after my freshman year of high school, things got pretty dark, and then in the fall. So my sophomore year of high school I was 15, I sort of fell into self-injury. I always tell people it sort of happened by accident. It wasn't like I had some plan, it wasn't something that I really knew about at that point. I didn't have any friends that I knew of who were doing it. It wasn't something I'd been exposed to. I just I came home and sort of on impulse, in an effort to quiet all of the noise and the chaos and the guilt, cut myself for the first time and I thought I had sort of invented it. I was some brilliant person who had come up with this magical way to like.
Speaker 1:Teenagers always feel that way, don't they?
Speaker 2:I thought I was so special and so unique. But I did it that one time and was just instantly hooked. It was just something that made me feel like I had some control and that was something that I hadn't felt I had in the situation where my friend had died and that I just didn't feel like I had in my life in general because of the way that I grew up with all of chips. One time You're like this is amazing.
Speaker 1:I got to have more.
Speaker 2:Like. Do you have?
Speaker 1:that kind of personality I kind of do. It depends on what it is, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think it depends on what it is. I do think I sometimes can get hyper fixated on things a little bit, and so I think that it was probably a perfect storm situation. None of us do things that don't feel good, whether it's something really unfortunate, or just eating a bag of chips.
Speaker 2:We do it because it does something for us, and so for me, the self-injury did something for me that I wasn't getting somewhere else, and I think it was something that I thought I could hide really easily, that nobody could take from me. Because of those things, and also probably the fact that I tend to fixate on things that feel good, it just stuck with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I can understand that. So how long did this go on? For how many years or months did you A?
Speaker 2:long time, Longer than it should have. So I started that first time was when I was 15. And then, and I struggled with it sort of off and on through high school and college and into early adulthood, and even now sometimes it's not something I've totally figured out. I still go to therapy. I still have to be really diligent about sort of taking care of things as they come up, because at this point, so many years later, I'm 33 now.
Speaker 2:So what's that like almost 18 years or something, it's something that I've sort of trained my brain and body to expect, and so, even though it's not something that I struggle with in the same way now that I once did that sort of draw to, it still exists, and so it's something I have to sort of actively work against sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of like an addiction. I was addicted to pornography for 17 years and you know I don't crave it the way that I once did. It's not a thing for me. But that doesn't mean that something won't trigger. Oh remember, when you watch this, how did that feel? And then at that point you have to train your brain in a different way and say, no, this isn't how I do things anymore, we're done. Is cutting the only thing you did? Or were there other things, because you call it self-injury, which some people might think? Well, maybe she hurt herself on purpose, skinned a knee or something because she wanted to feel something. So I'm just curious if it was just cutting or if there was other forms that you took on too.
Speaker 2:For me it was mostly cutting In the early years. Up through college it was 100% cutting. That was the only thing I ever did. As I got a little bit older I tried some burning here and there, but sort of cutting has always been the primary thing, with sort of some sort of I'll call it experimental in type of injuries here and there. Otherwise. But yeah, it's primarily just been cutting.
Speaker 1:Okay, and you were able to keep it secret, because I'm assuming you did it in places where they're not usually seen, correct? Hey friends, have you joined the Honest Christian Conversations online group yet? If you haven't, you're missing out on a perfect opportunity to grow your relationship with Jesus Christ. This is a community for those who want to go deeper in their relationship. You can do Bible studies together, ask the questions you have biblically and get the answers that you might need or maybe you're somebody who has answers to somebody else's questions. You can leave your prayer requests. You can leave your praise reports.
Speaker 1:This is a community. This is what church is supposed to be, and I am so glad that I finally took that step to make this group so that people's lives can flourish in Jesus' name. Also, if you haven't signed up for the mailing list, you're missing out on an opportunity there as well. I send out a weekly email chocked full of so much awesome content that I don't have time right now to share it all with you. But when you do sign up for that mailing list, you get my seven-day free devotional that I created just for those who sign up for the mailing list. If you haven't joined either of these, you can go to my website honestchristianconversationscom and sign up there, or you can use the links for it in the show notes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think the thing about self-injury in general regardless of if it's cutting or something else is that it's pretty easy to hide most of the time, because you're intentionally choosing where on your body you're doing it, and so I was intentionally picking places that I knew that I could hide, either with long sleeves or with bracelets or hair ties or normal clothes that you would wear. It's pretty easy to cover up, and so for me, I was able to hide it for probably six to eight months initially, really well, and then my parents did end up finding out.
Speaker 1:How did?
Speaker 2:that go. It was not great, honestly, I mean, and now I'm a parent and so I get it. It's a really scary thing to learn that your kid is hurting themselves. But I was at that point 15, 16 years old and I was just mad that they had found out and they made me go to therapy, which I had no interest in doing, and so I went to therapy for six weeks. It was coming up on another move and so I just thought I have to ride this out. For six weeks it was coming up on another move, and so I just thought I have to ride this out.
Speaker 2:My family moved and after that it sort of all got swept under the rug again, and so then for the next gosh decade, I hit it without them ever knowing. I learned sort of how to hide it better and how to keep it more underground, and so I learned to hide it. Unfortunately, it's something that you can hide easily and that, if you've done it long enough, you can learn to hide it. Unfortunately, it's something that you can hide easily and that, if you've done it long enough, don't want to be helped. Why are they doing this?
Speaker 1:Speak now since, like you said, you're a mom. Now speak to that perspective. If your child ever was in that situation, how would you handle that for your child.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. I think that really the thing that probably is the most important for parents who are in that situation is, first of all, not freaking out, which is, I know, sort of counterintuitive, because it is yeah, it's hard, it's really hard, it's really scary and you do have this initial gut reaction of like what did I do? How can I fix it? I mean, as a parent, we all just want to make our kids' lives better, and so we know that they're hurting in that way.
Speaker 2:I think the natural inclination is to sort of overreact sometimes and, as the person, if I put myself back in my 15-year-old shoes, that was a really hard thing to deal with was this level of overreaction, because I was trying to downplay the whole thing.
Speaker 2:And so then, when I had parents who were very outwardly concerned, that was overwhelming for me, which was triggering in and of itself, and so I think that, as a little, that was overwhelming for me, which was triggering in and of itself, and so I think that, as a parent, if I found myself in that situation, I would try to come in really calmly and just create a lot of space for conversation, because there are a lot of assumptions about what self-injury is and isn't and why people do it that aren't necessarily correct or aren't necessarily true across the board, and so I think coming in with a level of curious compassion where you make yourself open to the conversation and ask open-ended questions and give your kid a chance to sort of explain what it is that it does for them, is a good route to go.
Speaker 2:That obviously doesn't mean they're going to want to have the conversation, but I think, at least creating a space where it feels like that conversation can happen is a step in the right direction, so that they know when they are ready to talk about it, the door's open and that they're not going to be met with a level of panic or an overreaction of some sort.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. It's important that your kids know that it can come to you with difficult things, because there's a lot of things in the world today that are difficult, that they're going through that maybe we didn't go through when we were kids and they need to know that we're there for them, regardless of what they have to say. So yeah, I agree with that. If you don't mind me asking, did you have suicidal tendencies during this situation or were you just trying to feel something? Because I wonder, with self-harm, do people do that because they're hoping one day it'll take the full effect or are they doing it just because they're needing to feel something? I've always wondered that, especially my daughter's case, because she says she's not suicidal, she doesn't want to die, but she'll cut herself and she's got some gnarly scars on her body. I've always wondered and I know that for her dad, he did have suicidal tendencies when he did these things and he's also got some pretty gnarly scars on his body.
Speaker 2:So I'm just wondering if it depends on the person or yeah, I mean, I think it definitely can depend on the person. I think more often it is not a suicide attempt. I never was hoping it would work all the way or anything like that. It is separate from suicide and technically it's listed in the DSM and all the things as non-suicidal self-injury. It specifies non-suicidal because there isn't any sort of suicidal intent. For a lot of us who do it I think that it comes down to either control or wanting to either numb or feel emotion. It can kind of go both ways. But there's not necessarily suicidal intent involved in any of the action. There is a correlation between people who engage in self-harm and people who eventually do try to commit suicide. But the self-injury itself isn't usually about suicide and for me I never had any sort of suicidal tendencies before in the window of time when I was really struggling with it.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, that's good to know. So how did you come out of this lifestyle? What did God do to help you get over the initial? I know you say you still have the struggles and everything, but how did you overcome to get to the point where the struggles are not really struggles?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that for a long time I sort of expected that I would have this magical healing moment where God would reach down and it would be this miraculous new creation situation and I would just never struggle again. And that does happen for some people, right, and that's great if it does. That hasn't been my story, and so for me, I think that the way that God has sort of showed up in all of this is just being a steady presence. I think that I sort of thought, well, if I do this enough, eventually I'm going to outrun God. Eventually I'm going to have worked myself so far into this pit that I'm unsavable, that this is unredeemable, that there's nothing God can do or no way that he can reach me. And it wasn't that I didn't want that, I desperately did. But I sort of thought that I had made myself so unlovable by doing this so much. And that's not the case.
Speaker 2:You know, god, time and time again, has showed up in my life and come after me, and now this thing that I thought was sort of the worst thing about me has become the thing that I get to talk about and that gives me a platform and that allows me to share hope with others, and so it's actually something that God has kind of turned on its head and, even though it still is a hard thing and a hard part of my life and a hard thing to talk about, it's something that allows me to point others back to God and say he was there with me through all of this. He's still using this, even though it's not something I would wish on somebody else. If it is part of your story, it's not a wasted part of your story. It's something that God still can and will use in some way.
Speaker 1:He always uses everything, even the dark moments in our lives.
Speaker 2:Nothing's wasted.
Speaker 1:And it is great that you can speak on this, because I am guaranteeing there is maybe a handful of people who are speaking about this, and there's a lot of people out there who are doing self-harm, self-injury, and there are parents who don't know that their children are doing this and if they find out, they're going to flip their gourd or something because they don't know how to handle it. So this is a perfect episode for them to listen to and realize that they don't have to be afraid of the unknown. They have to be a safe place for their child to figure things out. If your child is doing this, then there is a reason for it and you have to figure out what that is. They aren't just doing it just to do it. There's got to be a deep reason for it and that should give you a pause to say, ok, what do I need to do to help them? So, parents, give yourself a little grace.
Speaker 1:Like Brittany was saying, this is something that they can control, that they can keep hidden if they're really good at keeping it hidden. So if you don't find out right away, it's not for lack of good parenting or anything. There's just some who are better at hiding things than others and there's some who they just they don't want you to find out, and it may not be a reflection of you. There could be something else that's going on. So don't focus too much on you in this. Focus on them and how to help them through, so that they don't have to go through a life of self-harm, feeling alone, and this is the only way that they can handle life. Yeah, absolutely. I know you said you struggle a little bit. How do you handle when those triggers come up, when you're having maybe a difficult time or something depressing has happened in your life and you're feeling that urge? What do you do to combat that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really good question. There are a lot of things that people suggest doing. If you Google how to stop cutting yourself or whatever, there are all these lists of different coping skills and obviously different things work for different people. For me, what I've learned about myself is that really more than any of those specific go color a picture or whatever kind of suggestions, I'm really lucky to have a lot of really good people in my life, and so I have a therapist who I see regularly, and if that urge comes up, I usually shoot her an email and she and I kind of have a system worked out where I tell her if that's something that I'm feeling like I want to do, so I'll send her an email and say, hey, I'm really struggling, this is what I'm thinking, and that sets us up to be able to talk about it easily at our next appointment, because even though this is something I've dealt with for a long time, it's still something that's hard to like. Admit out loud like, hey, I'm actively struggling right now.
Speaker 2:I also have a really supportive husband and really great friends who all know that this is part of my life, and I think that's been a really key thing for me the idea that at one point I was keeping this so hidden that I didn't have any sort of outside help.
Speaker 2:I hadn't made that available to myself because I was so embarrassed about it, whereas now most people in my life know that it's something that I struggle with sometimes, and so I'm able to go to them and say, hey, these are the thoughts that I'm having, and even just the act of sometimes saying it out loud lessens the urge in and of itself, whether or not anything else happens after that.
Speaker 2:And so I think for me a lot of the times the first step in sort of moving through that urge into a healthier place is just telling somebody that it's what I'm thinking, whether it's my therapist, whether it's my husband, whether it's a good friend, and that sort of takes the edge off for me initially. And then I'm able to sort of go into some of those other coping skills. I play guitar and I like to color or whatever, and so those things help as a distraction technique. But I think really the crucial thing for me that has made a big difference has been actually telling somebody, which is counterintuitive, I think, to what a lot of us want to do when we're feeling really badly about ourselves, or when we're having an urge that maybe isn't the healthiest, and so that's been a good thing for me.
Speaker 1:That's good advice for anybody who's listening right now, who may be doing this and they want to stop. They've just gotten some great nuggets of how to work on that, so take the advice everyone who's listening who may be struggling with this. You're not alone. You don't have to be alone. You can find a support system. Brittany, before we go, please share where people can get in touch with you if they are struggling with this or they're a parent and they're wanting more advice. How can they get in touch with you so that you can bless them with more information?
Speaker 2:Thank you for asking. I have a book coming out. It's called Stories Are Scars Tell and it's available for pre-order right now everywhere you order books. September 9th is officially when it comes out, but in that I talk a lot about my own story and offer reflections about hope and healing through sort of honest conversation like this one that we had, and so I think that's potentially a great resource for people. But you can also find me on social media. I hang out on Instagram probably more than anywhere else. I'm at Brittany Tinsley Writes there and I also write a weekly sub stack and that's called Braver on Paper, but I have the link to all of that in my Instagram bio. I send out a weekly newsletter about faith and mental health there through Substack that I really enjoy getting to write. So Substack, instagram and the book are probably the top three places where you can find me All right sounds good.
Speaker 1:Thank you again, brittany, for coming on and talking with me. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, leave a review for the podcast wherever you are listening, or click the link in the show notes. If you have feedback for me, use the leave a message or voicemail links also in the show notes. You can check out my website honestchristianconversationscom to leave a review or feedback as well. Join the community and become part of something bigger than yourself. Lastly, sign up for the mailing list and get the free seven day devotional as a thank you gift. Once again, thanks for listening. I look forward to our next conversation.
