MagiStream

I had a few friends on it that used to do it earlier this year... it was just... horrifying and nerve-wracking. I mean, seeing your friends come to school everyday with bright pink slits on their wrists... it's scary. Definately not something to joke about, but I've seen some people laughing about it and it really ticks me off. My friends are better now, but I still feel the same way about it.

The worst thing about self injury (cutting in my case) is that its hard to stop. My own experience is that I was in a lot of emotional pain. Cutting myself let me block that pain out - with other pain. Now I wish I'd just gone through it, even if it was hard. By trying to avoid the feelings, I kind of locked them in place. Instead of it making the pain go away it just let me ignore it for a little while. I had to deal with it anyway and it was way more complicated.

I do believe self harm helps in some situations in life but its not the answer to everything. I have "cut" myself before but after my mom noticed I figured out a way to cut to make it look like pimples and freckles (I will not tell how because they are now permanent). The pain makes people think clearly about serious things in life without remembering a bad situation they were in that might have caused this self inflicted harm. I do not consider it a disorder I think it is a way for people to think clearer and take a breath from reality for a moment so they ignore the pain of the world and just feel the insignificant pain of self harm.

I think: wat the heck. I mean, your hurting yourself. whats worse then that.

rawrzi5 wrote:I think: wat the heck. I mean, your hurting yourself. whats worse then that.

Drugs are just as bad. And killing yourself. And drinking your problems away.

I have quite a few friends who cut and I've honestly considered doing it, but only ended up digging my nails into my skin. Cutting yourself is a very serious thing, but for a lot of people it's a form of realease and helps take away the pain inside by causing pain outside. I worry about my friends who do it, but if it makes them feel better, and they're not making seriously fatal cuts/other means of hurting themselves... I think there's nothing "wrong" with doing it. It's not healthy, but its not wrong.

PureDragon wrote:I had a few friends on it that used to do it earlier this year... it was just... horrifying and nerve-wracking. I mean, seeing your friends come to school everyday with bright pink slits on their wrists... it's scary. Definately not something to joke about, but I've seen some people laughing about it and it really ticks me off. My friends are better now, but I still feel the same way about it.

People who laugh at that stuff are just sick. Someone should ask them how they felt if they ended up cutters/self-harmers and people made fun of them. I'm really glad your friends are better. The best thing you can do in that situation is be there for people. In my opinion an "emo" person is just a sterotype. There's so much more to it than that and it takes cutting yourself or knowing a cutter personally to realize that.
In the end though, you have to realize it's only a temporary fix to things and doesn't do anything in the long run.

I am one of those self harm types, although I do not cute, sometimes i starve myself (Not severely, just skip a meal or two) Or mentally torment myself. I'm a masochist, so something flips in my brain when i experience pain, it releases happy feelings, or, mor, endorphins

*cracks knuckles* Can I jump in on the self-injury discussion?

Kudos to everyone else who's talking about it. It's hard as heck to talk about it. I'm surprised that more people in this thread seem to be observers of it rather than self-injurers themselves, but I think, in a way, that's good; the less people who do it, the better. From my perspective, anyway. People don't get how nasty, habit-forming, and life-altering it can be. Even now, almost a year from the last time I cut myself, I still get urges when I'm on the darker side of the bipolar moon; my first thought is to grab something and hurt myself with it.

For some people, thankfully, they seem to outgrow it, but for most of us, we never really do. I started at 13, and I'm 21 now. That's 8 years of cutting, on and off. In my case, it only got worse as I got older. My arms are absolutely covered in scars of all kinds. They're raised, itchy, purple keloids. On one occasion, last year, I ended up in the ER because they needed to use a special glue to hold them together. They made me wear a bandage to cover it up, and every time someone asked about it, I had to make up something. It forced me to lie. Yet I continued, and sometimes I got out of control and would try to cut with anything I could find. This coincided with a point in my life where I was suicidal (before I was diagnosed as bipolar II, I hit a major depressive stage and tried to kill myself four times within the span of a month), and apart from being sent to the ER, I was also put into mental health facilities on two separate occasions. Those experiences are going to stay with me the rest of my life. Cutting is not a healthy coping tool.

The after-effects remain a painful reminder. Apart from the urges I get from time to time, there's also the stigma. When I nanny, I usually choose to wear long sleeves around the kids' parents. I don't know how they'd feel if they knew my full past, and I'm too chicken to go without long sleeves in front of them. The kids asked me about it the first time they saw me in short sleeves, and I told them it was a car accident (which is what I tell many people who ask). But for every one person who buys that story, there will be another few who suspect the truth. When I venture into public, the first thing people look at isn't my face, it's my arms. In that split-second, you can practically feel the burn of their judgement. As long as I have these scars, I'm going to have to suffer through it. It's the lifelong price I have to pay for my choices.

As for getting rid of the scars? Forget it. They might fade over time, but they're always going to be there. I've researched different treatments, but there's nothing that would be able to happen for me. My scars cover all of my arms and wrists, and the scars go deeply into my skin. OTC topical scar treatments are useless. Surgery is expensive and ineffective. I've branded myself permanently.

Why did I do it? In my case, I feel emotions that are extremely strong. I don't know how to handle myself. I could cry, scream, punch pillows. But when I hurt myself, it helped me calm down and numb myself. For me, that was easier than waiting out the bad feelings. It grew to a point where I couldn't even stand the feeling of discomfort with myself. I'd end up running to the bathroom for a "fix". I don't even remember the pain. The zen of being in the trance of cutting and blotting away blood was more therapeutic than anything else was. Now, I'm better at being able to cope, and my medicines help, too. Being stuck where I was is no way to live.

So if you're like I was, seek help. But in order to stop, you need to want it. Forcing help on someone who isn't ready won't work. If anyone wants to talk to me at all, let me know. Or ask questions about it or whatever. I'm an open book. ^^

I just entered therapy for this reason.

I don't think people really understand that self harm doesn't necessarily mean you cut yourself. I didn't either. Some of the behaviors I have associated with my anorexia are self-harm related behaviors but I didn't know this until the therapist identified them. Figuring out WHY I use those behaviors and what I can replace them with is going to be difficult; I've had these habits since I was about nine years old.

The best thing anyone with self injury issues --- true self injury issues, not just wanting to be thought cool (and Yes, I have seen some people who are like that) --- can do is to seek therapy and help. While self injury might seem like a good coping mechanism because it DOES help you cope, it really doesn't work for the long term. Eventually you're going to make a mistake, someone will notice, and then you'll have the added stress of suddenly having to face an intervention.

The self-harm behaviors I engage in include but are not limited to: negative self talk (and I don't mean the occasional "Oh, you dummy" directed at me, I mean a constant stream of abuse regarding how clumzy, stupid, ugly, useless, etc. I am); starving/limiting foods; excessive exercise; moving foods around on the plate to make it look eaten; feeding my meals to the animals; denying food based on the aforementioned negative talk; and I will even gnaw my wrists and knuckles rather than eat.

I have, in the past, cut myself but I have a tissue defect which makes things harder to heal up and harder to stop the bleeding. That is the only reason I stopped; a family member caught me and then sewed the danged thing up without anaesthetic...ouch. I hadn't even meant to cut that badly in the first place. See what I meant about mistakes?

In any case, therapy helps. It gives you a safe place to talk about what makes you injure yourself and allows you to talk to someone trained to deal with such behaviors who can show you healthier ways to deal with things.

Everyone looks at self harm differently. Some are horrified, some think its a joke and make fun of the person and laugh, some dont seem to care. The worst thing you could do to somebody who self harms is make fun of them for it. People who do this generally dont do it to draw attention to themselves, I would know because honestly, I still have a problem with it. And we dont do it for fun. There is nothing fun about hurting yourself, and we generally try to keep it hidden. Emo is not the same being a self harmer. The word 'Emo' stands for 'Emotional', and its steriotypical that somebody would automaticly think that they participate in self injury. Yes, it can be that way, but not always.
Everybody has different reasons for hurting themself. It varies greatly but out of people I have known(and myself), it may be a feeling of being in control of something, self esteem issues, feeling worthless, needing to get rid of the emotional pain with physical pain, and the list goes on and on. I'm open to talk about this subject.

Sorry about the typos on my last post. but still, if someone else is hurting you, that's different.