(Sorry if grammar, punctuation and spelling aren’t right. English isn’t my first language and i’m dyslexic)
so…I’m fairly new here but I decided to post my story to get things off of my chest and vent a little.
I started being depressed and having suicidal thoughts at a pretty young age and when I was 11 I cut myself for the first time. That very first time I did it just to deal with all the emotions and the anger towards myself I felt, because I had seen other people use selfharm as a way to deal with things. For a few weeks it was just that, calming myself down when my feelings overwhelmed me. But after some time I did it more and more and more until I couldn’t go a day without out hurting myself. I stole the blades from cardboard cutters in school, razor blades in super markets and tried to get as much sharp things I could hurt myself with as possible. At some point it wasn’t even something to calm me down or punish myself but I just craved the pain.
Currently i’m doing a lot better but I still feel like cutting. Today I did it again but I try to stay optimistic and hope this was a one time thing.
So yeah that was a summary of my story.
Well I hope you all have an Amazing day
I am very sorry you are going through this right now! I use to cut myself too. It all started when I was about 14. I stopped it at around 19 years of my life. I am 26 now. Mine wasn’t as frequent as yours. I would cut about once or twice a month when emotions inside me got so powerful I needed to release them again. Sometimes but rarely I suddenly get a urge to cut when I feel overwhelmed. I once heard this phrase once a cutter is always a cutter. And I think it’s true it someway. I relapsed once 2 years ago and havent since. The urge sometimes will be there and we don’t know why. It’s all about retraining your thought process and coping skills like with any other addiction. And knowing triggeres. You want to cut think of something to do that will calm you. Like a warm bath or music. Over time it will get alot easier. Even now sometimes the thought occurs to me it doesn’t have any power. Love and treat yourself good
You both are very good people and i know this because of my own addiction to drugs and alcohol at age 15. I was so sad scared helples and so so angry. I tried to drink to cope. A lot a lot. Suicidal thoughts got me doing very bad things with my meds. I od a lot and never reached out because i was sick of my family. I remember screeming i give up then chugging a milk jug of water to feel calm.
You both are young
Your lives are worth more then anything.
Guys can be so hurtful
Women can be crul
Family can be cluless
People can really suck
But
Would u help someone like yourself?
You both helped eachother right now
You both will help more people
Anger is a human nature
So is fear and sadness
Sence my own expariences…
Everything changed
Everything is ok now
It is really hard to understand
Take meds as perscribed with plenty of water / not a milk jug tho
Hi there!
I feel you
I also began self-harming to cope with my emotions but it got to a point where I was seriously addicted to cutting myself. I loved the pain and there wasn’t a day I didn’t cut.
I’m 134 days clean now and I’m not gonna lie, there are a lot of days where I really wanna cut myself, but I always tell myself it’s not worth it.
I know those urges and I also know it hard to stay strong sometimes.
What really helped me was tricking my mind into thinking I cut myself - instead of using a blade to cut my arm I’m now taking a red sharpie to just draw on my arm. Maybe you’ve already heard of this!
On some days it works quite well for me
I wish you all the best and I hope that you can find a way to treat your body with love
Well I’ll just list a few coping skills/things I use to distract myself when I feel the urge.
• I almost always have a fidget cube, stress ball or smooth stone on me so I can do something with my hands
• I leave my room because thats where I feel comfortable being vulnerable and the place I cu most of the time
• go straight to bandaging without even cutting
• take a shower and really scrub/massage my thighs and arms (where I usually cut) with a body wash that smells really good and calms me down
• wash the dishes (sounds weird I know). Because the warm water is calming, I can concentrate on the thing i’m doing and listen to music or a podcast
• the butterfly project
For me, unfortunately, elastic bands just became another method to hurt myself
I would snap them to the extend my skin would bleed and my whole arm was covered in bruises.
But I’ve met lots of people who successfully worked with elastic bands
I feel there are so many skills to prevent self-harming, it sometimes takes a long time to find the one skill (or a few ones) that work for yourself.
I literally have filling pages of different coping skills and I have tried most of them, just to find the one(s) that work for myself.
They all address different senses as everyone reacts to different things.
skills that address the sense of smell, which I often use to come back to ‘real life’ from dissociation (smelling freshly ground pepper, smelling salts etc.)
skills that address the visual sense such as naming 10 red things in the room, or naming 10 things that you can touch etc.
This can be adapted to the sense of hearing as well.
skills that address the sense of touch such as drawing on your skin to trick your mind into thinking you’re actually cutting your skin, snapping elastic bands…
skills that keep you busy such as reading, meditation, exercising, counting to 100 and so on…
There are so many different coping skills to try
As to your question what started the emotions: I experienced trauma in 2012 and I developed various eating disorders, PTBS, drug abuse, social anxiety, depression and many more mental issues. I always felt like everything’s too much or I felt nothing at all. Self-harm was a way to either feel something (in the times I would feel nothing at all) or it was a way to escape everything (when everything seemed too much, too loud, too intense).
Often it also was a way to punish myself as I thought I’m simply not good enough. I felt the urge to punish myself for (supposedly) letting people down. Just a way to cope with all my emotions which I didn’t know how to cope with in a healthy way.
I hope I could answer your questions properly
Also I’m sorry if my English is a little rough sometimes, it’s not my mother tongue and sometimes I really struggle to express my feelings and thoughts as
If there are any more questions left, feel free ro ask
Have a nice day
I totally relate…
I dont know why myself eont allow pleasure but loves pain destruction sorry and all that bad jazz…
I think as I get older I’m beginning to realize that im worthy and can experience pleasure iwithout guilt …
Tx 4 sharing
