[katerina]

hi I'm katerina and I self harm.

I used to cut , but since it leaves scars and my fianc� cries when he sees them, I stopped. But that doesn't mean I stopped hurting myself. I hit my head as hard as I can with whatever is hardest whenever I think I've done something wrong; like punishing myself. Also whenever I randomly have memories of my abusive childhood, I hurt myself because I want the memories and feelings to go away and I feel worthless. It's not always just hitting, just anything to hurt basically. :\ lately i've been hitting myself so much I wonder how my brain is doing because I feel so ......odd afterwards. I have constant headaches.

But I thank God for my fianc�! He helps me out so much, tries to distract me from hitting, basically like a therapist there all the time working through it with me. <3 I love my Bun (what I call him)!

[TimeturnedFragile]

hi, im maggie, and i self-injure.

ive cut on and off for three years, and recently its gotten bad. i cut because i like the blood and the scabs. they show me that i really am hurting, and not just imagining things. i cut when i feel like im suffocating, like im going to explode, when i get down so low, into the blue. i know what feeling i get when i wanna cut, but i dont know what causes that feeling, and im here because it needs to end.

[flightsoffancy]

This is a great idea. I know that there are a few states that actually have SI anonymous. Anyway.
My name is flightsoffancy. I've been a cutter since 15/16. The first time I felt rejected and could feel myself floating away. I know recognize my triggers. The biggest one is that feeling of disassociating. I always like razors and liked it on my wrist. worst place since its so hard to hide. Then I moved onto my hip area. You'll only see them if Im being intimate with someone. Someone said it before about it being an addiction. For a while I did it because I loved it. I loved the sting and that manical laugh that would follow from just pure relief/joy. I say this full well knowing how morbid it sounds but also knowing a lot of you will understand what I mean without judgement. I recently had an episode. I had about 6 beers before I went off. Had something of a blackout. i remember smashing a ceramic candle holder and slashing. I actually got stitches. A lot of my cuts needed stitches but they never received any. First time getting stitches. Sometimes I crave the physical feeling of slicing a blade across my flesh. Whether or not I actually do it depends on my current state of feeling/thinking. I am now attending AA meetings I can't keep living this way.

[ehygon]

My name is Ehy, and I've been self injuring off and on for 7 years.

I first started with broken glass, mostly doing a large volume of superficial cuts rather than more severe ones. I would pick a number in my head, and that's how many cuts it would be. The most I've ever done is 56 cuts.

I moved on from broken glass, to steak knives, and your stereotypical razor blades, but I went to therapy and stopped cutting for a while.

I lost the nerve to cut myself, but not the desire to stop hurting myself. So now, I burn.

I light a match, and hold it til the little head gets a nice firey orange, and then jab it into my skin until I stop feeling the heat transfer. I have done this so much, I have purple scars all over my legs, and when I wear shorts, I get looked up and down, in the bad way.

I hurt myself partly because I hate myself (lots of reasons, not terribly important to list them all) and partly because I hate other people. I am so nice of a person, that when someone else makes me angry at them, I hurt myself so I don't feel like hurting them. I am afraid if I get angry with someone, they will leave me, because I believe I am worthless. I like being alone, not because I dislike people really, but because it's safer and less complicated. No one can leave if they're never around, right?

[ShatteredGlass]

I really like this thread...it's just nice to get it out.

Hi, My name is Tin.

I've been a self harmer for eight years now on and off (wow I feel old now.)
Cutting is my main vice and honestly...i hate it. I will never be able to wear shorts again thanks to this habit I had.
I always use straight edge razors, new ones. I won't use them more then once...
I have over 300 scars, most in word form so...yeah.
I just do it because of the effect it had on the chemicals in your brain.
It calms me...like a narcotic. I like seeing the blood to, which is horrible... but it makes me feel real.
I also hate myself. Immensely. There's too many reasons to list here and I'm sure no one wants to hear that fun anyway.

But so far I've gone five days without, after two and a half moths of doing it everyday.
One day at a time or something like that.

[Zimmie]

Hi. My name is Zimmie. I self-injure.

I did for six years, starting with a suicide attempt when I was 13. I kept on doing it to hold in confusing negative emotions, or to hold myself together. I would do it to assuage blinding attacks of insecurity and to stave off suicide. I did it because I hated myself, wanted to punish myself. I cut myself with kitchen knives, pocket knives, multitools, razors, keys, scissors. I stopped last spring, when I was in a situation where I would have been locked up had I continued. Although I've been SI-free for five months, the urges and the feelings behind it are still very powerful and with me. I have huge webs of scars on my shoulders, forearms, and legs, and miscellaneous scars most everywhere else one can reach.

[Emma0703]

Hi, my name is Emma and I am a self harmer, I have been for the last 8 years, one day I had an argement with my parents and I just felt out of control and I felt it was a way out. I knew at this point that I just wanted to feel normal again.....
crept
I just found your site on the internet. I as feeling down and was having trouble sleeping. I have had a really stressful evening. I felt my ex partner couldn't at least understand what was going on and I found it difficult to communicate with them.. I found the relationship was not working and after he lost his job, which made it harder, I decided to end te relationship as it appeared to be going no where. I did manage to stop self harming for a short while, but i found that it has slowly crept back into my life. Anyway over the last couple of weeks we have been trying to divide up our flat as the mortgage is in both our names, I have found it difficult as his mother cannot help but get involved and she is blaming me for everything, which has not helped.. in fact it has probably made things worse.

I have a friend who is living with me at the moment and I am finding him a great help as he understands me more and still wants to know me even if I have cut. he helps me put everything that is going on into perspective. Jus had a long chat with my ex partner and found that through troubles at work the original plan will not be able to happen, I felt he was starting to blame me...

I am sorry i just needed to talk about it...

E

[Virgilia]

Hi. My name is Jen, and I self-harm.

I started at age 12, with broken glass. Never really cut again after that - instead I turned to skin-picking and hitting myself, as well as scratching at my skin.

I...would say I had gone two months without, but I got triggered and scratched into my arm today. One day at a time, right?

[tattoedxotears]

Hi, my name is Tat and i self injure...

I have been since i was about 9 years old, and i am now 18. It started by "erasing myself" with a pencil eraser during school. It then moved onto broken glass, razors, fire, picking out hair and picking off skin, knives, stoves, boiling water, strangling/smoothering until almost loss of consciousness... And no one knows but the tdocs/pdocs.

I have been si free for 3 days...not a long time, but hey, gotta start somewhere right?

[Stickler]

Hi, I'm Stickler. I self injure. I started hitting myself because I fell asleep in class-to keep myself awake, back in seventh grade. Somewhere along the line my self-hatred led to seeing how deep I could sink sewing needles into my arms (usually about half an inch before the pain as more than I could bear). It made me feel, well, atoned, for being loathesome...also perhaps a little high. I used to despise myself for not having the courage to kill myself. Later, when my repressed rage started getting unrepressed I punched walls. Usually just hard enough to bruise my knuckles. This worked really well-try doing anything without your hands...A nice long ache all day. Stopping hating myself has been a long process, but I still cut sometimes...because it is like flipping a switch for me. I could be in a state of great agitation in one moment, and in the next I am calm, cool, collected-able to handle whatever it is that is causing me the problem. All I need is a couple of minutes and a very sharp instrument. Very strange way to be, stickler, now why do you need this? (::because my blood is still his blood is still his veins is still his body and he has crawled inside me and his rages are my rages and I must be controlled, I must be controlled I MUST BE CONTROLLED:::: why do I have to look in the mirror and see his face??? why?I know what kind of monster I have in me. My feet will fit the torturer's shoes. I KNOW) Why did I have to think about this again? Why? Leave it the hell alone, Stickler I cut sometimes because it seems better than the alternative.

This post has been edited by Stickler: 11 December 2009 - 06:30 AM

[Shannie]

Hi, my name is Shannie and I self-harm. Or self-injure, whatever you prefer to call it. I started not long after I'd turned 12, when a friend in school told me about some sexual abuse that had happened to her. It brought back memories and emotions from some childhood sexual trauma of my own that I didn't know how to deal with. So I started to cut. Always superficial enough not to need hospital treatment - I managed to keep it hidden for a long time. Cutting served two main purposes for me. Sometimes I used the pain to punish myself for being a bad, dirty, selfish and ungrateful person. I would put nailvarnish remover into the cuts to make them hurt more. Then afterwards I would be nice to myself...once I had paid my price and had my punishment I could make amends with myself, I would take care of the wounds, dress them and (mostly) let them heal. Other times, during bouts of terrible depression, I used pain as a means of emotional regulation - it felt like something when nothing else did, it let out anger that I didn't want to show and somehow calmed me.

Eventually my mum saw the cuts on my legs and, I don't fully remember, but I think she freaked out a bit. She probably cried a lot. She had mental health problems of her own that were in full-on mode at that time, and it was just me and her living in the house, so I suppose she wasn't at all equipped to deal with my problems. I knew that at the time and that's why I never told her what I was doing or how I felt. I had to protect her from it because she wouldn't have been able to cope. Well, she wasn't able to cope. I ended up seeing a singularly unsympathetic GP who told me to get a hobby to take my mind off things. It was years before I ever sought medical help again after that - although oddly, I ended up going into the medical profession myself for a while (3 years in medical school learning to be a doctor before my demons got the better of me, I completely broke down and had to leave).

I stopped regularly physically self-harming at about age 18 (I'm 25 now), when I discovered that weed and alcohol were more effective ways of silencing the inner turmoil, at least temporarily. In the intervening years I've had a few isolated incidents of cutting and a lot of serious problems with substance abuse. Just over a year ago I ran out of fight and tried to commit suicide. For some reason I didn't die and that was my "rock bottom" - I decided to work seriously hard to get my shit together. I have stayed away from sexual relationships and non-prescription drugs since then, although I still drink socially. I choose to drink "responsibly" these days rather than deliberately trying to drink myself into a coma, which in retrospect I think was probably just another form of self-harm. For the last 12 months things have been...probably better than ever before in my life. I am actually getting better, I am recovering from all the f**ked up stuff. I've just resumed university, studying something scientific but not medical, and people have no idea about all the stuff I've been through. Luckily I heal really well and have very, very little residual scarring from all the years of cutting. If you met me in real life, I don't think you'd ever know that I wasn't approximately "normal".

[Me and Me]

Hi there, I'm Me and Me. But since that's a mouthful, and not my real name (I've got a strange, one-of-a-kind name, and so easily traced), you can call me Em. (It's Me backwards. Get it? Haha... okay, not very funny.)

I started SI when I was about 12. I think. It really bothers me that I don't remember the first cut, the first time, not even how old I was. I didn't write it down or anything. Anyway, I got the idea when I was at a birthday party. We were playing a game similar to truth or dare, but it was only truth. Pretty much 'whoever has done -----, raise your hand'. It was then that I realized how boring I was. I listened to my parents, did my homework, had a perfect life. Nothing exciting, nothing unique. So when someone said 'whoever has ever cut themself, raise your hand', I decided to try to pretend to be more exciting. I got lots of amazement and shock, which was another punch in the gut- nobody expected me to do something that wasn't average and perfect and prissy.

A while after that, I did my first cut. For the first few months, I only did it one or two times a week, maybe less. I used a little jackknife that was rather dull, and scratched more than it sliced. Rather ineffective. Over the years, I've experimented a lot- I tried a larger knife, a kitchen knife, hunting knives, sewing needles, pins, boxcutters, shaving razors, even pencils and scissors. My steel of choice are boxcutters- they cut deep with very little effort, give a lot of pain and a lot of blood, then scabs quickly for ease of hiding. I tried burning, heating up a paper clip over a lighter, but the blisters were irritating and gross. The lack of blood was a letdown, too. Bruising required loud banging sounds, and didn't give me the sharp sting I wanted. I do small cuts, all over my body, mostly the backs of my hands (passed off as paper cuts, or even shrugging disarms any curiosity), my hips, or my wrist under the five hair elastics I wear.

So I've been cutting off and on for almost five years, and consistently for the past year and a half. I do it for the rush that comes with the pain, the exquisite feeling of the endorphine rush, the heady flood of power and control, that I have the power to do this. And the independence, doing something so wrong, something so unexpected, something that's so unlike 'me'. Hence Me and Me- the one most people see, and the one I let out sometimes, who doesn't give a damn about anyone. I haven't cut in... six hours? Not very impressive, but I'm not sure I'm looking to stop. Just maybe to slow down a bit, stop escalating.

That's Me. And Me.

This post has been edited by Me and Me: 09 March 2010 - 06:54 PM

[deeschmee]

Hello Im deeschmee and I too self injure.
It began for me as a teenager when some girls were carving boys names in their arms, so I did it.
I was abused by my adoptive mentally ill mom and soon realized that the punching of my upper thighs could be replaced by cutting. Hell she dug her nails
into my arms hard enough to draw blood and leave marks anyway!
The rest is a blur of when or hows.

I do know that I started again in my late 30's during a SEVERE depression.

Oh yeah Im 41 now dont cut but I do this relentless picking of my fingers where I pull off bits of skin untill they bleed. Then they begin to heal into scabby hard skin
which I pick off again until it bleeds again. Sometimes if I feel like it I clip extra hard skin with nail clippers. I pick unconsciously all day long. Then sometimes i get out my
woodcarving tool and pick the ingrown hairs on the backs of my arms and quickly put the tool away before I cut.

Wow I just reread what I wrote and its pretty messed up