What dealing with self harm is like

What is dealing with self harm like?

Self harm is a different experience for everyone. Here are some examples:

1. "This is for the dealing w/ self harm thing. It all started when I was 15. I had been depressed for a year or so and didn't know how to deal with it so I started cutting. Gladly I met my SO when I was 17 and with their help I switched my blades to marker pens, so I could draw on my skin, and after a while I stopped doing that too. I'm now 20 and been 3 years clean, so yay (still depressed tho). I still sometimes get the urge to cut, but I just doodle on my skin and that's enough for me to cope -T."

2. "you wanted to know what it’s like to deal with self harm. well, it sucks. no matter what emotion i felt, my first thought (and i would do it) was to self harm. i’ve been clean for about 6 months and i swear to god there hasn’t been a day that i haven’t thought about it. it’s in my mind all day everyday. i’ve been close to relapsing like 20+ times. if i am being honest, i don’t know what is keeping me from doing it, but i’m glad i haven’t done it. it is a very dangerous thing"- Anonymous.

3. "It’s like a deafening noise holding you in a numb sort of limbo. As if in that moment you cannot hear or feel or think. The blade cuts across the flesh and still the world has faded around the edges. Slowly, as if line by line in the skin, the misty world begins to clear and come into focus. By the time the cutting has stopped, you feel calmer and less overwhelmed. It’s a way to make the internal pain seem relevant, real, or valid"- Anonymous.

4. " Everything is just empty. Even the things that normally fill with happiness or any other emotion don't. Its not until I cut that I feel I can breathe again and the air is clear. Like wiping the slate clean and being able to start over again. If I don't do it for a while I feel good about myself because people have told me it's a bad thing to do but I end up lingering in the same state of numbness for longer.

"I both love it and hate it. I wouldn't wish for others to be hurting themselves in the way I do but if they did I can say I understand. Although I dislike others being in the same place I'd much rather advocate safety over anything. I don't cut myself to kill myself and I don't want complications over it either. To me it's just a simply way to deal with how I feel"- Anonymous.

5. "it's pretty weird, to say the least! i started when i was in elementary school, i don't even remember seeing anything like that in the media, i just got a multi-function pocket knife and slashed my wrist horizontally. i started after i got molested. i've been doing that off and on for about 6 or 7 years now.

"sometimes i don't get the urge at all for months, and sometimes i get the urge but i'm able to control myself. other times it's all i want to do. recently i've been having a new experience because i don't even want to do it, but i feel like i have to or else i can't do my homework, or go to sleep, etc. i'm not doing too well with that rn.

"i cut for many reasons. i feel like a shitty person, like i've hurt people emotionally so i deserve to be hurt physically. sometimes my emotions are so intense, especially anger, and cutting gives me an outlet/helps me figure out my thoughts. other times, i get numb and that's terrifying, so i need to feel something and trigger some emotions. i physically feel a weight being lifted off of me when i do it.

"i like the blood, i like the scars, and i like the bruises when i hit myself. i always feel sympathy when i hear others cut and i don't recommend it all but self harm is all i know, it's my go-to coping mechanism. i'm comfortable with it now. it kinda sucks that i might not be able to wear short sleeves ever again if i keep at the pace i'm at, but i hate showing my fat arms anyway. and it's absolutely the worst when people notice the scars. also really sucks when the anxiety gets 10x worse wondering if my mother will notice the fresh cuts"- Anonymous.

6. "I feel a physical urge to self harm. I'm not sure how to explain it. It's like a burning sensation on my skin, an itch that won't go away until I cut."

“It's like, imagine you're walking into the ocean. You can feel the water growing bigger. That's what the buildup to self harm feels like for me. Thoughts in my head that I can't get out, emotions that I can't control, feelings that won't stop feeling, all swimming around in my head.

"Then the water gets deeper and it's covering everything but your face. Your thoughts and emotions are getting to be too much and you want out, you want an escape. But you hold on. Then the water goes over your head. Waves crash down. You're drowning. Drowning in the water, drowning in your thoughts, your feelings. You can't breathe, all you want is to breathe again, you just want to feel okay. You're struggling. There's nothing else you can do, you have to get out, self harm is all you can do.

"So you cut (or whatever form you use) and it hurts but it's a good hurt. It takes your mind off of one pain. Switching one pain for another- emotional pain for physical pain. All you can focus on is the physical pain. It makes the emotional stuff disappear for a little while. And you keep cutting because it keeps helping and you have to keep cutting to keep your emotional pain at bay. That's when you get your relief, your air after drowning, you can breathe again and everything is just less, your thoughts are less loud, you're feeling less, you hurt less.

"And suddenly somewhere along the way superficial cuts aren’t enough anymore and you have to go deeper and deeper to get the same release and it sucks. It's so hard to explain it. I've explained it better to myself in the past but now I can't seem to find all the right words. But it's a release for everything that's building up inside. And you keep going back to self harm because it's all you know, you don't know how else to cope and it's your automatic response to anything negative.

"I mean, even on a good day when I'm okay and nothing bad happens I still want to cut. I want to cut when I'm bored. It's just, I always want to cut, even if there's no reason, it's a part of me. It's like I've wired my brain to think 'oh something negative just happened? Go cut, that's how you cope, only that can help you' and I don't know how to change that and honestly I don't really want to change that but that's my illness talking. I should want to change it. I should want to get better- Anonymous.”