If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Aged 16-25? Share your experience of using the discussion boards and receive a £25 voucher! Take part via text-chat, video or phone. Click here to find out more and to take part.
Options
Comments
I used to claw and pick at my skin, and jab myself with a compass, but on my 18th birthday it all got too much and I held some scissors to my arm and just pressed down and cut myself all over my arm.
Pride is a perfectly natural and normal feeling to have. If you have cut in order to mutilate yourself, in order to deal with anger towards yourself, then it is natural to feel pride at the damage you have caused. I used to sit there watching the blood trickle down my arms and my chest, and I felt a perverted pride in what I'd done. I'd defaced myself, I deserved it and I'd done a good job.
It certainly doesn't make you abnormal to feel pride at your handiwork.
On the sort-of plus side someone took me aside and said she has the same problem sometimes, which was kinda good to know, but I'm so embarrassed that people here know now. I wanted to keep it to myself. Shit.
And it hurts.
yeah.
it quotes me as saying that in my case study thing.
doesn't that make me sound good.
It's been like...8 months since I was doing it this regularly. Fuckfuckfuck.
Franki sweetie, listen to me.
If I can stop, you can. You are a million times stronger than me. You are a lovely special girlie with so much going for you, loads of friends and respect coming from all over the place towards you. Does the fact that you made 8 months not tell you anything? You pulled yourself through the shit before, you can do it again. You'll get there honey, I promise you will.
Be careful with yourself
And, Franki, massive hugs. I know exactly how you feel (although I never stopped for that long, only about 6-7 weeks but I did manage to slow down for a while) and it fucking sucks. I'm trying so hard to stop but I can't and I think my friends at uni may have worked out that I do it which is mortifying.
Feel free to IM me, either of you, if you want to chat. I know I don't talk much but if I'm online it usually means I'm free.
I know feeling ill makes you feel like shit and want to do it again, but if you've managed to stop for 2 months, set yourself another deadline of 2 months to not do it again. just take it a couple of monts at a time. i'm sure you can do it!
My friends don't know anything
Jane - I did do it inbetween those 8 months, but only once or twice. Never this much...it's like...at least 4 times a week. I guess that sounds quite a lot...but I never do it that badly...people think I'm stronger than I am...I know what you're saying, and I'm trying. I really am *sigh*
And, yes, if you pick it it will probably heal much more slowly and it's more likely to scar.
May I also suggest investing in some Savlon or Sudocrem or something...helps it heal quicker.
but if i go to the doctors, wont they ask how i got it! i havent told my doctor about my self harm! i normally wear long sleaved tops over there! i dont want all the Qs and the hassle!! i dont tell anyone, i only asked for advice on here coz no1 nos me!
I am very glad you didnt do it..and proud of you. I self harmed for alot of years until I met a wonderful man who saw things in me i didnt knw were there...but forever I will live with the scars and the shame.....please dont do that to yourself...It is a horrible thing to live with. As I am sure many SIers can agree.
My friends don't really know what's going on, the only guy I've told in detail alternates between being really supportive and really flippant (and, at one point, telling me off for going to a psychotherapy appointment because he doesn't believe in counselling) and it's all driving me mad.
Anyway I guess it's good that I've got back into the NHS mental health services after coming to uni but the appointments are obviously a bit stressful in themselves (just getting to Finchley Road and not getting lost finding the clinic proved a task and a half!) and I don't cut more than daily any more. Sometimes only every 2 or 3 days which isn't so bad. I just feel like I should be ok, especially since everyone thinks I am, and I'm not.
Probably straight to A&E methinks. *hugs*
EDIT: I've PMed ya.
Samaritans: 08457 90 90 90
What littlemissy said...and also
"I've just been looking at [this thread]...I got to about page 35...then I started feeling so stupid. Like...all the stuff I wrote on there, I feel really bad about it because people have done so much worse and what I did was nothing compared to that.
And like...[Kirsty]'s posts about it being so hard for her to go without doing it for even a week...I feel bad because she tries so hard (<3 Kirsty) to not do it for that long but for me it's so easy usually. Unless I'm feeling really shitty, it's so easy for me not to do it...and I was finding it easy having not done it for 4 months. It kinda feels like it's unfair on them that I don't do it as badly...I know that sounds stupid but that's how my head is seeing it. I haven't done it in about a week because I don't have time...:|
It's just made me feel really shitty. God, I'm so stupid. Ignore me, I don't know what I'm talking about."
Degree of seriousness is a stupid thing to judge, because it's all so very personal. I didn't cut that badly compared to a lot of people, but I was considered a such a high risk that I was effectively bumped right to the top of an NHS psychotherapy waiting list: you don't get much mroe high risk without being sectioned. personal tolerances and personal experiences are so different that to compare your pain and suffering with someone else's is stupid, pointless, and serves no purpose other than as a way for you to "prove" to yourself that you're a stupid fuck.
If there was nothing wrong you wouldn't do it, fact. So because some people perhaps have more wrong is irrelevant.
ETA: PM or MSN, or have you ever tried emailing jo@samaritans.org ?
I know it's stupid for me to think it, and I know all of what you said is true...which is why I don't really understand why I feel as guilty as I do...*sighsighsigh*
I'm on MSN, by the way
Edited coz i tried to quote cept i couldn't make it work :impissed:
My mother just walked on me getting changed, and she saw what I did to the top of my leg...I mean...it's just over a week old and it's pretty much just scar tissue now...so it wasn't that bad...
But she's really pissed off and I knew that would happen I knew she'd say it and she was all "you need to stop"...I can't do it
I'm hoping that one day your cutting won't work for you; that happened to me, and it broke the cycle. It didn't work, so I didn't reach for the blades.
And I hope that happens too...I think that's what my mum wants to happen actually...she's all "when will you realise that it doesn't solve anything?". Hm.