Tips_of_Fingers said:
A wise man once said: "A suicide isn't painless, if you leave everyone in pain."
NOFX, eh?
As an offshoot of suicide, I'll say that self-harming is definitely another thing that I cannot grasp. I genuinely find it hard to take pity on people who hurt themselves as a way of dealing with their problems. There's enough people trying to hurt us in this world without successfully doing it ourselves....
As someone who's... well, *tried* to harm himself, I could try to shed some light on it. I suspect the experience is highly subjective though.
Self harm isn't an attempt to deal with problems. At least in my case, it offered short-term relief. When you're in pain, your mind focuses only on that.
It's like entering a meditative state.
Before I cut, my mind was just buzzing with thousands of thoughts, all sad, depressing or painful. It's a very stressful situation to be in, and when so cut all those thoughts are blown away for a moment and in your mind there is only an acute awareness of the cut.
It brings calm, in a very weird, sort of disturbing way.
In a way, it just feels right when you do it.
Keep in mind that I'm not recommending self-harm. I'm just trying to explain the concept somewhat rationally.