Self Harm and You

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Anger is a very toxic part of depression, possibly topping sadness as the most self-destructive emotion when left unchecked. The "wrinkles" on my knuckles are mostly scars from punching concrete walls and other hard things, and I have quite a few other scars that show up from various incidents. While I never actually went out and cut myself deliberately, I did hurt myself in fits of anger by explosive force only later realizing what had occurred as blood streamed down my forearms.
However I'm unsure how I never broke any bones in my hand until I was 27 and accidentally fell on it snapping two metacarpals in the process.
Aside from that I'm also unsure just how I never ended up in the hospital after being in various fights in my late teens/early 20's. I don't even know for sure just how much damage I did to others either.
Thankfully I learned how to control anger and depression, though its a very personal thing and isn't something I could teach folks.

33, Male, Straight

 

[Chris Moses]

I have tried to kill myself 8 times. I suffer from borderline personality disorder and major depression. My stomach had been pumped 3 times, once while I was too out of it to give consent. I have been genuinely surprised to wake up at least 2 of those attempts. Fortunately, I am never in full control of my faculties when I am in these suicidal states. Because now that I know that most drugs are safe to overdose on (well at least for all 250-280 lbs of me), I will not try that again in favor of a technique that would be less prone to failure. Also I am fortunate that I've escaped any major physical damage from these attempts. However, I am overweight and smoke. 2 things I might remedy if I didn't have to deal with frequent suicidal ideation.

I haven't had an attempt for over 11 years now. To that degree I have learned to better control my emotions. I have come close in those 11 years, but not yet to the point of actually attempting suicide again.

I don't find suicide humor all that funny, but I don't see the need of getting in anyone's face over it, or figuratively beating my chest in outrage over it.

I don't see cutting as something only teenage girls do. If you'd like to know what stereotypes I do feel better fit teenage girls, try these:

vapid

self-centered and self absorbed

overly concerned/interested in the affairs of others

horribly entitled, especially when it comes to their emotional state/reactions. ie. "I feel this way about something and you MUST validate my ALWAYS justified emotional state and cater to me/it in the way I see fit until I am satisfied/calmed down.)

38, male, bi

(still a virgin to women probably because of the above listed preconceptions and because I don't feel that all of them are limited to just teenage girls and because I started my 17 year long gay relationship when I was 21 and in my prime "girl getting" form.)

 

[Zoe Castillo]

-removed for privacy reasons-

 

[SonofaJohannes]

I once punched myself in the groin, twice, because I felt I deserved it. I had done it to someone else who in retrospect probably didn't, so I just punched myself on impulse. The guy wasn't even there to witness it.
Other than that, never. I've never cut myself on purpose, nor have I done anything else to harm myself. Sure I've felt a bit down at times, but never enough that I felt the need to drown my emotional pain in physical pain. I don't suffer from any depression or other psychological thingies, and my childhood was in my opinion great.
So other than the nut punching as some sort of weird self-inflicted retribution on behalf of someone else, my body remains untouched.

19, male, straight.

 

[Beffudled Sheep_v1legacy]

I have before. But it didn't help, the pain barely even registered to me so I stopped after trying it a few times.
So instead of physically attacking myself I just mentally attacked myself and then went out, got drunk, and got into a lot of fights.

Now when I'm depressed I kind of just sit around doing nothing until it passes. But it happens a lot.
Sometimes its really bad.
I think about suicide often but only tried twice. And I have no plans to ever try again.

20 year old, straight male.

 

[Whispering Cynic]

I've never done it since I never found a single rational reason to do so or some benefit it would bring me. Now, I won't pretend I haven't encountered depression, but I've learned fairly quickly to efficiently deal with it (mainly because I couldn't properly function while depressed). Haven't experienced depression for more than ten years now.

I can understand that some people may find fulfillment this way, given the wide variety of people's personalities and preferences, but for me the act of self harm is completely meaningless.

26, male, straight.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Nope, never. Or at least, never to alleviate depression or something like that. For a dare, maybe . I figured there are enough things out there that could potentially harm me that I shouldn't start doing it to myself. I appreciate pain for what it is, but I don't like it and I certainly don't like to inflict it on myself.

26, male, straight.

 

[The Inquisitive Mug]

I never have. I always found it preferable to inflict harm upon others rather than on myself, though not from a place of sadism. I suppose I was lucky that most of the sources of my discomfort were always other people who could be A) clearly seen as the root cause, B) clearly deserving of said harm, and C) easily (though not always so, as some of them were better fighters than me) dissuaded, through violence, from dicking with me any further. Also, most of this was in a high school small enough that once you beat the shit out of about 3 people, word has gotten around that you are not to be fucked with.

However, please don't misunderstand. I would never take out my aggression on someone who didn't have it coming for pleasure or sport. Anyway, I could never picture inflicting self-harm unless I were Captain Ginyu or something. I think about how pissed off it makes me when I get a papercut, and I come to the conclusion that hurting myself would only make me feel worse.

23, Male, Straight

EDIT: Off-Topic to SkarKrow: I'm down to take out that Heracross if you're down for a battle. Hopefully Pokemon Bank will be up by the time my hitch offshore ends (about two and a half weeks from now). Once I get my Diamond party squared away on X I'd love to kick off my first Gen >4 battle.

 

[FPLOON]

I'm just like my father...

I go in to a rage-fit and cause a tornado of destruction within the area that I'm in... I then apologize (if someone was in the room at the time), clean up to the best of my ability, and then calm down enough to handle the previous conversation I was mostly involved in before my anger got the best of me... There was also a time where I would use my anger in a "lawful neutral" way, where I would beat the crap out of bullies for being bullies while also being a bully myself... I don't do that anymore, mind you, but when I say I'm just like my father I also mean that I have the habit of lying to those around me and even believing those lies to be true... (I guess the only difference in this situation is that my lies are rarely traced back to me unless it's to someone that knows me as much as I know them like my mother, my grandma, and my [only] best friend since kindergarten...)

Do I regret those parts of my past and my current present? Never crossed my mind... Do I care if I don't become a better person over time? ...I honestly can't say without it being a lie in some way, shape, or form...

(This is all coming from a 21-year-old male who says he's straight, though a couple of bisexuals [and someone who PM'ed him a while ago] have told him he might just be more bisexual [or pansexual] than straight, given his stance on relationships...)

 

[Headsprouter]

I'm too mellow to have done anything serious like self-harm...I suppose the closest thing you'd ever get is some thigh-bashing until bruises were left thanks to general frustration. All my self-destructive behaviour has been mental and verbal. Hard to go through a night without a cringe a twitch and a swearword or something aggressive.

I never did any of the verbal bashing when I was in the thigh-thumping stage...I suppose you could say I've maybe grown enough to resent my confused younger self, so there's no point in physically beating my current self.

Oh, yeah, I'm hardly statistically relevant, but I'm 18 (19 in January...) and male.

 

[EeveeElectro]

For a short while during my early teens because school and home life was more or less unbearable.
I didn't do enough damage because I finally got some help with my problems when people realised.
For me it was a cry for help. I had approached people at school about how badly bullied I was and they just said in so many words, "Well, stop being so weird and people won't bully you."
I thought if they realised it was making me want to physically harm myself (I had a strange obsession with reading up about self harm at the time) they would finally do something.
Secondly, I felt I deserved to be punished because everyone hated me so I must have been bad, I did sometimes fantasise about hitting an artery or a vein and killing myself.

My brother used to self harm, hopefully he no longer does but he has been left with some horrible scars and I've walked in on him to find blood all over the walls and floor which has greatly put me off.

I haven't hurt myself in years, mainly because I have a huge phobia of pain. I do things knowing how much they hurt me emotionally and keep doing them, like thinking about certain people or memories for example.

21, female, bi.

 

[EHKOS]

Male, 20, Strait.

Twice in my life I smashed my knuckles up against brick, to make them bleed. I don't like doing that so much because I don't want to fuck up my wrist.

Suicidal with a leash, I can't ever do it because of my mom. And the odds say I have a good chance of being in a place I don't want to be for eternity after. So there's a bit of a death wish. But I have to try my best to stop it, unless it's taking it for someone else. Otherwise, in anyone's eyes, it's suicide.

But I only don't physically self-harm much besides a cigarette every once in a great while. Whatever my DNA makeup is, it gave me a very low pain tolerance.

 

[Filiecs]

18,Male,Straight

Never

I've never experienced any sort of depression, though I have been surrounded by friends who suffered heavily from it. Some of them DID self harm. Hell, one of them even carved the word "Failure" into is arm. He eventually became suicidal, and he was so close to actually killing himself that I had to call the police.

The closest I've ever come to any sort of depression was in the summer where I was waiting to go to college. I had absolutely no idea what to do and felt like a sluggish and worthless slab of meat. I pretty much just felt lazy, though, it didn't even cross my mind to hurt myself. Of course, that all changed when college started and I became more satisfied with my life then ever.

 

[Spider RedNight]

Christ. I just wanna bash the self-harmers in this thread, but I just can't bring myself to care anymore.
Welp, that and I've done far stupider crap in this lifetime so I have no place for judging. 23, Male, mostly straight.

I appreciate this post, my man. It was, like, two in the morning when I posted my 'sob story' and when I submitted it, I realized "wait... why do I care?" because I guess I'm mentally defunct or something because I REALLY don't.

But I'm a pansy and I don't REALLY wanna post my disagreement on here - I've been doing pretty good about staying out of trouble and I'm not sure what EXACTLY the judging criteria is for getting a warning on a post.

 

[Angelowl]

Thanks to my wonderful and amazing super power of 'Schizophrenia', I occasionally have some pretty powerful hallucinations, with them several times manifesting as the feeling that something was living inside my arms that I needed to get out.

Glad I'm not the only one here who have that. Apparently the hallucination of having something moving under your skin is pretty common amongst schizophrenic.

Even on meds I have it sometimes, one time when I was riding the bus. Had to pretend like nothing was happening but it's one of the worse feeling you can experience.

Oh brain, why are you so fucked up

The last part is something I frequently wonder about, not to mention complain a fair bit about. Those parts of your brain that you can not control, which gives you impulses and thoughts that you just can not seem to get rid of. Quite frightening at times.

"Brain, just shut up and let me focus for once!" is something I tend to say to myself at times.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

I used to hit myself and punch/headbutt walls when I went into particularly bad moods, but I stopped for a long time, even as my moods got worse. I recently cut myself for the first time during a pretty dark daydream; didn't even realize what I was doing. I was sat at my desk in work and when I came to from the dream, I was bleeding. I managed to hide it and no-one saw.

This came after a half-hearted suicide attempt (got a belt around my neck and gave up trying to find something to hook it to within about 5 minutes) and right before the worst panic attack I've ever had (right in the middle of work, again).

I've had 'episodes' throughout most of my life, but I've only recently sought serious help (school tried to give me counselling but I wasn't very co-operative or honest). About a week or two ago I was diagnosed with depression and declared temporarily unfit for work, to be re-assessed in the middle of January.

For the people wondering why I, and the other people like me, are sharing this stuff; it's because the best thing about internet forums is venting about all your dumb crap to a bunch of people who barely know who you even are. Though I guess my profile doesn't hide my identity very well.

Male, 22, straight.

 

[awesomeClaw]

I´ve never cut myself or anything like that.

But there´s been quite a few times where I´ve had two clear choices - one that gets me in trouble and one that lets me continue on just fine. And a majority of the time, I´ve chosen to do the very thing I know is wrong and I know will get me into trouble. After the fact, I´m uncertain as to why I ever did what I did.

That´s not selfharm exactly, but it is self-destructive, which is sort of similar, I think. (If it´s not at all similar and I´m offending everyone, I apoligize in advance.)

Male, straight, 16.

 

[game-lover]

I have not seriously done so, no.

During times when I got incredibly upset for one reason or another back when I was younger, I used to halfheartedly choke myself. The closest that I came was probably when I toyed with the thought of stabbing my thigh with scissors.

But I couldn't bring myself. Honestly, I'm a baby about pain so I probably could never manage even if a genuine urge came.

25, Female, Straight