Why do people self harm?

I 19 M want to hurt myself idc what it is i’ll burn if i can’t cut
i have hurt my girlfriend currently my ex and she hates me alot and she told me to take my life maybe it was because she was angry but i have hurt her sm and i had no intentions for it…i hate myself i want to kill my self because im a coward and she told the same guess what im running again im running to end my life i wish got get to forgive me i miss her i hv been crying over 2 hours continuously i have to cut myself soon..
im sorry

I’d been staying at my cousin’s this past month, and got home like 2 weeks ago.
I usually end up hurting myself after an argument with my mom, which obviously didn’t happen as often as usual while I was away, and I actually didn’t talk to her at all for like 2 weeks at one point bc we’d still sometimes fight over the phone but even then I didn’t and I’m so proud of myself 😼😼 like, it’s been like 2weeks since coming back and we have fought like maybe 4-ish times? But even then, I completely steered clear of the bathroom to keep myself from doing it

Heh so while writing this, I had to go shower and guess what fricking happened :)

I don’t even know why like, i was still kind of upset bc of an argument from last night but I didn’t really think about it and honestly don’t even remember doing it that well, like the moments leading up to it, just the fact that I did it again. So fricking mad at myself

To celebrate it I met up with my best friend (who was and is a huge support for me) and had a chill afternoon together.

Okay well for context I had relapsed recently and had accidentally cut a bit to deep on one of them, I have bandages on them, but im worried that maybe the flesh is rotting..I would put a photo to show people for the soul purpose trying to figure out what’s going on with them. But I didn’t! I thought I would’ve been triggering to sum so I didn’t.

I hope this is okay to post here! I’m going to be starting college in about a month and I’ll be going out of state. I’ve been in recovery for a while, but I have a bunch of old stuff that would be very alarming for my family to see hidden in my room. I’m talking old linens/towels with stains on them. I would love to throw them out before I go, however I am worried if I just stuff them in a trash bag and take it to a dumpster that someone might stumble upon them and think there was a crime committed or something. I’m trying not to be graphic about the level of staining, but it would definitely be scary to anyone who randomly saw them.

Has anyone dealt with anything similar? Do y’all think it would be okay to just throw them in trash bag and take it to a dumpster?

Thank you for any advice!!

had to pay $30 for an uber to the hospital bc i was too afraid to tell my parents. also owe a friend money for driving me to the hospital, not to mention i have better things to spend my money on than blades and bandaids

also i’m tired of accidentally cutting too deep and having to keep everything a secret. too much work. not worth it

Hi! Its my first time posting here and I hope all who read this can have a nice day. You are loved and I’m completely available to chat with anyone who needs it.

Lets actually start so you don’t think I click baited you ahaha. I’ve been clean for a year but my last time doing sh I think I accidentally hit beans but heres whats weird: I never saw any yellow or small beans. I had to get 11 stitches and the cut was around almost a cm deep, 2cm wide so usually in these cases it would be beans instead of deep styro.

TW for what I’m about to describe but what I saw as soon as the cut happened was a pale, bubbly, even jello-looking tissue. Of course blood immediately started pouring but I managed to wash the wound and get a better look, no yellowish beans. There weren’t any nerves on that tissue because I felt nothing when I washed it and it just felt like jelly.

In all my time reading others’ experiences with beans, I’ve never heard of anybody whos seen the same things I did so I was wondering if anyone has an idea of what I saw that day. Thanks!

I hate how I cant just do whatever the fuck I want with my own body.

I dream of having my own apartment and getting to do whatever I want to myself anywhere inside of it however I please.

I want a wider canvas, I want to feel like I have a right to the skin covering me. Right now I feel restless and obsolete.

I might sound like a disgusting piece of shit but I feel envy as well as an increased desire whenever I see people with marks on their arms. I have a few scattered and anymore would look strange. I'd get made fun of and monitored.

I feel disgusting. Everytime I make more I hate myself and feel uglier and I just want to rip myself open more and more. I wish I was a blank canvas, I feel like scrap paper. This sounds strangely contradictory to my prior wishes. But, it's like I want to add and add and then go back to zero always. I wish I didn't exist anymore I think that is the simplest way to put it I'm fucking tired, from nothing of course, I don't do shit ever so I guess I'm just tired of myself. Nothing new. I'm tired, I want to sleep and know I am going nowhere, or somewhere very different. I want my own apartment.

I am so disappointed in my self

almost 8 months clean and i should be stable right but every now and then and so often lately i feel like relapsing. the urges manifest physically too, tingling on my skin, itchy feeling even if there's no scabs. like my mind and body playing psychological torture on me. i don't know what else to turn to anymore that can give me the same numbness. i want to cut so bad rn.

After writing this i already feel so different.. but i wanted to share this small joy i had.

The last 2 times i did it, i was surprised by 2 different people and it pretty much made me feel conscious and afraid. Especially the most recent time. It felt like i could almost get caught and basically have my life thrown away all over again... So i haven't. I've been too busy. I also moved somewhere so i had to leave my tool somewhere. Ig it feels nice.. and guilt-free.

I can’t even go to grocery stores because I’m so self conscious about my looks, I only leave my home once every 2 weeks.

It’s just always at the back of my head, if I have a face that’s a complete disaster, I will not be forced to be a part of the beauty standards. I won’t be the 2/10 girl, because I will be 0/10, hence not even in this rat race.

But I have never done any SH acts, because I have low pain tolerance… So I’m just tortured myself in my head and cry everyday.

hi around three/four weeks ago​ I did very small kitten scratches on the side of my long, halfway between my knee and ankle. they're not serious and genuinely embrassing to even think about lol they're also pretty invisible in certain lightning, but only certain lighthing lol

my problem is that the scars are still visible 😭 even though those are just kitten scratches !! is there any way I could speed up their healing process and make them gone?? I'm not worried about others seeing them because as long as you don't look super close you'd just think I tripped but I notice them constantly. And every time I see them I remind myself of self-harm overall and remindes me what I "can" do ☹️

seriously please, any tips how I take care of kitten scratches so they wont permanently scar? does this have to do with the place I did it? are there places where it scars less?

I havent done this in 6.5 years until today. I was just so angry after work this evening I came home took 2 good hits off my bowl, took a couple shots of moonshine and did it. first of all, I dont drink much, I dont particularly like the way it makes me feel, but i just needed something today (first time not social drinking ever.) I do smoke weed regularly though. I didnt even stop to think about it, I just needed it all tonight. im not upset about relapsing, just that I lost the time. although it was the longest stretch since I was 12 years old. I dont personally see this as an "issue" but im a creature of habit and starting this one up again could cause one. anyways yeah thats my day.

Why do I have to be like this. This evening I got overwhelmed and distanced myself from my friends for a while, when Ithought I was ready to talk with them again I reached them and started listening to this stupid discussion. There were around 7 other people and just 3 of them, including my brother knew my self harm issues while the others probably just thought of me like a silly depressed guy or something. At one point I started mocking one of them for something stupid they said, I find this one to be a very annoying person but this doesn't justyify my unrespectful behaviour. I'm not going to explain the discussion, but it rapidly escalated in the two of us mocking each other's interests in a despicable way and at some point I was forced to admit about not being able of understanding them for their passions, but for some reason I became enraged and said something like "yeah, I can't understand you but you can't understand me either, because otherwise you wouldn't be able of understanding this" and showed my most recent wounds. I've realized how stupid this was right after and went home but I hate myself so much now. Why do I feel the need of showing my self harm to others even if this will just create more pain and problems. Now I want to cut myself again but my closest friends came to reach me. I'm grateful to them, but I also want to be alone with my self loathing for a while. Fuck I want to die.

after hating on it for soso long, i finally watched kpop demon hunters (i know), and it was actually a very magical experience for me. as a member of this community, i really resonated with the last song- 'this is what it sounds like.' the scar imagery and being comfortable in your own skin despite your past and your flaws mentioned within the lyrics really held a metaphorical meaning for me, and so i reckon yous all need to sit and watch it! it was also just really cool :P

Im 18 next year and I am so so deeply ashamed.

Ive done nothing out of my life and my life revolves around getting home as early as possible to grab my blade.

I dont even know why I do it anymore

When I was 6, it started with pulling my own hair to 'punish' myself.

Then at around 9 I started biting myself, and when my parents noticed, I started scratching myself (because you can excuse it as a rash or mosquito bite)

The first time I cut was when I was 12. I got in a friendgroup with some older guys and they were all doing drugs n shit and I was depressed and one of them had deep, deep scars on both arms that went up to his shoulders, and his chest and stomach were covered in them too.

I threw up when I saw them. I couldnt believe how anybody could do something like that to themselves.

But I tried it. Like a little 'peer pressure' moment, I noticed that they all had scars, healed or not, and one of them even had a deep, stitched scar from a previous attempt. I wanted to try.

I stole a razorblade from my grandpa (bless his soul) and tried it on my wrist.

When it was noticed, I got beat up, so the next time I did it, I did it on a place that was easier to hide.

Years have passed, Im still on it.

It feels so fucking childish, Im so much better than this.

I hate undressing before shovering, it just reminds me of what Im doing to myself.

I wish I could be an alcoholic or something, like normal people my age are. No Im hurting myself like some attention deprived child.

I hate this so much.

Im having my first job this summer. I have a job. I am officially a grown ass dude that slices. I hate this, I hate doing this, I hate feeling like this. Too old for this shit.

Id laugh at myself if I were somebody else.

All of my friends that used to do it, either got help and recovered, stopped on their own, or died.

Why am I stuck?

A butterfly. Hatched as a disgusting egg, forced to eat to grow, and cacooned into a tight wrap of silk. Its comfortable. Being underneath these tight blankets, flowing around me holding me tightly. But I need to grow. I grow inside. I grow and I grow. So much so the once comfortable caccoon is tight and uncomfortable.

But I am weak.

I fail to break through the harsh texture. I refuse to leave the warm comfort of it. I dont want to. I like the comfortable, dark, tight prison this caccoon I made. I created. Initially to grow. To be better. To become the stunning elegant butterfly I was born to be.

And the days blurr. Ive been in here for so long I am rotting. Decaying. No food, no water. I continue to grow, the caccoon being to small. Too tight. Suffocating. But I dont want to leave. I never want to leave. Im scared of the outside. Scared of what may happen, what could happen.

And as a result, I die. Alone. In the silk caccoon I considered my home. My safe place. And maybe I realized what was helping me eventually killed me. I die while everyone around me left the comfort, went into the unknown. They explored. They got better. But I died.

I dont regret it. I dont regret dying. Dying in comfort. Dying in my own silk cage. I regret not seeing it. Not exploring the world for the few blips of life I was. I was going to die anyway. Why was I so scared? To the point I stunted myself? I dreamed of the experiences of the butterfly. To grow, to fly, to *see*. But I didnt. I died. Alone. In my comfort. But now I will never know what I could have done. What I could of expierenced.

---

So when the day happens, and I die for real. I can't help but wonder what id miss out on. And for now, the fear of death, missed experiences, and rhe rare chance I'll get better. Ill continue to live. I am Suffocating. I am drowning. So tired. Too tired. But I want to try. I want to try, despite how comfortable it is to live in misery. How comfortable it is to want to die. How comfortable it is to be sad and negative all the time. I, at least, want to try. And even if I die in my guilded cage by my own hands one day, at least I can say I made an effort.

Everytime my mum seed my scars she always says smth like "Imagine once ur a mother and ur child asks u about those marks... what will you tell them ?"

And that has stuck deep in my mind, can any moms here tell me what will i be supposed to answer ?

TW: kinda descriptive text maybe? possibly triggering
this is not me encouraging or glorifying anything i say here. this is just me rambling about my own personal experience with some mental stuff

i feel like that one song where the person says "i wanna cover myself head to toe with super sexy scars". like, i know the risks and i dont want the pain or the judgement, i just want the scars, but at the same time i dont. im trying to get into therapy, but i also feel like if i say what really goes on in my head to anyone, it could just make everything harder. when my mom found out that i was doing this, she made me keep my door open all the time. i know she meant well but it didnt help much. ive been clean from cutting for almost 2 years now (2 years on August 28th) but ive had several times where ive wanted to badly to relapse, and the only reason i havent is honestly out of spite for myself, and because it makes me feel both powerful to be in control of that but also pathetic for not being able to just not self harm in the first place. i feel pathetic that i even feel this way in the first place. i want to tell my friends (ive only told one so far) but i feel like they'd worry more about me. one of them is already worried about my eating habits and the other has enough issues. i dont want to burden my friends but like, i also want people to vent to but again, i dont want to unload all my issues onto my friends. i just wish that i could be "normal" again, but ive also been like this for a while. i guess i just want to be able to not have these feelings anymore, because it sucks. i dont have visible scars, which makes me feel even worse because i feel like all those nights i spent regretting even doing it feel like nothing. but i also dont want it to be visible at all, since then people would ask. i want people to ask but i dont want them to know. i have a lot of original characters and many of them have scars. hell, even my sona i use for venting has scars. but i dont. maybe if im still like this when i grow up i'll have scars, but a small part of me also hopes that i wont, and like. i feel pathetic for wanting scars but then i also feel pathetic for wanting them to go away after doing it. sometimes i seriously wish that i could just stop feeling this way at all. i still keep my little collection of blades, even if i'll somehow never use them again. i wish i could just talk to someone about this, but every time i have, i just choke up and i cant talk properly. its especially pathetic because in my head i made up a fictional partner for myself for whenever i get lonely but for some reason my own mind depicts her negatively. i know that i could really easily change it but also like, i do still like her. and i know that its fake and its really stupid but like, i want a partner but i also dont. man this was just a lot of brain vomit.. i dont blame anyone for not reading the whole thing haha, i just needed to get that off my chest..

I cut kinda deep a bit ago and planning to go to the ER, never got stitches before so im kind of anxious

I spoke with a girl I have been on and off with for about 10 years (we both have severe mental health issues and agree that putting a label on us as dating is going to add unneeded stress on us) about my self harm and opened up about relapsing. Ever since I've felt super guilty about it. I want to be open and honest with her because I feel it's the right thing to do, but I also feel if I do talk to her it's going to make her feel bad or disgusted with me and I don't want that either. No matter what I do I'm left feeling guilty and worse off. Does anyone have any advice on how to move forwards?

She wasn’t the first person I sought out. I love my mom, but she could never understand me. Most people around me can’t, or rather, I can’t relate to them and vice versa.

I’m autistic and used to the fact that I’m just really bad with people. I don’t understand and feel things the way people expect me to, and that’s okay, because I can’t really help it. It’s just how I work..

I have one person who truly understands me. They’re so important to me and I’m so glad to have them in my life. I told them and it didn’t shock me when they told me they also struggled with sh and suicidal thoughts.

After gathering courage, I told my psychologist. I remember how disgustingly weak I sounded, my head hung low because I couldn’t face her after admitting that. But nothing changed! She assured me she wouldn’t tell my mother. Ofcourse, she worried for me… but she knew me enough to know that I “know what I’m doing”. She said she trusted me and I was a responsible person. Cool

Later, I accidentally let it slip to a friend. And another… and another ~_~ I’m good at keeping secrets, but I reckon this was a cry for help kind of confession. I didn’t make a scene about it. I just casually mentioned it as if it was just another silly thing my dumb little brain made me do. All the reactions I got were sympathetic but so, so, awkward.
I didn’t want to make them uncomfortable, I really didn’t. But they just looked like, well, they didn’t care. I know my friends like me. But idk this made me feel so bad. I told them I was fine even though nobody asked and I know they know I’m not mentally unstable but I wish they doubted me for a second, which is a terrible shameful thing to feel…

After maybe 2-3 years of cutting, I finally told my mom. It was such an awful experience: she was welcoming and didn’t judge me, but I cried so hard and made a fool out of myself. We had a long conversation about it and she assured me she loved me and nothing would change between us

I was glad. I’m a paranoid person, and if my mom were to start keeping a closer eye on me, I would’ve actually gone crazy

But now. Well. I told everyone that I trust enough to handle this information. And literally nothing changed

Nothing changed. My friends don’t care if I joke about ending it and cutting my wrists because they know I won’t actually do it. My therapist knows I’m not going to commit because I’m deeply empathetic and couldn’t possibly imagine how my parents would react. My mom trusts me and never once did she assume I was fragile and helpless

I hate it. I hate how I’m such a coward I can’t tell people I’m struggling. I hate how much I want to bleed out in front of everyone I know so they know that I was struggling too. I hate how I can type “im fine” to my friends while staring at fresh self- inflicted wounds. I hate how my thighs look, because cutting my arms would make people assume things about me I secretly know it’s true.

It’s such a pain. I wish someone worried about me the same way I worry about worrying them. It feels like every option I have is wrong, and I somehow only choose the painful ones

I feel like I’m the only person who worries enough about me, but also I’m my own biggest critic. So I need help, but I won’t ask for it because I’m too weak. Because I would see myself as a coward

I want to cut my forearms really badly, but it would definitely be noticeable. I’ve only ever cut my thighs and a little bit on my upper arms. I’m unsure why I want to specifically cut my forearms, but the urge is really strong. I might just go back to my upper arms, I don’t know. Is there even anything I can do to nullify the urge?