The Fabulous Self-Mutilation Megathread

Discussion in 'Brainbent' started by Vast Derp, Apr 29, 2015.

  1. chaoticArbiter

    chaoticArbiter an actual shiny eevee (destroyer of worlds)

    thank you!! I will try these next time it comes up.
     
    • Like x 1
  2. Nertbugs

    Nertbugs Information Leafblower

    Relapsed for the first time in about a year.

    Have been sad for a while. Got too much. Had access to a hammer. I'm alright, didn't do too much damage, just a bit sore.

    I've got a cup of tea. And am rewatching Wolf Hall. It'll be alright as long as I can distract myself enough for the next few hours.

    I hate this.
     
    • Witnessed x 2
  3. sidneyia

    sidneyia from TV

    I relapsed this past Monday after 15ish years in recovery* and felt like I didn't really get the help I needed because my therapist was just really... scold-y when I told her about it. So this hopefully will help me process it. I'm using mixed present and past tenses which hopefully won't be too confusing.

    *15 years of not injuring myself physically. I never stopped engaging in emotional self-harm.

    Why do you do it?
    A mix of reasons. One is that I want to refocus my emotional pain into something concrete and tangible. And the other big one is self-punishment. I always feel like I'm a bad person and I need to be made to suffer physically for whatever bad-person thing I did that's upsetting me in the moment.

    Have you stopped if so, what made you stop?
    I stopped physically self-harming when I was 17 or 18 and a big part of it was getting on the right meds. I also was getting in trouble for it a lot (sent home from school, kicked out of summer camp) and as much as I don't believe that punishing teens for self-injuring is a good way to deal with it at all, I admit that constant fear of getting in trouble was one of the things that drove me to stop.

    Do you regret it?
    Nah. Sometimes I get jealous of people with more visible scars though. (Mine are on my calves and shins and therefore covered with leg hair.)

    What is your goal regarding self-harm? Do you know how to achieve it?
    1. not relapse (again) on the physical stuff and 2. stop doing the emotional stuff because I never really learned to stop doing that

    Do you want to stop? Do you feel like you need help?
    yes and yes.
     
  4. Mostly Harmless

    Mostly Harmless poetry apologist

    I'm in a weird mood tonight but I'm not gonna do anything about it! I texted a friend and we bullshitted about the future of technology and I didn't tell her why i needed someone to talk to because feelings with real people are hard, but i feel a little less like i want to crawl out of my skin. so there's that?
     
    • Winner x 3
  5. AbsenteeLandLady124

    AbsenteeLandLady124 Well-Known Member

    been picking at my face and compulsively hair plucking for weeks and weeks. sometimes i punch myself in the face, or bite whatever part of me is closest until I leave full teeth prints. if i bite my chest i can actually bite hard enough to bleed because of the lack of sensitivity there. face is covered in scabs rn :( really hope this will become Less Bad after the move, i don't want to relapse entirely
     
    • Witnessed x 3
  6. PotteryWalrus

    PotteryWalrus halfway hideous and halfway sweet

    I don't usually self-harm much beyond biting myself and sometimes pulling my hair out when very stressed. But in the past two weeks I've third-degree burnt my skin with a windproof lighter, and for the first time in my life seriously started cutting my arm.

    I figured out how to get the blades out of a disposable razor for surgical reasons, and now I can't undo that knowledge. I don't - I'm scared of myself now. It would be so easy to do worse.
     
  7. Birdy

    Birdy so long

    i really hope you went to the hospital. third degree burns are the worst kind of burns, that’s deep tissue and nerve damage you’re looking at.

    if you’re causing yourself that much injury I think it’s time to look for outside help if you don’t have it already
     
    • Agree x 1
  8. PotteryWalrus

    PotteryWalrus halfway hideous and halfway sweet

    I have a regular therapist that I go to, but I hate/fear hospitals that even the prospect of being overnight in one would be enough to push me that little bit too far.

    (Context - I have been stuck in a hospital bed for over ten days on three separate occasions with non self-inflicted illness, and it never does anything good for me brain -wise. I've also been in a mental ward for a week on suicide watch, and I only got out of there because I managed to start pretending I was okay again.)

    I'm not sure they are actually third degree since they've been healing okay when I leave them alone, anyway. I don't want to involve my GP for fear she'll refer me for a hospital stay, even though she knows how terrified I am of them. )

    Paranoia; that's fun too!
     
  9. Birdy

    Birdy so long

    I actually pretty highly doubt they are, since third degree burns basically destroy flesh, and are always surrounded by horrifically painful second degree burns. i didn’t want to sound like I was calling bullshit but if you were that badly burned i doubt you’d be here typing this.

    either way, burns are really, really bad news because they get infected easily. if you’ve gone this long enduring them, I don’t think you’ll be referred for a hospital stay, but please, please get medical attention
     
    • Agree x 1
  10. PotteryWalrus

    PotteryWalrus halfway hideous and halfway sweet

    I'll try. That's all I can offer because if the options come down to hospital or death, I'd take death.
     
  11. ChelG

    ChelG Well-Known Member

    I don't physically harm myself anymore and never did enough to break skin, but does it count as self-harm if I intentionally read stuff I know is going to upset me, or if I eat until my stomach hurts? I think it does but does it count for this thread?
     
    • Witnessed x 4
  12. ZeroEsper

    ZeroEsper Well-Known Member

    Reading stuff you know will upset is what I consider a form of emotional self-harm. I think with eating until your stomach hurts, it is a form of self-harm, like most eating-disordered behavior. EDs are typically sort of grouped together in mental health discussions, and self-harm is tends to get pushed into the 'depression' category. But EDs are also a form of self-harm, and I think people are starting to acknowledge that a little more.
     
    • Agree x 6
  13. palindromordnilap

    palindromordnilap Well-Known Member

    I'm not entirely sure how to stop emotionally self-harming. It just doesn't even register to my brain as something that's bad, not even when I get other people involved by doing that in public, and it's... Really easy to do, and kinda helps me feel more real, in a way.
     
    • Witnessed x 1
  14. turtleDove

    turtleDove Well-Known Member

    I need to actually get up the spoons to call the allergist, and apologize for missing my appointment back in March and hope that I can get booked for a new appointment. Because my face is an itchy, flaky, rash-y mess if I don't manage to wash and moisturize and apply hydrocortizone every day, and I just...do not have the spoons to pull that off every day yet. But if I don't do it, I end up picking and scratching at my face and don't realize when I've scratched so hard that it's bleeding; the scabs just feel like acne, which means I end up picking more and don't realize until either I look at a mirror or notice dried blood under my fingernails.

    I also need to get myself booked for laser hair removal, because my chin and jaw hair is not helping with trying to not pick at my face. (The hairs are just long enough that they feel prickly-pointy, the same as dead skin that needs to be pulled away, and I keep picking and pulling at them if I don't manage to stay on top of getting them tweezed. And it feels like more of them are growing in, with some of them showing up on my neck now.)

    And I've started plucking again - not just facial hair, which is easy enough to handwave as Normal and Okay, but pubic hair too (because it itches and chafes and it's gross, it traps smells and moisture and it won't stop getting longer), which is not possible to handwave away. I've got a large patch that's free of anything except tiny hairs that are just starting to grow back in, and I should feel embarrassed or ashamed by that but I just feel like it's a good start and maybe I'll be able to actually keep that area free of hair if I get all of it plucked for once.
     
  15. Everett

    Everett local rats so small, so tiny

    (somersaults slowly into thread) i'm upsetti so i scratched my arms a bunch lol

    edit: i will have Regrets but rn i'm just tired and fed up.
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2018
  16. Jove

    Jove [ destination defenestration ]

    For the first time in a long time I felt like cutting because I’m just so tired of this clearly defective body of mine, but instead picked a small sore open.

    Could be worse, I guess.
     
    • Witnessed x 1
  17. Kathy

    Kathy Well-Known Member

    relapsed.
     
    • Witnessed x 4
  18. ChelG

    ChelG Well-Known Member

    So apparently a thing I do is called "wilful insomnia" in the biz. Is it common?
     
  19. TheMockingCrows

    TheMockingCrows Resident Bisexual Lich

    scratches. didn't think I broke the skin, but i scraped enough to leave marks. new location, too. i've never done on the underside of my forearm/near my wrist before. i wasn't even that upset, i wasn't spiraling, i was just sliding further and further into the blank feeling and was panicking. i couldn't even think straight. i tried doing the distraction techniques, but it's like i'd already made up my mind i was going to do it, so soon as i sat back down i did it. only regret is it wasn't sharper.
     
    • Witnessed x 1
  20. TheMockingCrows

    TheMockingCrows Resident Bisexual Lich

    keep picking at my arm. it was, once upon a time, a zit. then it was a sore for ages because i kept picking at it. now its thick with scar tissue and occasionally i get in a mood and scrape it raw again. didn't bleed as much as the other scabs ive been fixating on as a way to still see something/feel something without having to fully admit i've gone off the wagon but. ....i guess it counts still. it's still harming myself actively, with purpose. it's just not in the way i normally do.
     
    • Witnessed x 1
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