Triggering (SI) - How and when did you 'discover' self-harm?
I first self-harmed in Year 10 at school when I was 15. I'd heard of self-harm before then, but never thought of doing it. I was shaving my legs in the bathroom then got some random urge to cut two lines in my left arm. Nobody noticed except some girl in PE called Charlene who suspected what it was but didn't really care. lol.
I then returned to it about a year later where it got much worse. :/ I thought it was a good way of getting a thrill yet self-punishing at the same time. I do it periodically now, but not badly.
i started doing it before i knew what it was, back in year 8, but then i googled what i was doing and found others were doing similar and unfortunately i learnt from them.
I'd never heard of SI either, I was sitting at my desk and decided to scratch myself with sharp metal end of a pencil, After I'd been SIing for a few months I disocvered it was something other people do online, so I guess I discovered SI after I had been doing it for a while
Let the Force be with you
I'm not short, I'm space efficient
I was 6 the first time I did it, I don't really remember I just know as it's in my medical notes from when I saw a psych at age 10. I don't know where I got the idea from
I first did it in 2001, never even heard of it back then. I remember i was sat in my car whilst a load of other's were standing outside, i felt anxious and started rubbing my wrist with my keys, it felt relieving, so when i got back to my friends i said i was going to the toilet, passed the kitchen, picked up a knife, went into the bathroom and started cutting my arm, and it all snowballed from there, 9 years later and it's still something i do, hmmm. I do remember feeling rather comforted by the fact that a few months after i first did it that hollyoaks ran a story about self harm on lisa hunter, made me look for help and stuff.
So I started two years ago the summer before my sophmore year and I remember getting really upset bccause I had gotten into a fight with my dad and I didn't even think of it I went to the gaahe and got a razor out of my dads tool box and cut my hands. It was an impulse I didn't have a second thought of it. From there it just went down hill.
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, i think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat
-Mother Theresa
I began self harming even before I knew what I was doing. I was eight years old and had gotten beat by my dad yet again and I just did it. I do not really know where the idea came from, it just happened.
That was seventeen years ago, and still to this day I am struggling with self harm.
I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can't. How you hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside. ~ Girl Interrupted
I hurt myself before others get the chance...
I hurt myself because others hurt me and I can't stand the pain...
To tell the truth, I'm afraid of recovery because it means I have to let go...
I first self-harmed 2 years ago. I watched a few youtube videos showing what I have been doing to self-harm and tried it. Every now and then I would do it.
good question.
i used to bang my head when i was around 8 or 9 if i felt i'd been bad or should be punished but at the time i didn't even know what SI was so i didn't really think about it but i first cut when i was 15 in year 11 at high school and that was 4 years ago..
In grade 6, I was shaving my arms and I unintentionally nicked myself with the razor. I had never heard of it, or even thought of doing it, but when I did it was stressed out, and I discovered that it was relieving for me. About a year later, I would cut when I was sad, angry, overwhelmed, or if something really huge happened. Like....a scar for a memory.
I know you know that we could do more but we just don't...
I don't even remember when I started, It was forever ago tho, I would punch myself whenever I used to get sent to my room, I wanted to be able to keep crying or look like my step had hurt me so I wouldn't have to see him anymore (he didn't, but I wanted it to look that way), and then I saw a movie based on SI and abusing illegal substances, and a couple of years after that I realised my hitting and someone elses cutting were all part of the same problem, SI...
"Wish that I could cry,
Fall apon my knees,
Find a way to lie,
About the home I'll never see"
Superman by Five For Fighting
I first thought about it when i was 19/20 in my last year at college. I was stressed trying to juggle college and work, once while washing up looked at a knife and thought if i was injured i could get time off work and take off some of the pressure. But i didn't actually do it till about 3 years later. I was in my last year of uni and not coping with the work and depression. I wasn't even aware i'd done it till afterwards. It was an impulse, i'd had a bad day saw the razor laying there and it just happened.
People are like stained-glass windows.
They sparkle and shine when the sun is out,
but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed
only if there is a light from within.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
God doesn't require us to succeed; he only requires that you try - Mother Teresa
i first sh when i was 10. i didnt know it was at the time it was more self abuse behaviours. didnt cut til i was 12.i got to about 14 before it actually came up in conversation and i thought 'oh, thats what i do'
I started in 8th grade just because. At that time a bunch of people tried to get attention by taking plastic knives from the cafeteria at school and pretend to cut themselves. It was horrible. It was just a one time thing because I did it the night the counselor told my parents I might be bipolar and I was upset because I asked her not to tell them. So I cut myself. It was just one of those impulsive things.
Do what you love to do, and you'll never work another day in your life.
6 years ago I was in homeroom and another student was doing it right in the middle of class because she was upset that she had to get rid of her dog. I was going through a really stressful time and a few days after the homeroom incident I got into a fight with my mom on the way to the mall. She went into the mall and I stayed in the car. I saw a safety pin and started scratching at my arm.
I never knew it was a somewhat common thing until high school when I noticed a lot of students had marks on their arms.
I started really small. In 7th grade I started Volleyball and I would mess up and I hated it when they wouldn't punish some of my mistakes so I'd pinch my self. Stupid, I know, but it didn't seem to matter - I would never have classified it as SI until I actually began cutting. Then I started hurting myself in other situations - pinching, hitting, biting. It was around February that year that I finally cut myself. I'd been feeling bad and stressed for a while and then I got the news that Grandpa (who I'm real close to) has cancer… it didn't have anything to do with me, but the blood was so distracting… when I stared at it everything else just faded away. I know we talk of SI in health class (mostly just depression, but it's mentioned) so I'm not sure if I knew of it already through a formal classroom situation, or just common knowledge… but I think SI was already somewhere in the back of my mind at the time.
@SheHasHope: I know what you mean about it being 'cool' to pretend to SI. My freshman year a lot of kids were drawing on their wrists with red pens and joking about cutting themselves.
Silence can be golden but gold can sometimes suffocate
Like that girl in that James Bond film, too late to respirate
Tragedy can be plain to see with lights and sirens
But sometimes it ain't quite so clear, Domestic Silence
~Scroobius Pip
It was the summer between 6th and 7th grade. I was just browsing the Internet and came across a blog of a self harmer... the descriptions of everything were so detailed. I was taken aback that someone could do anything like that to themselves, but at the same time, I was fascinated. I wanted to try it (and it wasn't but a few months later before I did). I remember waking my mom up in the middle of the night to tell her all about the blog. I don't know why I wanted to tell her so much... I guess I just wanted to share my discovery. But she freaked out that I was reading that kind of thing.
Life:
it's all about perspective.
So when it isn't going well for you,
just try looking at it in a whole new way.
I'd heard of it, I think, but never really thought much about it. Then one day last year, when I was angry, the thought kind of came out of nowhere: 'I could cut myself.' So I did. = /
oh non-believer, please believe me.
is there honestly nothing in this world
that keeps you living & breathing?
you're a ghost in your own
goddamn city.
When I was a toddler I used to bang my head (which apparently is fairly normal, haha), and as I got older, I'd hit myself and bite myself and pull my hair when I was angry. The first time I ever saw anyone cut was when my mum and sister were arguing one day and mum grabbed her wrist and it was covered in blood. I was eleven or twelve at the time. It was terrifying, but fascinating.
I've never been a happy person. I've always been shy and anxious and getting through school was extremely difficult. I think I was fourteen or fifteen when I started scratching myself at night to make my mind stop. I just got pissed one night and did it and it worked. The first time I cut I was shaving my legs. People I knew online did it and they said it helped so much. So I did it. Just a little. I think I was fifteen/sixteenish.
It just went downhill from there.
Now I'm twenty and not much has changed.
(sorry if this is too graphic :/ feel free to delete it)
like SheHasHope and Rynn said about it was cool to pretend to SI
some of my friends thought it was cool to SI, so thats where i learnt what it was, they used it for a laugh and it became my coping method, they all stopped and im still here two years later.
but the first time i was introduced to the (what i thought) fascinating yet scary situation of self harm, was when i was 9. my ex-best friend showed me her arm where she'd raked a comb up and down her arm, i was so terrified, i never spoke of it again.
