Self Harm?

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I used to deliberately physically self-harm (cutting/biting) when younger. This would be used to stop me spiralling into depression. It seemed to be a sfaety-valve of sorts. The act was quite carefully performed and was one of the few things that I would feel in control of at that time.

This stopped when I discovered the effects of alcohol and drugs which blanked a lot of feeling/emotion but the after-effects were probably more damaging. This went on for several years until the birth of my son. This seemed to externalise a lot of my pain and allow my caring for him to replace my inwrad-looking tendancies. I was still depressed but I bagan to take SSRI medication and that dampened and flattened a lot of the extremes. However I began to experience strong urges to self-harm again with no apparent external reasons.

When I became professionally aware of the effects of SSRI's I decided to come off them and replaced medication with mindfulness practice and a healthier regime in life. This took 17 months due to side-effects but is well worth it.

I have had no urges to self-harm for some time and use the mindfulness practices on a regular basis which has a global positive effect.

Peace

Tog

i have hit myself (as in slapped my face or forehead) a lot when i am upset. helps me calm down. I still do it sometimes which is not cool. should not be doing it.

congratulations to u Tog on your practices.

When I was a teenager I thought I was doing what everyone else was doing...turns out, they were doing what I was doing...*sigh*

Unfortunately, self-harm easily becomes a teenage fad, which I think is a fairly awful reality, but have been witness to it, time and time again....

I used to heat a lighter and sear my skin (I still have little happy faces scars on my hands and wrists)

I didn't quite get involved in the cutting, but often punched walls... (this usually occured when I was trying to redirect some form of physical pain I was experiencing)

*I knew girls that spent their days engraving symbols and initials of their current BF in their legs, more out of boredom and fad than any more obvious reason.

On occasion I have been so frustrated I would hit my head off of the wall, but never repeatedly.

And I am not sure if this qualifies, but the one and only thing I do as an adult is compulsive picking.
My picking is really bad when I am anxious, but otherwise become fairly casual, but constant.

i self harm cuting with a pencil sharpiner blade and burning with lighters i do it on an urge bases and im allso adickted to it atm its not worth me stoping so i will sta like this for a wile i fear:( hug

Done that plenty of times when I get very angry, I would punch my legs so hard until it would really hurt and it would feel so dumb, I also scratched myself when in many places, mainly the arms but I dont do it hard enough to scar for life...

When I was little it was worse as I would usually bang my head against walls or anything... I dont really do that anymore.

The self harming I haven't done in a while since I left that school.. i've just suddenly snapped out of it, but still have my meltdowns though anyways, thats all I gotta say....


superboyian.

I bite my arm, slap/punch my legs, wack my head, and I cut. I'm not proud of any of it. I'm in DBT for it. I want it to stop but I need a little extra help. I know a lot of people that also self harm but they battle depression. I don't think any of my other friends are Aspies.

I had a phase of banging my head around the time I was diagnosed. I'm mostly past it now but it's tempting when I'm stressed or overwhelmed.

Frustration, trouble communicating, no way to let things out.. It can make everything feel so much calmer.

I've done it on and off when everything goes numb and I need some way to verify that I'm still alive and not a ghost.

I self-harmed a lot. The adrenaline helped me avoid meltdowns.

I hit myself a lot.

Another vote for the 'hitting myself' pile.

I used to hit myself/bang my head against the wall a lot when I thought/realised I'd done something embarressing/inappropriate. I still do occasionally when I have a meltdown, but a lot less frequent/intense. I don't like to now because I know it scares my partner, which has made me actively confront it as a habit.

I hit my head a bit as a kid, but then seemed to give it up for a few years, almost inexplicably. When I was fifteen, I started cutting--thinking, oddly enough, that I'd "invented" it. I was battling what my parents considered a perfectionist streak, and whenever I felt overwhelmed--by friendship difficulties, by school problems, by simple things like my homework crinkling at the corner--out would come the scissors.

It's been quite a few months since I last cut. I'm 22 now.

The really odd thing is, just this past year and a half or so, I've started banging my head again....

I did this a lot growing up. It happens during a meltdown and it's actually how I know I'm in a full blown one. I used to bite my hands so much I had huge scars on both of them. They went away though (thank god) Actually, they were like really big, thick calluses but my mom put a lot of vitamin E oil on them and they went away. They probably would be scars today had she not done that.

Anyways, I did it when I was frusterated and upset. I don't really know why, I just had the urge to. It didn't even make me feel much better. Or maybe it did, I don't know. I still have the urge to do it to this day and it's something I have to fight all the time. Sometimes I slip and it's very upsetting to me.