I don’t really understand why people do it. Not like “they’re doing it because they are depressed and feel bad”, I had depression myself but never had a call to injure myself. I hate pain, and doing something painful to myself while I’m already feeling bad doesn’t really sound appealing. So I don’t quite get what self-harm gives people so they keep doing it.
Like, is it a way to “ground” yourself and stop dissociating, or is it “just to feel anything at all”, or as a “punishment”, or something else?
For clarity I don’t self harm but I’ve fought the urge to several times…
For me it’s often immense frustration. It seems to be that most people take out their frustrations on the people around them. Not everyone is frustrated enough to, and not everyone does it, but there’s a nontrivial number of people who take it out on whomever they can, IMO, this is what leads to things like physical and emotional abuse but spouses, in some cases. IMO, bluntly, if you take out your frustrations on those you supposedly love, then you’re in desperate need of either therapy, or a percussive rearrangement of your neurons…
For me, I silo things. If I’m frustrated at a situation, then that’s what I take things out on, if I’m frustrated at a person, that’s where that frustration is focused. Only when I’m in the midst of incredible stress/burnout do any of these lines ever get crossed and it signals to me that I need to take some time to rest and recover.
However, even frustrations are happening quickly and intensely, I get the urge to harm something. If my mind is properly siloing my feelings as I’ve tried to do, and I’m not frustrated to the point of uncontrollable (or nearly uncontrollable) anger at a person, instead being frustrated by a situation or circumstance or thing… Then either I beat the crap out of an inanimate object to release that tension, or… Well… Take it out on myself.
There’s a line in an obscure episode of the TV show scrubs, where doctor Cox says to JD that sometimes JD makes him so angry he’s afraid he might hurt himself… When I first saw that, I didn’t comprehend what he meant… After being out in the world as a working adult for as long as I have been since first hearing that line, I get it. Sometimes the frustration needs to vent off, in some way or another, and sometimes the machine (me) that holds the pressure of that frustration starts to get damaged from holding the pressure.
It’s fairly rare for me, I’m usually very calm and disciplined. Though, when it happens, it can be very intense.
Everyone’s reasons are different, these are mine. I’m almost never in a situation where I feel like self harm is a good idea or something I am compelled to do. For me it’s simply the failed containment of extreme emotion.
i also have never really self harmed (sometimes i used to bite the flesh under my thumb really hard but otherwise nothing) but for me, it was to provide a distraction. it’s difficult to think about everything else being shit when you’re focused on physical pain.