Why did you START self harm?

Never self harmed. Makes no sense to me. How does hurting your body help solve any of the issues that are troubling you?

So stupid.

>>6640402
It feels good.
Faggot.

>>6640404
>temporary fleeting pleasure
>scar your body permanently

heh seems like a bad trade.

Self harm is retarded. The world is already out to get you. No need to assist it.

My family life was really fucked up. Dad was an abusive alcoholic. Fighting every night. Over critical of everything. By the time I was in 2nd grade I hated myself. So, I'd punch myself in the head until I was dizzy. That went on through like 10th grade. I have a bit of a deformed looking knot on my forehead where I would hit. The bone on the opposite side is normal. I'm scared that I probably caused some frontal lobe damage but I'd feel really dumb to ask a doctor.

I also started to cut my arms when I was about thirteen because of my abusive father.

When I brought my first girlfriend home (I never told anybody we were together or showed it) he just assumed I was lesbain and started hitting me, grabbing me by my hair etc.

From then on he insulted me every weekend: "you are not my daughter", "I hope you will die soon" and so on.

This time around I started to get pretty aggressive too, smashing bottles, chairs or punching against walls.

The aggression is gone now and I don't cut myself anymore but I am still pretty much depressed.

>>6640446
My parents knew that I did it too, but they could obviously not take me to the doctor since I would tell them why I was so angry. They were pretty mad when I wrote a poem in 2nd grade about hating them, them hating me, and wanting to die.

Licensed psychologist:

Its like talking to yourself - mental clarification, getting it out of your head makes it feel more defined and clear. It isn't that talking to yourself makes the thing you are taking about any more attractive or doable, but its clearer. I think its a natural human instinct to make physical expressions of inner feelings, likely beneficial to the mind in an evolutionary sense.

Its why people talk to themselves, why people write things down, why we write songs and do anything really - to make the things in our head clearer.

I believe that the ultimate effect of this is validation of the emotion (likely sadness in the case of self-harm). Almost as if seeing it makes it more real.

A lot of self-harm starts in people frighteningly close to not feeling anything anymore at all. The cutting (pain) validates the emotion they grab onto to evade complete withdrawal.

>>6640477
Wow. Despite all my introspection, this explanation might have vaguely come to mind but I never realized how true this is for me, as part of my cutting motivation anyway. Thank you.

I used to beat myself in front of the mirror, choke myself with a belt around my bedroom doorknob, cut and put cigarettes out on my upper arm.

It started with cutting, I wanted to kill myself but I knew I was afraid to die, so I started cutting my arm to get a feel for it and hopefully one day step up to the real thing.
4 years later and I'm still kicking, so obviously this didn't work.
I stopped harming myself as brutally and as routinely, but I still cut on off days and am definitely not a self preservationist like this dork >>6640402