Scratching my arm.

[Ceilidh]

Whenever I'm really nervous or really angry I scratch or dig my nails into my skin really hard to try and calm myself down. I just know if I don't harm myself I'll only end up breaking something or harm another person, so I figure it's better to hurt myself.

The problems are A) I don't think it's healthy, B) people ask me why I have scratches on my arm and if I blame my cat once more people will get more and more questionable and C) I done it so much earlier my arm started bleeding (I've never done it hard enough to bleed until today)

What do you think I could do instead? I don't do it for the high or to punish myself I just do it to calm myself down /:

[Pizza Slut]

Well if you do it to calm yourself down then maybe speaking to a doctor would help. They could give you some medication to stop you getting so worked up.
Also, you could do other things like take a stress ball/something squishy to squeeze instead of your arm.

[thinkpink]

hello, this is how my self harm started, if i were you before it goes to full blown self harm i'd do something about it, get an elastc band and put it round your wrist when you get angry snap it against your wrist i always find that helps. hope everything goes okay.

[Br0k3nSmil3s]

Okay first of all this is self-harm theres no way to get around that fact at all.For about what the person above me said I don't think the rubber band idea is a good one because believe it or not thats a form of self-harm to..your just replacing one with the other. But as for what you can do to calm yourself down instead of scratching your arm: write, read, draw come on here and vent.

Pretty much anything that you like to do can work.
If you ever need to talk you can always PM me.

[Evanescent]

Well, I have to agree with you, even though I self-harm I still don't think it's healthy. And hurting yourself is just as bad as hurting someone else. Look at the alternatives thread, it has some great ideas. Make sure you keep your scratched clean, they can get easily infected. If you ever need to talk feel free to PM me.

[Stardaze]

Look through some alternatives. I do this occasionally but i bite my nails so i have like no nails whatsoever so it doesn't allow any bleeding to occur.

[.Brittany.]

Hey Ceilidh,

Self harm is pretty much doing anything that causes harm to yourself. As referred to here.

Also, as said above, please try some of the alternatives. You need to stop what your doing before it becomes too much, and before you do some serious harm to yourself. Here is the link for the alternatives.

Some of them others, and myself find VERY useful. You should really try them out.

Stay strong
PM me if you need anything
Brittany