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Edit avatar · 11:00 AM

Hey, Lindsey.

People self-harm to cope with overwhelming difficult emotions or events that happen in their life. They just need something to help them so they turn to self-harm as an outlet. Most of the time, it's used for coping with feelings, then it's to feel something when you feel numb. It gets addictive because it releases endorphins which brings you to wanna start doing it when you don't even feel sad or numb.

I used to self-harm to relieve guilt, to punish myself and I needed to know my feelings were real. So I took my feelings and made them show on the outside. I come from a family where general normal feelings aren't understood or listened to, so they get swept under the rug so I couldn't talk about anything bothering me. Self-harm was how I dealt with that.

Whenever my parents yelled at me, whenever I made mistakes, whenever me and my best friend would have a argument I'd cut. But now I'm one day from 2 months away, and I've found that talking to my best friend and sorting out our feelings together after an argument is so much better than cutting myself over it. Each argument brings us closer since we deal with it in a healthy apologetic way now.

Same goes for other sad feelings, I distract myself by doing things I enjoy to get my mind off it.

I still have urges to self-harm and sometimes I almost slip up and it's on my mind often. It doesn't solve my problems, just temporary relief, it gave me scars, it gave me lies I have to hide and cover up, and sometimes awful urges. Don't self-harm, it's not worth it! I'm glad you say you probably won't, because it's a bad path to go down. So hard to quit.

When you feel sad, make sure you have things to do around you to cope, healthy things. Talk to those around you about things bothering you. Write thoughts/feelings in a journal and express yourself.

Hope I helped you understand a bit better.