Self-Injury Support Group
Whether you or someone you know or love struggles with self-injury, this is the community to discuss your experience, find support, meet others going through the same, and get advice on how to stop. Working together, we can help find alternative coping skills to reduce the urge to self-harm.
On an episode of House (airing right now, in fact), there was a woman lying on the hospital bed, asleep. House, following one of his *hunches*, pulled back the blanket a bit and uncovered an all-too familiar sight.
Her leg was decorated with a series of small, neat, clean red lines. Cuts, arranged in the same pattern I use, about the same length and deep... It was like a snapshot of my arm or my hip or my ankle or, more recently, my knee a day or two after an incident, when the cuts had started healing and were nice little red lines and not puffy or inflamed...
Anyway, I found it comforting. It made me feel better to see it, to see that pattern and neatness. It made me feel GOOD. Which makes me wonder: do I cut only for the release and the physical pain to ease the emotional pain, or do I derive some sort of satisfaction from the visual of the finished product?
Just wondered if anyone else could identify...
Her leg was decorated with a series of small, neat, clean red lines. Cuts, arranged in the same pattern I use, about the same length and deep... It was like a snapshot of my arm or my hip or my ankle or, more recently, my knee a day or two after an incident, when the cuts had started healing and were nice little red lines and not puffy or inflamed...
Anyway, I found it comforting. It made me feel better to see it, to see that pattern and neatness. It made me feel GOOD. Which makes me wonder: do I cut only for the release and the physical pain to ease the emotional pain, or do I derive some sort of satisfaction from the visual of the finished product?
Just wondered if anyone else could identify...
deleted_user
i totally identify with that. the neatness makes me feel better too. like, if i slip and it goes crooked, i doesnt feel as good as when its straight and neat.
deleted_user
Do you have a set pattern that you tend to use each time? I always start with parallel lines of a certain length, and then I start another set perpendicular to the first, and there's a whole pattern that ends up with this nice square that resembles a quilt or something warm and nice like that...
deleted_user
there's no rhyme or reason to the cuts that i do. i just cut...i slash away wherever i feel like it. sometimes they are parallel, sometimes they are all going sideways but they are crooked. i love seeing the finished product. like you said, a day or two after. i like looking at it and knowing that i did that. it's the one thing in my life that i have some control over. but no, there is no pattern to how i do it.
Thriver
What was different, is that the cuts were on her back, where I guess she couldn't see them. ?
deleted_user
I cut words into my flesh, so I do definately identify!! For me, it's the pain, blood, look of the word, how deep it scars, how much it bleeds.
deleted_user
I actually think I get more satisfaction when I do it randomly and in no particular order. Once when I was in a psych ward, one of the nurses told me that women cutters tended toward doing it more slowly and "orderly" while male cutters tended generally to more randomness. I do not know if it is true, but has anyone else heard that? It is true for me.
deleted_user
I really do get where youre coming from i mean i get some sort of satisfaction from seeing it too. i dont know how to explain it. xx
deleted_user
unlike mst people who have commented, i get no satisfaction whatsoever when i see the scars that i've made. it makes me feel sick that i could do it to myself when i see the finished product, but i get satisfaction from the actual SI if that makes any sense whatsoever.
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