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How long have you been self harming? Discuss why you started.
My struggle with self-injury began in my freshman year of high school. I am now a freshman in college, so I've been doing it, intermittently, for four years-ish. I started...out of deep self hatred I was a lonely misfit in the cruel world of junior high, and this was a way of punishing myself for not fitting in. Along with the [self-harm] came other destructive behaviors [but] most of that stuff disappeared by about the middle of my sophomore year. By then, I had [moved on to more serious self-injury]. I wasn't self-harming much because of loneliness or because I didn't fit in, I [self-injured] because of self-hatred, and punishment was a comfort (it still is.)
Then last fall I began to prematurely celebrate what was to be the one year anniversary of my very last [self-injury] and one year since I'd made myself throw up. Shortly after that, on the eve of my senior year, I was raped by a close friend. That changed me more than any other event in my life. I began to see the world differently, and the [self-harm] got very bad for awhile. While I no longer [self-harm] as often or as violently, I indulge occasionally when I am very angry, stressed, or particularly overwhelmed with self-loathing.
Unlike many self-injurers, I've never really [self-injured] out of depression; I do it almost exclusively out of anger. That's how I've come to cope with it.
My struggle with self-injury began in my freshman year of high school. I am now a freshman in college, so I've been doing it, intermittently, for four years-ish. I started...out of deep self hatred I was a lonely misfit in the cruel world of junior high, and this was a way of punishing myself for not fitting in. Along with the [self-harm] came other destructive behaviors [but] most of that stuff disappeared by about the middle of my sophomore year. By then, I had [moved on to more serious self-injury]. I wasn't self-harming much because of loneliness or because I didn't fit in, I [self-injured] because of self-hatred, and punishment was a comfort (it still is.)
Then last fall I began to prematurely celebrate what was to be the one year anniversary of my very last [self-injury] and one year since I'd made myself throw up. Shortly after that, on the eve of my senior year, I was raped by a close friend. That changed me more than any other event in my life. I began to see the world differently, and the [self-harm] got very bad for awhile. While I no longer [self-harm] as often or as violently, I indulge occasionally when I am very angry, stressed, or particularly overwhelmed with self-loathing.
Unlike many self-injurers, I've never really [self-injured] out of depression; I do it almost exclusively out of anger. That's how I've come to cope with it.
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