Hi PR, haven't heard from you in awhile. Occasional emotional pain is a part of life, occasional is the key word here. A healthy person is able to roll with the flow and be able to tolerate and work with their feelings, because it is a part of life. Normal stops with emotional pain, however, purposefully inflicting pain on yourself is not normal. It is self abuse. What kind of message is this sending to yourself when you abuse yourself? We have received enough abuse in our lives while growing up and this sent plenty of messages that we need to work through to become healthy. Continuing to abuse yourself just keeps on sending those messages that you deserve abuse. Taking care of yourself really, really sends good messages to yourself. It says that you are valuable and worthwhile. Allowing others to mistreat and abuse us sends us bad messages about ourself. A person needs to take care of themself, not abuse themself.

Extreme sports do not have a 100% injury rate. The person isn't doing the activity to injure themselves. They are doing it for the thrill and they are willing to take a small risk that they could injure themselves. Some might do it for SI reasons, however, I guess but this would be classified as SI then.

You write that it makes you feel powerful. Why not really feel powerful? When we have these types of issues there is always some unempowerment involved. Dysfunctional families turn out unempowered people. Why not really work on this issue and really get empowered. Feeling empowered because you are abusing yourself sounds like the perpetrators. This is why perpetrators abuse others. They don't want to be the victim anymore so they become the perpetrator. Abusing others gives them power so that they don't feel unempowered. It never occurs to them that this isn't the only paradigm in the universe. You can feel empowered with no abuse going on whatsoever. Do you want to be a perpetrator against yourself just so that you can feel powerful?

I'm really glad you are exploring this PR because this is how you work through this stuff that is in your head and which affects your behavior, good work..........