I agree with sannah. Obviously, there is something troubling you, even if its only a minor thing to make you have to express your emotions and get something out... and it builds up.

I think its then when we blame ourselves for things, so we feel the need to pusish ourselves and thats when the self injury comes in ... we realise it makes us feel better, a quick release (even if its only temporary) ...and the cycle begins... after we do it, it makes us feel even worse and we blame ourselves again... but the only thing to make us feel better about that is self injury and then continue to do it so we get addicted. It makes us feel reliant on it then, we get blinded by it so we believe its the only thing that can stop the pain inside, when really thats not true at all. Our self confidence shatters, in fact, it gets so low we feel that we dont deserve anything better than this because we started it all so we have to suffer the concequences - we become angry at ourselves for doing this in the first place.

But we can control this - its just that people are so caught up in its ugliness and what it makes us think about ourselves, that we cannot see the reality... we are good people, every single one of us, and there was a time before we started to self injure when we wouldnt have even dreamed of doing this to ourselves because we knew that we deserved better...

Its just a struggle believing that we can all fight it and we can all live without it, there are better ways to express our emotions.

Remember - there is a big big difference in believing and knowing... We know that we all can get over this one day and we wont need it again, but because of that shattered inner confidence it has brough upon us all - we dont believe in ourselves and believe that we cant. So we go off that. But I think its time all of us started concentrating on that we KNOW we can all do this, its pure fact... and knowing this - doesnt that make it the tinyist bit easier learning to believe we can, now we all know we can do it?

I hope this helps you catssday, I hope now you might be able to take that first step into trusting in yourself to believe

take care hun, babyg - x