do you remember why you started, and how it felt the first time?

for me, the first time felt .. i don't like to use the word great, but it felt natural. like i was waiting for that relief for ages and ages, and i knew i'd found something that works for me. (even if it is unhealthy)

i started after my family refused to support me, and said they wanted nothing to do with my issues. i found a sharp thing in the room i was in and just went for it.

yeah.. what about you?

I was 14. A week or two before two massive changes happened in my life and I didn't know how to handle it. My friend had done it before so it seemed like a good idea I guess. I can't really remember how it felt. Ithink I only did it the once and it took several months for me to do it again and that's when it became something I would do regularly. Nearly 11 years since the first cut and I'm still struggling!

[RedSun]

I was about six.
I can't remember the first time...I remember that I didn't realise something would hurt, but when it did it made everything feel better.

[TheOriginalMe]

I can't remember when or why but I think it was banging my head against the wall and I knew that it would never be enough. Despite knowing that I carried on trying various methods and none of them really help.

Originally Posted by Red75

I was about six.
I can't remember the first time...I remember that I didn't realise something would hurt, but when it did it made everything feel better.

hey red!

thanks for posting.

glad i'm not the only person on here who staerted young (9 years old)

[i dont matter]

as far as cutting.... I was in my 40s - and it was awesommmmmmmme. You could visualize the deadness within myself. I could see pain, I could see years of hurt all flow out of deep red rivers. It was as if there was an awakening of my soul.

[StillIntending]

I'd been suicidally depressed for about six months already, and one night, as I went through the motions of a routine that had become commonplace to me, I silently cried on the bathroom floor at 11 o'clock at night, while texting everything I was thinking to my best friend. For the first time, he told me he couldn't handle this tonight, said he was sorry, and left. I was convinced that I had finally driven away the one person who truly knew all of me and still loved me for it, and so in a frantic haze I grabbed a pair of tweezers and scraped at a small spot on my right hand until it ever so slightly started to bleed. It took maybe 20 minutes to get that deep, as the tweezers weren't really all that sharp. It hurt, a lot. I'm a person who can barely rip her own bandaids off. This was my first time ever inflicting any amount of physical pain on myself, let alone the first time doing so for the pain's sake. I felt like I deserved it. I hoped that if I kept it up I'd eventually be capable of killing myself, because by that point I wanted, and sometimes still want, to die.
The next day, he came back and told me that his whole day leading up to that moment had been overwhelming already and that it wasn't even really me who got him to the point of shutting down. But as far as self harm went, the damage had already been done. A few days later I had a cut up soda can, and a week or so after that I had a few pieces of broken glass. I prefer the glass over anything else I've used. He knows, of course, that I do this. Nothing between the two of us changed. I just cut myself now, usually on my feet so that I can say I must have just gotten them from walking around in sandals so often.
This is the longest reply here now. Sorry. I may have rambled a bit.

[everythingsworld]

Ever heard of death by a thousand cuts?

[Wanderlust90]

I self harmed for the first time because I desperately couldn't face work. I don't know if it was depression & total lack of interest, because I had started to have thoughts of suicide just for, in my mind, being forced to live a life of work & drudgery. Or maybe it was anxiety, the dread of facing work because I had started to lose all faith in myself. I just didn't know how to feel, I became agitated & sobbing, I told my boyfriend I wanted to sell our house & run away to Europe so I could spend all the money on drugs & partying. I was too scared to call in sick to work. I was taking enough sick leave & being difficult enough, I knew not to push my luck. Also, my boyfriend was not very understanding, he couldn't understand why I was so unhappy & couldn't just suck it up & go to work without making a drama. He just felt like it was his fault & it scared him. So I used a Stanley blade to make superficial cuts to my wrist. I felt like I was losing control. I knew what I was doing but for some reason did it anyway. I think it could almost have been an expression of anger. Anger I'm often too scared to direct at others, sometimes it's easier to direct it on yourself. A physical expression of frustration & anger & pain. Similar to that of not eating, but that's for another thread.

[AuroraBorealis75]

I started bruising myself on purpose when I was about 14, but it wasn't until years later, after my cousin had been murdered and his wife committed suicide that I started cutting. That first time it was just 2 small cuts, and it was like a drug. Suddenly all the tension was released, and I could relax enough to fall asleep. I've gone through periods with no self harm, and then when the stress gets overwhelming I go back to it worse than ever. Now, even in the hottest months of summer, I have to have my arms covered almost down to my elbows covered.

First time I hurt myself I was 5 or 6 I think. My mom told me she'd be spanked with the carpet-beater on her underpants by her parents if she'd done something to deserve it (back when she was a kid). I felt I deserved punishment, so I hit myself on my bare behind with the flyswatter.

I was 8 when i really started, but around 6 was when i started punishing myself for anything i did. When i was 8, right after i did it, i remember going to stand by my moms tulip garden, and looking at the tulips made me cry. Tulips still make me sad.

[random_emotion]

I was 12 or 13 when I first hurt myself I remember it being scary that it helped but I liked it...

[brooke34]

I was in 5th grade my first time. Had a baseball tournament that day, everyone's parents, grandparents, etc were there to cheer them on while they played except for mine. I had rode the city bus to the park the tournament was being held at and had been told that morning by my dad and grandpa that they would be there. I kept watching the rode to see their car pull up and kept scanning the crowd thinking maybe I just didn't see where they parked or something, and ended up getting my nose broke because I wasn't paying attention to the ball. The way the blood poured out of my nose just felt like such a relief of everything. The feeling was indescribible. After the tournament I had become angry that they didn't even bother to come pick me up while knowing I didn't have money to ride the bus back home. So while walking home I found some broken glass and felt that if I just made a small cut to release some blood that I would feel better. and I was right. After that, it just became something I would do frequently.

[CrazyLo]

I was 17 my first time...12 years ago now. I don't really remember how it felt. My self-harm was pretty minor when it started out. I was just trying to release the anger and tension I felt in my body. I guess it worked.

As a child, I would bite my arm to punish myself for crying after being beaten.

As a teen, I would beat my head hard for a few times, bang my head against the cupboard, and pull my hair hard whenever I felt I hated myself.

Then, as an adult, I learned it was a form of self harm, but the most common narrative seemed to be cutting.

I still bit myself, beat my head and pulled my hair, but one day, when I was 24, I felt a lot of self hatred, so I took a knife and methodically made a few scratches.

It was silent, unlike beating my head or banging my head against something hard, so it became my method of choice.

[Coffeelover1920]

Well, I think as a child I would do things to bring pain but I don't recall that in great detail.

However, when I was in 7th or 8th grade I started self harming. I had read a book about cutting and for some reason all the stuff I read in the book hit home. I figured since I was struggling so much I would give it a try. I couldn't cut myself because I didn't have the tools but I did something else that enabled me to bleed a little and it felt amazing? I don't know if that's the right word but I got so much relief from it and all the emotions I was having just kind of disappeared for a while. It calmed me down greatly and I was able to stop crying. Sometimes I wish I had never read that book because then I might not have gone down that path.

[CrazyLo]

Originally Posted by Coffeelover1920

Well, I think as a child I would do things to bring pain but I don't recall that in great detail.

However, when I was in 7th or 8th grade I started self harming. I had read a book about cutting and for some reason all the stuff I read in the book hit home. I figured since I was struggling so much I would give it a try. I couldn't cut myself because I didn't have the tools but I did something else that enabled me to bleed a little and it felt amazing? I don't know if that's the right word but I got so much relief from it and all the emotions I was having just kind of disappeared for a while. It calmed me down greatly and I was able to stop crying. Sometimes I wish I had never read that book because then I might not have gone down that path.

I believe you may have gone down that path anyway without ever reading that book, though perhaps at an older age. It is hard to avoid hearing about and learning about self-harm in our culture.

[Texansfan]

The first time I was six and I remember like it was yesterday. It felt good to be able to release those emotions. I never regretted it because it was such an emtional release. It progressed from there but the end result is always the same - total relief. I hate that. Today I am learning new ways of expressing my difficult feelings but even that is hard. It is hard to reprogram my mind.