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Re: I scratched myself -
April 6th 2022, 01:35 AM
Hey Soda. Thank you for posting. I hope we can help you out.
I am sorry to hear you are struggling enough with painful emotions to engage in self-harm. Emotional suffering is hard to cope with, and sometimes we turn to self-harm to try and manage it. While I am glad you are not seriously injured, I am sorry you are feeling so much disgust and guilt for what you did. While these emotions exist for a reason, to deter us from engaging in behaviors we find wrong, hanging onto them doesn't serve us well, either, as they can cause our emotional pain to become even worse.
We all make mistakes. We all do things that hurt ourselves in some way or another. Some things just look more apparent than others. It's important to remember you did the best you could with the resources you had at the time, and to show yourself some grace for that. You were hurting, and you coped the best you knew how. You don't deserve to punish yourself for that. Instead, you can go forward knowing that you don't need to hurt yourself in this manner, and that it may be important to talk to someone about the feelings you are having that led you to do this, as well as finding other coping skills for dealing with difficult emotions.
Sometimes when physical harm is an urge, it can help to engage in other physical activities to relieve distress, like healthy exercise, or yoga, or making art, for example. Another common substitution for self-harm is to hold ice, or a frozen orange, until it hurts too much to do so. This creates sensations of "pain" without harming yourself, as well as cool your nervous system down, which relaxes the body on the inside.
Please remember, you are not a bad person for doing this, and you don't need to punish yourself. You are learning and growing, and that's okay. It's how life works. If you ever need us, feel free to reach out. We're here for you.
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