Well, you could say that I made it through my suicidal thoughts. But that is a story I am not comfortable sharing quite yet as I am still collecting my thoughts. But at any rate, when I do share, it should be an interesting read.
I am posting here today to ask for advice on cutting myself. I am aware that I am not allowed to discuss methods here but I don’t feel that this is necessarily a method.
I have managed to bottle my emotions for many years, but ever since I first felt suicidal, I have had a desire to feel the pain and suffering of those who were suicidal. Being suicidal forced me to discover a side of myself that I didn’t even know existed – the emotional side. For some reason I have been compelled to feel suicidal again because these feelings seem to unlock a hidden view of the world – almost like a 6th sense that you didn’t know you had. It is kind of sad that as soon as I told someone about my thoughts of suicide, all the old emotions where just put back into that bottle again (maybe more permanently this time?).
I have become obsessed with understanding how suicidal people feel; I want to endure what you endure. I seem to think that feeling like you do might bring those emotions back. So, here I am, asking for your advice. Where is a good place to cut myself? I don’t intend to kill myself with this method so it should not be deadly, but I want the pain to feel similar. I am not trying to get attention with this so cutting my wrist obviously is not a good idea, so where can I cut myself?
Or maybe this is a better question: Where have you cut yourself? What have you done to yourself?
I am on a journey to feel your pain. There are no wrong answers. How have you hurt yourself? What is the most self-destructive thing you have ever done to yourself? I will attempt as many of your posted ideas as possible – but please keep them to non-deadly topics. I don’t want this to become a methods thread. I am dead serious (somewhat ironic that I say that on a suicide blog), I want to feel your pain, let me feel it.
22 comments
Sure, I’ve cut myself. I’ve hit myself too. Self-injury is a ***** to deal with, but it will always be a part of me. I cut myself on my legs to make it a little less obvious. I have about 45 scars, but I haven’t counted them in a while so who knows. I would advise you not to do it, but I’m not one to talk. I usually hit myself on my arms just because I’m able to hit the bone and feel more pain. I can’t explain how it helps, but it does. It makes me think about the physical pain, and not the emotional pain.
I know this isn’t what you want to hear at all, but I would advise you not to venture into any form of self mutilation. I frequently cut and burn myself and honestly its not worth it. The only reason i keep doing it is because i can’t stop. And if you’ve experienced suicidal thoughts before I would NOT go into this because if you are still collecting your thoughts and not ready to share you experience with suicidal thoughts then you truly arent over them and honestly this would just resurface those feelings if not make them stronger! I can’t say i know what you’re going through because honestly i can never be able to say that but i can say ive been through similar things keep your head up and stay strong!
Why do you want to feel other’s pain? Because it will distract yourself from your own? This is not a good path. Not for you, not for anyone.
@one_day I want to feel the pain of these people because the time in which I was suicidal I experienced what emotions really felt like – for the first time in years. I described these emotions as a 6th sense; they are a guide to understanding how other people are feeling. Just as I am sure you wouldn’t do away with your eye-sight or hearing, I want to feel these emotions again. But not only do I want to feel emotions again, I fear that if I do not deal with them properly that they may “explode” out of the “bottle” that I keep them in – and when they do it will probably be much more damaging than last time.
I have tried self-inflicting pain and it seems to help cause that desperate, confused mindset that I felt while I was suicidal. It brings me so close, but I never quite get to those emotions.
But there is another reason I want to do this. I want to understand how the people here feel. I want to know what their pain feels like, I want to understand how desperate they are for some sort of release. And I want the people here to know that I feel their pain, that I can relate to them, that I understand exactly how they feel, and that I will do whatever it takes to make myself understand if I don’t already.
Maybe I am just weird, maybe I am trying to help in the wrong way, maybe I will never feel these emotions again. I don’t know, but I do know that I can try.
A better way of understanding a suicide persons though ia maybe by help someone that has suicide intentions. It takes focus off of your emotions and focus on them listen to them. listen to tge emotion behind there words cause there can be many ways why we feel this why but it all comes down to they way we feel or if we even feel at all. What i mean by this is when your emotions just come numb .what most people dont understand is tht depression doesnt just go away, people see me in my fragile state cause i cant even control my emtions in public sometimes im completely silent cause every thIng i see i just think of another way i could leave this place and solitary thoughts if i talk ill just cry. And there time people see me in my fine state whih i just try my best to hid these emotions and pretend it all okay. But the question ill get is r u feeling better i just say yes to stop the questions, but no i dont i never had and im starting to think ill never be okay.
But I do cut myself, i cut my arm at first its was two scar around my arm but its built to bout 14 the deeper the more blood the more release but to hid hasnt been tht easy
The side hip work well as to, easier to hide but if it doesnt nothing for you it you just find your the scars itchy from the healing process.
Just feel hopelessness and pain so many emotions never end, this feeling never ends
Interesting.
My whole life I tried to get rid of my feelings and suicidetalk wants feelings.
suicidetalk it seems like you can only seem to feel when you harm yourself or are in a self destructive mindset.
the previous bottling your emotions is the issue. you’ve somehow switched your brain into some kind of blunted mode.
if you are going to cut do so in places people cannot see.
and if you use a sharp enough blade and do so lightly it will not scar bad at all. I do scars on my legs where i deliberately kicked through plate glass windows of abandoned houses to dissipate rage and feel pain.
but the forearm cutting seemed the best.
@U.N. Owen Thanks for your advice. I recently read your comment about cutting releasing endorphins – brain chemistry is interesting to me. I will have to look up some more information on that. Do you happen to have any good articles or even scientific papers on the topic?
I agree that forearm cutting does seem like the best, and most natural place to cut. I think I have identified a place on the side of my upper-arm that may have a similar feeling without risking massive blood loss or being noticed.
Suicidetalk… I’ll look around and see if I can dig up anything.
Been so long since I have read up on that particular subject.
Just remember snippets.. but there should be studies out there though.
Sorry I do not have anything readily available.
And again , lightly with a really sharp and thin blade , and your scars will heal better.
Breaking the skin usually worked for me without cutting into the lower dermal layer. And the blood was not that much. An a bit of alcohol followed by normal hydrogen peroxide helps with the healing too.
Ok, so here I am. Approximately 5 minutes before I cut myself. Self-bondage is something I do – because I enjoy it and because it allows me to feel pain. Actually, I enjoyed it before I was suicidal.. Without it, I would not be alive. When I was suicidal, I would hog-tie myself with an ice-lock and wait until the urge to kill myself has past.
This time, I have gaged myself, frozen a key (which I need to escape) inside a block of ice, and ziptied my legs together. I will sit at the base of my bed, cut my arm (at least one time, maybe more) – use rubber-bands to hold something over the wound while I ziptie and lock my hands around the bed post. There is a key that will release this lock (frozen into the ice). I will also lock the string I used on my gag around the bed post. The key to release this lock is located on the first pad lock. Essentially, I will be stuck for at least 30 minutes, maybe an hour, maybe more with a bleeding arm and nothing but my thoughts – unable to even scream for help.
I will finish this post when this is done.
(Apologies for the digression from my usual levels of coherence in the remaining portion of this post. When I start writing these things I just have to let it all out and it comes out in an unorganized tangle – but it is all there)
It must have been at least two hours, maybe more that I was tied like that. It was harder to cut myself than I expected. At first I was almost unable to do it. Something seemed wrong about using a knife to cut my own flesh. Once I started trying I discovered that it is much harder than it looks to cut your skin open (or maybe I have just seen too many medical shows on TV. They make it look so easy!). Some of this was probably because the skin on my upper arm seems to be a little tougher than the softer skin located on your wrist.
I probably spent 10 minutes cutting myself, the first “cuts” where nothing more than little scratches. Eventually I had enough, I stabbed an existing scar (which probably hurts less) with the tip of the knife and cut it open. Finally! The blood I was looking for. But I could not stop there. It was now easy to use this opening to make other cuts starting from there. I made 6 cuts, approximately 2cm in length starting from that point. They were all very shallow.
I was surprised that it didn’t hurt more, actually. I then used rubber-bands to attach some paper-towel over the cuts to catch the bleeding (it was minimal).
I am going to say this to myself again – NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE AMOUNT OF TIME IT TAKES ICE TO MELT. Actually, I used far less ice than last time but the changing weather made it take much longer to melt. I was stuck, tied like this for what I estimate to be 2 hours. It was very uncomfortable, but at least it wasn’t the hog-tie I did last time or I may have never gotten out. I still have deep indentations on my arms from struggling against these zipties and a red mark around my neck from the way I tied the gag on.
This is the closest I ever felt to my emotions since being suicidal. I felt loved and I remember what it felt like to love someone. Love is an primitive emotion by evolutionary standards and I only felt it a little bit, but we are making progress. Maybe I don’t want to feel all these emotions anyways – or at least not in their full strength. As I said, the emotions are a sense and being able to tell that someone loves you is useful in the same way being able to identify colors with your eyesight is. It may not be perfect “emotional vision” but the only time I remember fully experiencing emotions was when the emotions almost caused me to kill myself. Dull emotions are probably best.
Even now I can still feel loved. The only person who I told about my previous suicidal thoughts (I call him P when I am writing about suicidal topics) – the person who got me through it – told me that he loved me (in a not gay sort of way. I knew what he meant and I’m not gay either so that is ok). Knowing that he loved me is what allowed me to make it through those emotional days where my mood could flip from that “on top of the world” feeling to suicidal in a few seconds. It is because he loves me that I find the strength to live on every day. It is because he loves me and because it makes him happy that I haven’t already taken my own life. But what good is knowing that he loves me when I don’t feel love anymore. Love is the one emotion I had not managed to replace with some type of logical, utilitarian logic. No surprise there, I think we all know love causes a lot of illogical things to happen.
So, I cut myself in some self-discovery voyage. I inflicted pain upon myself, I learned to like it, and I got over it. I found love and I can feel it again. Thank you to everyone and thank you P. If you ever read this, I still love you and I know that you love me too.
It seems kind of silly, but I lost a friend today, or last night, or sometime. Ever since I first felt suicidal I started wearing a rubber-band. This rubber-band eventually became my friend. It was with me every day, I never took it off. It had become a part of me in the same way that my hand is part of me. It was part of who I was. It was a symbol of my emotions, it was an external manifestation of how I felt differently inside. Today, I noticed that it was gone. I don’t really feel attached to it anymore, but I would loved to have kept it.
But that does not matter, I made a new friend today. I have decided to keep the ziptie I mentioned above. It is a new, better symbol. One might say that a rubber-band represents my emotional instability. But a ziptie is much stronger and once applied they are hard to remove. It would take years to come off unless I was to remove it myself. But, for now, it says. It is a symbol of a new time in my life, a time where I can finally feel loved. Let us hope that this feeling lasts longer than this ziptie.
@suicidetalk – I still think this is a bad path for you. Do you have asbergers, or some other condition that prevents you from feeling emotion? Either way, I appreciate your desire to empathise with messed up people, but you seem to be allowing that desire to manifest in the wrong ways. For example, with cutting – You will never understand someone’s emotional pain by inflicting physical pain on yourself. It seems you are replicating the SYMPTOMS of depression, without understanding the CAUSES. Very important that you make this distinction.
You will never help anyone in this way. And you will probably hurt yourself. There are better ways to understand and control your emotions.
@one_day Thank you for an insightful comment. I am not aware that I have any condition that prevents myself from feeling emotion. I remember that I made a choice not to feel emotion. I managed to find a way to destroy anything that resembles an emotion I don’t like. It all started with a teacher I had who liked to make people feel guilty for her own benefit – I was even feeling guilty when I had done nothing wrong and the teacher was talking to other people. It was then I decided that I would be better off without emotion.
Also, I already do empathize with “messed up” people (but I wouldn’t call people messed up because they are suicidal – that is completely normal). I remember feeling these emotions recently, very recently. That was when I was suicidal. I can empathize with you to the extent which I have replaced empathy with understanding. It is really hard to describe this mix of emotions and “emotional replacements” I have here.
I have made the distinction between the cause and symptoms of depression as well. But one thing I couldn’t understand is the extent of the mental anguish which must exist to cause someone to start cutting.
But this wasn’t all about understanding other people, it was about understanding myself. It was about pushing myself to that one emotion which I never destroyed – mostly because I never felt it until recently. Desperation. That feeling, the uncontrollable shaking, the panic, etc. – it all reminds me that week I almost killed myself – that one time where I can remember feeling emotions.
I will probably never cut myself again, it doesn’t appeal to me, but I can say I did it. It guided me to love and that is as far as I am going to take it right now – mostly because I don’t want a huge emotional release that ends with me killing myself. I am going to do this slowly. I am in control this time.
Again, thanks for your concern and insight. If you know of any less-destructive ways to unlock these emotions, please share them or your thoughts on the matter.
@suicidetalk – hm, this is all very interesting and weirdly, something i can relate to:
‘I can empathize with you to the extent which I have replaced empathy with understanding.’
It’s basically the same thing, and I believe you are caught in the bind of semantics… because the word ’empathy’ implies emotion, and that is something you claim not to have. Don’t you see? You DO have emotin, you DO have empathy, because you have understanding, but you resist the word because that word is so loaded with connotations that it’s scary.
I can see why you would rebel against having emotions. Because you don’t like being emotionally blackmailed. That is good, because it means you are strong enough to guard your emotions with the respect they deserve. However, stopping yourself from feeling emotion to rebel against emotional blackmail is somewhat akin to cutting off your nose to spite your face…
I relate to you in the sense that: I think you might be the only person I’ve come accross, besides me, who breaks down emotion and catorgorises it into rational and logical thoughts. You call them ’emotional replacements’. I would argue, they are not replacements at all. They are emotions, simply articulated in objective terms. DON’T undermine your emotion, simply because you don’t express it in a ‘normal’ way.
In terms of unlocking your emotions, it seems you are going about it all backwards. Don’t start with other people, you have to look inside. You have to talk about your experiences, what made you what you are. Also, if you are serious about doing this, why don’t you find the help of a psychologist to guide you on this journey? They are perfectly trained in this kind of thing! People on this website, maybe we can give you a different point of view, but we are not trained like psychologists to understand how thought processes work. We only deal with our own brains. Psychologists have a much wider range of experience and knowledge.
Good luck anyway, and do let us know how it goes. You are basically embarking on a journey of self discovery, and I think it’s very fascinating and also very brave.
@one_day hmm. What you are saying makes sense, and seems to apply. It is kind of confusing. I wouldn’t say I was necessarily caught by semantics (I would have to kill myself if I was – logic is something I take very seriously and I’ve spent days trying to help someone realize that they were using semantic trickery. Basically, the argument went: “x exists; if we define ‘god’ as having properties of x, god exists.” It is a nice attempt but it obviously fails because I can call my toaster oven “god” but I didn’t actually prove anything supernatural. But I digress).
I see how what I have could be considered an emotion and the more I think about it, the more they seem to qualify as emotions. But at the same time they never fit my definition of emotions. To me, emotions are something you will feel regardless of thinking about things logically. I don’t really feel empathy in the same way as other people. When I see someone who is sad I recognize what is causing them to be said, I think about the thought patterns causing the sadness, I generally see what has to be done in terms of the greater good of the world. If someone is crying I may try to comfort them because I can understand why it is the right thing it would do.
But there is another side of these emotions. I felt these while I was suicidal so it may just be some combination of stress, sleep deprivation, and other factors causing my brain to go crazy on me and create the physical manifestations of the emotions in no particular order. When I have normal “emotions” or “emotional replacements” or whatever we will call them, I don’t “feel” anything. I don’t get any physical manifestation of that emotion at all, which I remember having at some point. In fact, there are so many things I haven’t felt at all. I have somehow managed to remove sadness and anger completely. There is no logical way to think about them other than in terms of gain and loss.
So, to me, looking at something and noticing a loss does not really exemplify sadness as it seems it would by your definition. Wow, this is confusing.
It is like I have two sets of emotions – one which involves actual feeling, and one which involves thinking about things in the most practical way possible (to the extent which you call that an emotion). My true emotional side is screaming to be heard, it has something to say, but my logical side is telling me that it is a stupid idea and that it will only cloud my judgment.
I already said that I would be dead if it wasn’t for love but I am not exactly sure what to do at this point. Do I continue to “discover” these true emotions or do I live with my logical side. And if I go with the logical side, what reasons can I find to stay alive?
Do you have any thoughts on any of that? I’m going to think about it and try to make it more coherent.
Ok, maybe I was mistaken. You know your brain better than I, so if you want to make that distinction between your emotions and your ’emotional replacements’, I will take your word for it. But here is some food for thought:
Emotions are very fast and intense logical reactions to circumstances that are learned subconsciously in early childhood. Because they are learned by the subconscious, they are interpreted as feelings rather than thoughts. But really they are still thoughts, but they are coming from the subconscious instead of from the conscious, so we don’t percieve them with logic.
Do you agree or disagree with the above statement? Personally, I like to think of emotions in terms of logic because this implies that you can learn all these things, you can train your brain to think logically, you can train yourself to throw away negative emotions and nurture positive ones. It puts the power in your hands to be whoever you want to be.
So… in answer to your question, to search for your emotions or to go with the logical side, I say… it really depends on who you want to be.
Are you ready to take the risk, to open your emotions and potentially get hurt, but also potentially rewarded by love?
Or, are you happy or content operating purely on logic?
There’s no right or wrong answer here. It depends on what you want, and what you’re ready to acheive. Once again, I say, this is something you might want to ask a shrink.
If you go with the logical side, I think there are plenty of logical reasons to stay alive. The spare your loved ones from pain and suffering – that is entirely logical.
Hopefully this ends up looking ok in a non-monospace font. Here is a table of some emotions and their logical replacements. I couldn’t think of any other emotions so, here it is:
Emotion | Logical alternative
=================================================
Love | *None*
Hate | Dislike due to irrational behavior
| or due to a cause of sadness
Sadness | Lost productivity, lost gain
Happiness | Gain
Anger | Extreme amounts of loss
Empathy | Understanding why someone feels an
| emotion, logical or not
Depression| Lowered self-worth evaluations,
| possibly due to sadness or less
| happiness.
Suicidal | More global gain than harm would be
| caused by death. Depression.
Ok, now I am getting some insane ideas. Emotions are like “gut instincts.” I’m going to use math to explain this so I hope you know/remember this enough to understand my example.
When graphing a linear-inequality and you are trying to decide which side to shade in, you are taught to test a point in the equality. I quickly developed a “gut instinct” as to which side of the line it would be on based on the slope and other factors. I can’t say how I know what I know, but I can instantly tell you what side would need to be shaded without testing a point. Emotions are like these instincts, they can be learned, replaced, and forgotten. Haha .
I love your way of thinking about this and Id am going to need to spend some more time thinking about this. As a computer-programmer, it is particularly interesting to think about being able to “program” your brain to automatically take a set of parameters in a real world situation, process them, and give some kind of emotional manifestation based on them.
So I am not emotionally impaired, I just have a set of well-refined, automatic reactions to stimuli which preform real-time, psychoanalytical processing of people which I interact with.
Hmm, now I just need a better reason to live than not causing pain and suffering to those with less-evolved emotions. Just need a way to get love back without destroying myself. I can kind-of feel it. Barely, but it is there.
You’re emotion/logical alternative table all checks out perfectly to me.
These theories I have on emotion, they basically came from 2 things:
1. Being a stupidly emotional child who would cry at the drop of a hat, yet at the same time being an intensely inquisitive child who needed to know the logic behind everything, emotions included. (Still cry at the drop of a hat, but at least now I understand why)
2. Growing up in an emotionally retarded family where everyone was always screaming at each other. We would have arguements and I would ask ‘Why are you shouting? Why do you have to get so angry?’ and they would reply ‘Because I feel like it!’ Well, I’m sorry but that answer simply isn’t good enough for me. Once I learnt to break down and understand THEIR emotion, I stopped having to feel so hurt by it all.
People think you’re weird when you talk about emotions in such logical terms, they assume you;re some kind of robot (not true at all), so I advise you to just be careful who you talk to about this.
But it is definately true, that you can train yourself (to an extent) to feel or think whatever you want. So just work out who you want to be.
Also don’t fall into the trap of belittling those with ‘less-evolved emotions’. It is dangerous thinking to think that you are superior to anyone. Some people are logically driven, some aren’t. Who cares, we are all human in the end. I worked out this model of phrasing emotions in a logical way, because I am a logical person, and that’s what worked for me. But it doesn’t work for most people. You and I are the minority. That doesn’t make us ‘more-evolved’, just different.
Current status: calm/relaxed – having no problems to solve
Thank you for helping me figure this all out, one_day. I am feeling much better about myself – again, maybe even better than last time. I may have killed myself trying to figure this out. Just need to find a way to feel love now – the ultimate logic puzzle.
Haha love, the ultimate logic puzzle!
Well the best I can come up with is: love is an intense collection of several different emotions. Some are physical – brain chemistry. Then there is also, feelings of wholeness, acceptance, security, and trust. So it’s hard to find someone who who fullfills all these emotional needs. But I think it’s best NOT to actively seek this, but to be open to all these things when they present, and not cut yourself off from potentially feeling this for anyone because of superficial things like appearance.
Also understand that because of the trust factor with love, love is something that develops over time. Another reason it’s important to stay open, and to nurture positive emotion and understand/prevent negative emotion.
Good luck! You are quite dedicated to understnading yourself and others, so I think you can do very well! (PS. Some might call that quality empathy…!)
* Wholeness – logical alternative not found
* acceptance – feeling as if you are in an advantageous social position OR feeling as if you have a normal/above average chance of social interaction because of who you are OR self-acceptance (having a logically tenable set of thoughts define who you are.
* security – low probability of danger
* trust – low probability of a trust breaking action
I think I can make that work. P already fits all of these, but I still don’t know what to think about the “wholeness” thing. I have no plans to actively seek love.
== Status update ==
The cuts on my arm are healing quite well. Most of the cuts that were bleeding are down to about 1cm in size – no surprise there as they were quite shallow. However, the cuts that didn’t really make it through the skin have turned a nice red color. Hopefully that will go away soon.
@U.N. Owen Thanks for the advice with the hydrogen peroxide. I probably wouldn’t have thought of that for a self-inflicted injury. I also sharpened the knife I was using which is probably a good thing because it was still pretty hard to break through the skin.
And because it is probably a bad idea to have a knife with traces of blood on it, I have since removed all evidence of blood and DNA from the knife blade.
Hey guys, I want to share my story with y’all. Sorry if my english is bad, but I’m Dutch and 14 years old. Lets start from the beginning right? Well, I’m like I said a 14 years old Dutch girl. It all started a year ago. I find out my mother was cheating on my dead with a very good friend of my dad, I knew hem so well. He was my “second” dad. I hate him now. But back to the point, there was a lot of drama, and a lot of problems. So my parents divorced. My life was not good, I just hated myself, I wanted to die, people called me stupid, worthless, ugly blabla. You know it right? And the words of those people actually hurted. When people say everyday the same stupid words like “Ugly whore” or something like that, well, some day you will believe it. So I started to hate myself, not a little bit, no very much. I was disgusted with myself, literally. My friends weren’t real, they were talking shit behind my back. And I felt alone in this big world. But I moved on, going to high school. Things get better, I started to feel better. Not like “Oh I love myself.” or something, but better you know. But the second year of highschool, I started cutting, my life was a hell. It felt good, it burns, it helped getting the pain inside of me away. Hurt myself on the outside, to kill the monster on the inside. It is easy, take a knife, put it down on my skin, and cut. It bleed, and I felt like I could handle the world. I know, it sounds weird, but other cutters will understand me I guess. So I started doing it more, and nobody knew it. But then, my best friend, I found out she did the same thing, we were talking about it, and we actually had the same story. So from then on, we shared everything. She supported me, she helped me to stay strong, together we stopped cutting. And here I am now, but I still cut. Suicide goes trough my head everyday. I want to do it, but I cant. I dont want to leave everybody behind, and I’m afraid for the dead, so I just can’t. But I’m so afraid, that one day I’ll do it. And let everything and everybody behind. I don’t want to, but I’m scared… I just want to say to y’all, stay strong, and please dont cut. It doesn’t matter who you are, we all have our stories, we all have scars. So stay strong. I know you can do this, you’re worthy all the good things in life. Thanks for reading it. I love you.