What did you think about SH before you started?

[Fractured Silhouette]

I used to think about cutting and SH in the very stereotypical manner. I thought people such as goths, emo's etc did to fit in and it was just done for the sake of it. I couldn't comprehend it, neither could anyone I knew. I had never encountered anyone who was cutting or used to and I still haven't. At that time, I had no idea of SH in general was something used to help you feel better.

You know, until I tried it. I have no idea what was going through my mind the day I started, but I do remember thinking after I did it that it made me feel much better. It wasn't until a couple of days later that I realized what i'd done. I was confused about why I did it and how it made me feel better. The weeks that followed I did some research into the matter. So now I understand why people do it, so in some respects, cutting opened my mind. I still wish I'd not started and carried on gleefully ignorant. But oh well...

So what did you think about SH before you started? Did you know about the way it made you feel better beforehand or not? What did you think about it just after you had done it?

[FullyAlive]

To be honest I don't think I'd heard of it, or if I had it hadn't really made much of an impact. I didn't label what it was that I was doing until six months later when I was confronted about it. I knew not to tell anyone I just didn't really think about what it was.
It was an instinct I was hurting and I just cut, I think I would have done it even had I known more about the addiction side and everything I wasn't really thinking at the time.

[LucasRobert0897]

This is a really good question. I first heard about it directly when a girl in my class was first caught self harming at lunch. It sorta took us all aback and we just reverted to being unsympathetic and stereotyical. She got teased so much, I wasn't innocent myself. About a month or two on I was having a really hard time with an issue that was a big part of my life and one night I decided to take a pocket knife and cut some lines. I don't remembrr why or how it made me feel but from that day forward I became so much more open minded and apologized to the girl I teased. It changed me infinitely.

[Desuetude]

I was very stereoypical about it as well. I went along with the jokes about emos and depression which I hate myself for now. I think people are mostly like this because they don't understand, something gets linked to one thing and therefore when people hear about cutting they immediatly think you're an emo or suicidal. Being uneducated on the subject means children don't know much about it which was what I was, another child that just didn't understand. It made me sad that people would do that to themselves but like I say, I didn't know much about it.
I can't remember what made me first do it. I was home alone I think and my anger was getting harder and harder to control. It felt like such a release I just felt like sighing and afterwards I don't think I felt any resentment towards what I'd done. it had helped more than anything else ever had and that's all that mattered.

[Princess Ariel]

I really can't remember. I was young, really young, I was also a very strong worded person, I mean i got suspended in grade 1 for saying fuck.
The more I think about it, I think I thought it was stupid, and that they'll never be able to swim.
When I first started, I just turned five. It was just a curiosity, on how it would feel, and ever since then I struggle to get to day 1.
My highest i've ever gotten was 9 days, and that was pretty recent.

[Ambrosia]

I first heard of self harm when I was in 6th grade and a girl in our class was caught cutting herself in the girls bathroom. I thought it was disgusting an something drama queens did, a way to seek attention. I went a good two years remembering that, and thinking it was just gross and wrong. When I first did it myself I didn't realize what I was doing for a few months after it escalated from small slices on the tops of my arms to large gashes across my legs. Now it's a big struggle to quit.

[Philleeep]

I thought it was stupid and pathetic at first then when i knew more about it I just felt sympathetic and tried to help and then I started and understood it and it felt like it helped at the time and then i found someone on here who means the world to me and i rely on him way more than i should and he helped me stop and realize, most of the time i didn't need to do it, i just needed to talk to someone and trust them with what i had to say but now, i don't regret it because sometimes you need to experience something before you can fully understand it and it can be an experience we can teach future generations about x

[project_icarus]

Rather stereotypically. But that's the way it's generally been looked upon by the minute amount of the public that actually has an opinion on it, I didn't understand it really; but what I did understand about the link between depression and self harm is what I was rather sympathetic about. I didn't really get it - nor did I even really know what it was.

[razorblade-wolfveins]

I didn't even know what it was until a few months after I started. I found out about it in a book I read. At first I was kind of like "That's stupid. I'll never do it that bad, it's so easy to stop." Boy, was I wrong. I look at other people and think pretty stereo-typically about it, but it just seems so different. It's like the people I know personally who do it just do it because I do.

[Kaius]

I don't think i actually knew what it was before i started or whether it had actually sunk in. When i first started doing it i actually knew no one else that did it, so i thought i was alone in it which tbh made it worse.

[Jupiter]

I first heard of self harm when I was in 6th grade and a girl in our class was caught cutting herself in the girls bathroom. I thought it was disgusting an something drama queens did, a way to seek attention. I went a good two years remembering that, and thinking it was just gross and wrong. When I first did it myself I didn't realize what I was doing for a few months after it escalated from small slices on the tops of my arms to large gashes across my legs. Now it's a big struggle to quit.

she basically explained what i said. i hardly knew i was doing it at first. i thought it was an easy thing to quit and it was totally wrong. now i know that it isn't good, but it isn't the worst thing in the world. i just wish i could quit.

[Carly011]

I use to think it was something i never would do, and that it was a cry for attention. Boy was i wrong :/ I wish no one cut, but once you start its so hard to stop

[Ravenous1]

I really didn't know about it at first, I heard about it when my BFF told me she cut herself I got mad at her for it and i decided to do some research and realized my reaction was the wrong way to react, that was in 11th grade and now its 12th grade and I'm the one cutting not my BFF, I mostly thought " why would someone do that?" Ik they prolly did cuz they were depressed but I didn't know the real reason but now I do.

[TravelToTheMoon]

I never thought SH was related to emo's or anything, but I knew thats what society percieved it as. Though I could never understand how people could cut themselves as I am naturally a squeamish person and I just thought 'ooh its gotta hurt so much! How do they do it!'
That was of course until I started to SH. I get it now, which I guess is probably the only upside to SH.