I'm a 24 year old female and I've been self injuring since I was at least 13. It started out with just minor things like scrapes but when I was in high school I "discovered" burning by accident. I would burn myself on the heat vents in the wall or the electric radiator I used to heat my room in the winter. But that only happened occasionally, once every 6 months or so. Then about a year and a half ago I caught the tail end of a news report on self injury. Up until that time I didn't know that what I did was common or even a problem. I had heard about people who cut themselves or burned themself with cigarettes before on talk shows but I never associated it with what I did. Fortunately (I think) I caught the part of the show that gave a list of all the different types of things that people do to self injure. I was shocked to learn that I fit into the description entirely too well. I think the one bad thing that has come out of my learning that what I do is SI and that it's a problem is that it started me cutting. Up until I learned about it, I never thought about cutting. I started out using the point of a drawing compass or a safety pin but it hurt quite a bit and never really drew much blood. I'm afraid of using a knife or a razor for fear of cutting too deeply. I have moved on to a pair of scissors with which it doesn't hurt too much to cut to draw the satisfactory amount of blood. At this point in my life, cutting is probably my primary form of SI although I do still burn occasionally. I've been able to identify many things that I will use to trigger myself intentionally but I don't know why I sometimes want to. Maybe to just release all the emotions that I have intentionally and unintentionally shoved into the back ground. I've gotten a bit better considering there was a time not too long ago when i was cutting just about every week. Bit by bit that has subsided and I'm at a point where I only si ever month or so. Sometimes more, sometimes much less. I saw a therapist for a little while. I was on Zoloft for 10 days and it was horrible. Right now I'm just trying to cope on my own. Thinking about seeing a therapist again. Maybe someday. Right now I have no real reason to stop or want to stop.
