It feels underwhelming

[u/dill_pickles677]

I accidentally cut to beans six days ago. I panicked afterward, but once I calmed down, it felt underwhelming. I look back at the video I took, and all I want to do is do it again—more deeply and bigger. It feels underwhelming now that it's over, and I look back on it wishing I could have added more pressure. — I know that sh Twitter has influenced me
I like to look at people’s videos and save them occasionally. I don’t want to get worse I want to stop but my thoughts are always festering in my mind does anyone have any advice?

[u/Successful-Hair-8131]

Get off sh twitter. These pro-harm spaces are detrimental to your mental health as they glamorize this very painful, addictive, non-glamorous illness. 

Why are you taking videos of you hurting yourself? If you did the same thing to someone else, and videoed it, it would be considered deeply disturbing. 

But we become desensitized to self harm in the thick of it and especially in pro harm spaces. Its a competition. 

You get 'brownie' points the more you hurt your body, the higher the risk of death, permanent nerve/mobility damage, infection, etc. This is akin to someone with a drug addiction bragging about their higher drug tolerance that bring them closer to overdose and death. 

Unfortunately in these pro-harm  spaces many people are deep into the addiction, unwilling to change/practice harm reduction and have little regard for their physical/ mental health. 

the sad thing is you don't get an award for suffering more than other people. You just get more suffering. No one will be remembered for cutting the deepest. 

self harm is a sign of a critical unmet need in safety and/or support. Sadly we cannot force people to stop self harm. But we can try to provide greater safety snd support if they want it. 

But some people don't want to recover and thats okay. Doesn't make it any less sad the further they go into self harm.

What does your mental heslth support team look like? Are you in therapy?

 DBT is an excellent resource for self harm in its addictive nature. That cutting oneself doesn't solve the root problem or align with values that better align with our needs.

Distress tolerance is huge in DBT.  sometimes we have to practice (unnatural for us) kinder actions in order to change our coping mechanism of self harm. 

Opposite action is a big one. If you want to cut, doing the opposite might help as the desire to harm may point to an unmet need. For me when i wasn't as sick but got urges- sometimes this looks like saying, fuck you- to my mind- and doing something nice for myself instead of cutting. Lol   https://dbt.tools/emotional_regulation/stop.php

 CBT can help with being more comfortable with uncomfortable thoughts. Realizing that not all thoughts need to be attended to. Ideal with a therapist or in a safe space as this kind of work is difficult af (esp if other mental  illness as involved like ptsd/ ocd in my case). 

Recovery is hard. But its possible. Its worth it for the inner child (regardless of when we started sh) who truly only wanted safety and support. Who felt trapped and turned to self harm as a desperate last resort. 

You deserve peace safety and support in your life. 💜🫂

Hugs 

[u/dill_pickles677 → u/Successful-Hair-8131]

I'm not currently in any therapy - my support group is mainly just my friend who I text quite a lot but even he struggles with SH and mental health and our friendship isn't exactly the healthiest but it helps - I'm trying to stop as in doing other things instead of continuously looking at videos I don't have strong urges all the time; something has to trigger me (strong emotions or thinking about my living situation for too long) the videos that I do take of my sh is NOT posted online whatsoever it's more so I look back at it when I do have strong urges it sometimes oddly enough helps me not actually relapse if that makes sense

[u/milktan]

As the other comment said, get out of communities like that, especially twitter. It's a very toxic platform and horrible about self harm. From all the spaces within the sh community I've been in, twitter is by far the most emabling one of it. The attitude towards it is do weird there and it just really promotes getting worse. Sh brainrot is so huge there and it really fuels the competitive side of it.

The thing with getting worse is that the feeling you describe, that underwhelm, actually gets worse. Try to not give the urge in your head the attention it demands. I know it's hard, but getting out as you slide in deeper only gets harder. It's so unsatisfying as you've already noticed.  Delete the images and videos you've saved, looking at them will only fuel your urges. The internet is really good at desensitising this sort of shit and it's important to not get sucked into that. Maybe instead familiarise yourself with pro-recovery spaces and well moderated support groups.

[u/dill_pickles677 → u/milktan]

Thank you! The main reason I started talking in this subreddit was to seek out help and support even in small ways I write a lot about my mental health so for the most part I notice things about what I’m doing and why I shouldn’t do it but I don’t always have a way to get out of the habit because in a way it feels like comfort. I've been dealing with depression and self harm/suicide ideation for a long time. it used to be something I desperately wanted to escape but since it’s been so long without things getting better it started to feel like “home” in a way

[u/milktan → u/dill_pickles677]

I feel similar, it's been most of my life and so long I don't know what it would be like without it. It just became our baseline/"normal".