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Why do we insist on hurting ourselves at the same place again and again?

14:05 / 06.08.06

I was eating Müsli right now, and crrrunch, I bit into my inner cheek with my sharp teeth.

Again and again, since I can remember, I´m doing this. Hm, the taste of blood adds a nice extra flavour to my meal, a bit like malt beer.

So for about a quarter of a century, I again and again accidentally bite my inner mouth and I have thick long scars to prove it. I don´t know how to avoid it!

The only thing I do remember: about twenty years ago, a dentist asked me, if he should file down my teeth, since they have these sharp edges. But I declined. I rather have sharp teeth and scarred cheeks than teeth that are marred by delusional dentists.

So in what way do you hurt yourself? The odd hitting of the elbow with an electrical numbness rushing down to your hand? Groin (ouch!), knee (I did that again and again at work, damn those unergonomic tables!), head (watch that basement pipe!)?

Or do you hurt yourself another way? Do you ask yourself each monday: Hangover, why did I do this to myself? Or: Why did I eat that food, I suspected it might be a bit too ripe by now?

Let´s hear and share experiences and mayhap find solutions, so that some of us will live with fewer scars, dents, bruises, sores and grazes.

paranoidwriter waves hello

14:47 / 06.08.06

I keep sitting with my legs crossed for too long, to find that when I stand my knees have virtually seized up and I have to limp around for a while before the pain goes. This seating habit has also resulted in the development of two small patches of leg hair baldness (one one each leg). I obviously need to get out more.

Kiltartan Cross

15:44 / 06.08.06

I regularly mutilate all my nails out of a feeling that they're just not growing right. Even when they obviously are. I can't offer a good explanation!

15:57 / 06.08.06

Very good examples!

I thought of anpother one:
My ex and me discovered that we both had the habit to twirl the skin in the middle of our upper lip, until it was a little skin roll. We then ripped it off and had a sore lip tip for a couple of days. She told me it runs in her family.

20:36 / 06.08.06

A friend of mine used to brush her teeth so compulsively she wore away her gums until her teeth hurt all the time. This was in her mid-20s.

00:23 / 07.08.06

I'm really bad about picking at scabs, pimples, insect bites and the like. I've got lots of tiny little scars all over my arms and legs as a result.

00:33 / 07.08.06

This is a very timely thread.

Yesterday I sprained my ankle again. It's always the same ankle (I guess it is just weak now), it always happens when I am least expecting it, and it always sends me into that horrible white-faced shaky shock, followed soon after by tears. It happens about once a year.

Are there some exercises I should be doing to strengthen the joint?

(By the way, on reading the thread summary I thought this was about deliberate self-harm...)

paranoidwriter waves hello

01:03 / 07.08.06

sorenson, I have the same problem due to (I think) stretched ankle ligaments from a bad habit / funny way of standing, which I picked up from my family (long story).

The last time it happened was when I ran down a flight of stairs and my foot buckled underneath me, and I hit the ground and nearly threw up. Fortunately, afterwards a friend of mine (a personal trainer) gave me a few exercises which really helped the healing process and also seemed (touch wood) to help prevent further twists:

1) stand (or sit) up straight and sideways to a wall, with your shoulder and outer ankle touching the wall.

2) then, GENTLY use your ankle muscles/ligaments to fan your foot outward and press against the wall. Note: the motion should be slight and not forced.

3) Do this for a few minutes or so, daily; but not too much or too hard and you should probably wait a little while after the injury before doing it. i.e. once the healing process has begun - the object of the exercise (I think) is to gently help torn muscles and ligaments to heal properly, slowly increasing their strength and helping to insure they do not heal in such a way that they become a little slack. Do not try and push yourself through the pain-barrier (etc)

Another exercise was putting your foot under (say) a bed, and, using your ankle, gently lifting your foot slightly and pressing up against the underside of the bed, but while leaving your heel on the ground - although, again the object of the exercise is to be gentle, using slight motions, and not (e.g) to try and actually lift the bed off the ground.

Also, please note I have absolutely no medical training, so you should obviously see a doctor (etc) for more advice.

Hope that helps. Worked for me, anyway.

01:05 / 07.08.06

Thanks Paranoidwriter - that's really helpful. I intend to print those instructions out and refer to regularly!

paranoidwriter waves hello

01:13 / 07.08.06

No worries. I can now go to bed and fall asleep with a buzz, feeling like I've just helped someone. It's actually quite selfish, now I come to think of it. Goodnight all.

06:03 / 07.08.06

Strangely enough, I've inherited my mother's obsession with hair.

My mother used to take her hair into her mouth and chew it, on occasion pulling it out thread by thread, and it was such an embarassing mess when her wedding rolled around that she opted for a wig. The result was an Elvira-style hairdo. No kidding.

When I'm utterly bored or stressed, especially when dieting, I have the terrible habit of pulling out the thickest and darkest hairs in my hair, the ones that make my hair wavy instead of straight.

I know it's terrible, but it's strangely satisifying, even though I like my dark wavy hair. I tried to stop, and succeeded for a year, but then stress pushed me back over the edge.

Even my hairdresser commented once, and that wasn't the best time of my life. I hope to stop soon.

(my boyfriend's tongue is a strange bumpy and ratty one, as a result of accidentally biting it several times with sharp teeth over the years)

Disco is My Class War

10:53 / 07.08.06

Wow, Lizard, I feel normal! I went through a stage of chewing and pulling out my (then long) hair in high school. It's lucky I stopped. My scalp was starting to show through. Then I took up smoking at 18, and hey presto! Hair good.

Why do we insist on hurting ourselves emotionally at the same place again and again? This is a rhetorical question.

14:52 / 07.08.06

I remove food particles(tonsilloliths) with my tongue from the crypt of the right tonsil. It's a bad hard useless work...trust me.

You don't know...but you have this: Tonsillolith

...Bleargh!

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

15:44 / 07.08.06

I'm not sure if this counts but I'll give a try.

All along my left inner forearm are a series of thin white scars, some darker ones, as a result of nearly seventeen years of cutting myself.

I usually use an unfolded paper clip or safety pin, but occasionally I'll use a single edge razor blade. It doesn't happen as nearly as often as it used to--it depends on my moodswings--but it does still happen. There's a strange sense of relief that I get when this act is performed, and no amount of therapy or attempts to put me on meds can change that.

paranoidwriter waves hello

15:52 / 07.08.06

Kali, this is a sincere and genuine question from one who is largely ignorant of (I don't know if this is the correct term) "deliberate self-harm" (so please forgive my ignorance):

I heard once that squeezing ice-cubes can be an alternative release in such situations: have you tried this, and if so, did it work?

(By the way, I'm not sure if this is the right thing to do, but I think sorenson was right about the thread summary, and so I was wondering if there should be [already is?] a thread for the issue of "deliberate self-harming"? If one needs to be started, however, I'm definitely not the right choice to do it.)

16:10 / 07.08.06

If I wear non-boots I twist my ankles and fall over. My massage therapist tells me it is because I'm prone to walking on the outer edge of my foot due to my inner calf muscles pulling up on my inner foot... so yeah weird strength exercises and boots. When I'm just bare foot in the house and spacing out standing (doing dishes etc) I always stand on the side of my foot which enforces the problem. Falling/stumbling all the time is not good yet I still turn my feet sideways all the time...

As far as self-harm goes I am supportive of both people who wish to stop and those who wish to be respected for their choice to modify their bodies in rituallistic ways(even simple 2 second rituals count). The use of pain and healing mirrored between the physical self and the emotional self should not be readily dismissed as always negative.

The hair eating leads to bezoars in extreme cases. Freaky thing to find in one's gut I'd imagine.

paranoidwriter waves hello

16:14 / 07.08.06

The use of pain and healing mirrored between the physical self and the emotional self should not be readily dismissed as always negative.

For the record: I certainly wasn't dismissing this as negative. I was merely curious about the ice-cube thing, and wondered if a new thread was needed. Apologies for any confusion.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

16:21 / 07.08.06

I have never tried the ice-cube thing.

I don't really see me cutting myself as harmful but of course there are many who do.

I tend to be the kind of person who keeps things bottled up inside and cutting myself has always had the feeling of draining something negative, something that I cannot express any other way, away. Sometimes there have been accidents. The sharp object in questions went too deep and those scars are ones that still ache every now and again.

This only occurs in times of extreme emotional duress.

17:50 / 07.08.06

paranoidwriter your reply sounded fine to me, sorry if you thought I was deploying the rolled up newspaper!

paranoidwriter waves hello

18:00 / 07.08.06

No worries, xk. I didn't think you were. Indeed, I thought you raised a really valid point, and I just wanted to make sure no one else got the wrong idea about my post. Just me being to self-conscious, probably.

Oh, and your standing on the sides of your feet thingymy is exactly what I was on about earlier when I said about my bad habit / funny way of standing, which I picked up from my family. Who knows? Maybe we're distantly related and this is some kind of bad family meme?

By the way, does repeatedly hurting yourself financially count in this thread? I have little idea why, but every time I try to do something positive lately, I appear to keep accidentally clipping my "self-destruct button" with my clumsy mental elbow.

18:32 / 07.08.06

I don't remember a day when my fingers have not bled. I've bit nails, picked at them, cut off calloused skin, and other things for years. I never think of myself as a "cutter", because 1. I don't normally use a blade, 2. it's only my fingertips, and 3. I'm not female (what are the statistics? is this prejudice based on anything other than a few stories I've heard?).

I constantly wear bandaids.

18:34 / 07.08.06

...it could be a family meme... one of my sisters does it as well.

supposedly if you practice picking up a dish/tea towel off of the floor with your toes with a sweeping outward movement of the foot you can strengthen the weaker calf muscles. I however am just at the point of making myself not stand on the sides of my foot let alone remembering to do foot/towel exercises.

20:38 / 07.08.06

I did do an admittedly quick search to see if there was a thread on self-harming - there were a few that mentioned it but none that were dedicated to the topic.

On the hair pulling thing, I have a related but different stress reaction that I have never confessed to anybody. When I am really stressed I pick at my scalp until there are huge scabby sores scattered around my head. No matter how hard I try to stop I just keep picking at them until whatever is causing the stress calms down. They are covered by my hair, but it can be embarrassing at the hairdresser!

My ankle is feeling much better, by the way, and I will try those exercises today.

11:46 / 08.08.06

My mother, on the hair chewing, hair pulling thing, seeked alternative means - and when I was little, I had one of those pony rides, a replica mounted on a see-saw - even with hair and everything. Over the years, the tail slacked and dwindled to three or two threads.

It later clicked on when I caught her with a paintbrush - the house kind, flat black bristles, perfect for walls - and she was chewing it, pulling the bristles out one by one.

My mother goes through each one every fortnight - and she's very embarrassed about it, denouncing my attempts to tell her that I have inherited the same meme as "rubbish".

No idea how to stop myself from pulling my hair out; I try to manage my stress, but most of the time I put it aside and bury it, hoping it'll go away - and I got slammed with Bells Palsy last year! Not fun!

19:29 / 17.10.06

When you move your legs and squish your own nutsack.

Nofun.