Is Self-harm A Warning Sign Of Suicide?

[anthony]

I'm actually scared to ask this but is self-harm a warning sign of suicide?

The simple answer is, no. Self harm is normally about trying to feel something, not about wanting to die.

Risk taking to the degree of seriously dangerous activities and pushing danger as close to death as possible, that is a warning sign you want to die.

 

[xena21]

I agree Anthony. Whenever I have self-harmed or thought of it, it has been primarily to get some kind of change in my body and mind to take place...some feeling to happen that I haven't been able to make happen. At least that was my goal. I want something other than the numbness. Other times I self injure, I want to control a feeling like rage or anger that is bottled up.

When I have suicidal thinking, I might go out and drive faster than I normally do and walk through the city late at night trying to invite danger. I may jump off high boulders and hike through areas I don't know well hoping to get lost. Those are mild things but that's the mind frame I'm in when I'm starting to test the waters of suicidal ideation.

 

[Ayasha]

Sometimes I cut or hit things because I feel that I deserve to hurt and/or I'm trying to feel some other pain rather than emotional pain. It's something I'm working on in counseling but I have put myself in dangerous situations before and I didn't see them as dangerous. I think part of me really does want to dare someone to hurt me, which is just asking to get hurt and is very foolish--I haven't done this in a while, I think.

 

[Britt.f7]

Self injury I do for control. When I'm feeling suicidal I take chances with my heart that would risk it's chance of infection.

With both though I try to put myself in a situation that I don't/won't do either. Sometimes that just means staying put.

 

[maddog]

What Britt said is true for me too. Even though I sometimes can only recognize it in hindsight, there is a difference for me between self injury for control/emotional release, and the blatant reckless risk taking behaviour that could... hopefully... lead to my suffering a fatal misadventure...

The former is a definite and desperate fightback against the pull of death, while the latter is the indirect, but very real, path towards it.

But sometimes, in very confused and distressed emotional states, I'm not really sure what's driving the urges and know too that staying very very still and quite literally limiting all activity and movement, is the safest and only thing to do. So far I've been lucky. A primitive survival part of me that isn't even linked, apparently, to my conscious sense of whether or not I want to keep living, does tend to kick in and more or less place me in "standby mode". I know it's kept me safe sometimes.

Having just begun to emerge from a terribly bad bout of depression, this topic is very raw and real for me right now. I have been more genuinely suicidal in recent days/weeks than I have been in a long time, and I have to say... I'm terrified. Something in me just feels different now, as though I've just survived a major cancer scare but know that I'm really only in remission with a high chance of even more devastating relapse. I cant' really explain it, but I just feel like I'm not the same anymore and maybe never will be. I hope that's just the depression talking...

Maddog

 

[Jen93]

In my experience, I do think it is a warning sign of suicide. Always take every form of self harm seriously.

I made that mistake a few times, never again.

If you feel like self harming, the important thing is to figure out why? Is it dissociation? Ground yourself when you feel fuzzy.

Are you trying to feel something, anything other than the pain? Self Harm gives you endorphins, but so does exercise. Go for a walk, a really long one that's familiar and makes you happy. Watch a comedy. Write in a journal about what you're feeling- it doesn't have to have a name... maybe you could find the circumstances which lead you to do it. Please, please, please be careful.

Nobody deserves to feel pain. We've been through pain, if that's all we know, that may be all we think we deserve and/or are capable of receiving. You are worth more than this. You are useful in society, by just living. People do care, friends, family- even people on a forum who haven't even met you!

 

[Ayasha]

That is really great advice, thank you.

I have actually been doing much better in not harming myself--I cut last month after my nephew died but I haven't done anything since then. I haven't hit any walls to hurt myself either, although all the times I have done this have caught up with me. I think I finally learned my lesson when it comes to hitting brick walls, and walls in general. I haven't hit anything recently but I somehow hurt my wrist and am having to see a specialist Friday due to pain and swelling. Lesson learned.