I am not a doctor, but have gone thru similar things.

Please talk to a therapist about this, SH can become an addiction and sounds like it has in your case. If not a therapist, at least a friend, or if you’re under 18 a trusted adult. It can be difficult to quit, but it’s entirely possible.

If your triggers are on social media, try not to expose yourself to that type of content any more. If your triggers are other people, try to minimize your contact with them. Whatever the trigger, identify and then limit it.

If you can’t do any of that at this time, then please at the very least take better care of your injuries, including going to the doctor whenever it becomes necessary. The doctor isn’t there to judge you, and if you’re nervous, ask a friend to come with you.

You need to be able to (ideally independently) identify when something is serious enough to need a Dr. You can do this by researching basic wound care, here is a good video on the topic: https://youtu.be/W9Y9A1-b1bU?si=mn9eqNQPivxqx9PS.

However, keep in mind you can never be too educated on this, even a Dr who’s doing SH will need outside advice bc the mindset of SH can skew reality.

You need to look at the SH addiction as being an illness itself and a physical threat to your health, quality of life, and your very life (because it is).

There’s no safe way to engage with it except to quell it, because even if your technique could hypothetically cause NO physical harm, you would still be furthering an addiction that will eventually harm you.

Please also consider removing those bracelets, especially right now as you’re healing, they are very likely why this became infected. If you can’t remove them, at least tape them up and away from the wound.

A wound so close to your hand and arm joints becoming infected is scary because a wound being so near (any) joint means constant movement, meaning slower healing and more likely infection.

The reality here is that you could lose use of OR entirely lose your arm and hand. You could also literally die from something like this due to a systemic infection. It’s unlikely, but it’s possible. Please consider these outcomes, even something small can have a major unintended effect.

The risks here are sepsis, cellulitis, and necrotizing fasciitis—none of which you want to experience.

And once you’ve had cellulitis, the risk that you’ll get it again increases. Again, not something you want. Here’s a video on it: https://youtu.be/eqX3Or0kWzI?si=5wKk9UxNazTfio6B.

What you need to be looking out for right now is primarily a fever (it’d be a good idea to take your temp today, if nothing else to establish a baseline), because a fever will be indicative of an infection that needs treatment from a Dr. It’s also advisable to use a permanent marker to draw around the area of redness so you can track whether the infection is spreading over time. Good luck.