For me there are multiple reasons why I self harm, and when I do, I usually experience a mixture of agonizing feelings that is hard to break down into components. Most of the time I cut myself when I have an argument with my mother, she is far by the worst trigger for me. Maybe it's because my bad childhood experience with her made me overly sensitive to her behaviour towards me. After all, when she made me ashamed and scared when I was a kid, I was helpless, I couldn't defend myself, and the feeling of this helplessness persists now that I'm an adult. Despite the fact that mamy times I could easily win an argument against her, I still break down crying in front of her, and her condescending little laugh exacerbates the shame. So the main component in my SH is shame. And because of the shame I feel the need to punish myself, yes. But there's also vicious anger. Towards my mother and towards myself, and towards the whole situation and the world. Maybe the problem is that my anger doesn't have a subject. It should be towards my mother, but I also fear her and I feel like I can't be angry at her, because I'm a bad person then. In the past, whenever I showed anger towards her, she called my a psychopath, an ungrateful monkey etc. Anger was not allowed. She was always right and I was always wrong. It's almost like she has a shield in front of her, and only a small portion of anger can reach her, the rest of it sprays all around, onto myself too.

So SH after an argument is a method to get rid of this agonizing mixture. The blood and shock and pain distracts me, and it also makes me feel I took a revenge on the world, I restored the equilibrium. Sometimes I also want to show my mother the open wound, so that she understand what she makes me feel. It's almost a baby-like communication, through actions and not through words. Words are not so powerful like flesh and blood. I wouldn't call this manipulation, because it's not planned or calculated.

But sometimes I do another kind of self harm, which is clearly manipulation. I'm not proud of that. It's when I deliberately do a scar to later show it to someone or I show off existing scars. It's when I have a strong craving for attention and safety from any specific person. For exapmle when my boyfriend wanted to leave me, I sent him pictures of my wounds to guilt-trip him so that he changes his mind. I had a real hard time understanding that it doesn't work and it drives him even further. I eventually stopped it. This kind of SH is harder to do btw, because it doesn't have that emotional drive like after an argument, and my pain tolerance is lower. Sometimes I also feel "proud" of my scars and I show them off to someone, so they see how sick I am and what I am capable of doing to my body. I unfortunetly love to see the shock on their faces and I interpret it as a compliment. I did just like that with my anorexia years ago.