Do you ever want someone to see just how much pain you are in?

No. I love me too much.

That would be a no, that would put me in the psycho category. Alot of things I am but psycho is definately not one of them. Nothing is that serious to want to hurt someone or hurt myself over.

No I haven’t. I cherish life too much. And I care about myself too much.
If I was hurting so much, then I would seek advice and perhaps counselling.

Who cares so much about another people. The other person probably doesn’t give a damn to begin with, so why bother?

I used to. I didn’t have the language I needed to express my pain, and partly didn’t feel that I was permitted to have it in the first place. I was also around people, and trying to communicate with people, who weren’t healthy and didn’t have my true health as part of their concern. When I did hurt myself, they didn’t care.

What helped me was to get rid of the toxic people around me and learn that it’s okay for me to feel whatever I want to. I have the right to feel anything and the right to express it and expect that those who profess to love me will give a damn and respond in a way that is healthy. I had to let go of the passive-aggressive nature I had clung to for so long as my only means of communication.

No, I don’t want my suffering to affect other people. If they truly understood, my situation may provoke sympathy, and I never want sympathy. When people are in trouble, they often think of what their friends should do to support them, but I tend to think that it is my duty as a friend not to burden them with more than they need to know.

When I really do need support though, I am happy to talk to a select group of people about it. I have never even considered self harm, because it achieves nothing and talking is so much more productive.

A cry for help is what you describe. Just because you are willing to harm yourself to prove your love for somebody it doesn’t mean that will make them love you. In fact, they are more likely to stay further clear from you.

Find a way to express your inner pain, harming yourself further in more obvious ways will mislead attention at best.

@Dibley PM me now

No, I’ve never considered doing this although I have had a few terrible low times in my life. I usually do most of my suffering and/or recovering alone as that seems to work best for me.

@Dibley You’ve got a partner who cares very much for you, which is 100% more than I’ve got. Don’t listen to those evil voices calling you to hurt yourself. You have friends who care about you. (I’ve asked the mods to remove my previous posting).

No, not really. I am more the “suffer in silence” type and tend not to involve others in my personal turmoil, but if I got to the point of hurting myself more to make someone notice, I would see a professional. Sometimes, the average person will mistake emotional pain for something else where a person who is trained in such things will see where the problem lies and actually help. Hurting yourself more will not solve anything.

i get down on mysef, but who dosn’t, Not to the point that i want to hurt myself. Especially not o get attention. There are too many other ways to get attention. For example, just say you need a little TLC.

As Daffy once said “I can’t stand pain, it hurts me!”

Actually, I’m very good at managing both physical and emotional pain. I find no purpose in giving into pain unless not doing so will just make it worse. When I am hurt to the point that it shows, my first instinct is to make sure others can’t see and I prefer it that way. But once they catch a glimpse, there’s no need to do anything extra, and the little black duck’s truism is proven in spades.

I’ve found, when in pain, hurting yourself more to get others to help just leads to more pain both for you and for them and makes the healing process take all the longer. Asking directly for help from someone who cares about you on the other hand… that often leads to amazing results.

I wouldn’t mind if people could tell when im upset or things like that, but no-one ever can :(

I don’t like pain so if I feel the need for that kind of attention I just paint a sad clown face on me…works every time.

@Cruiser That is so lovely LOL

No, I just tell someone I’m hurting and could use a shoulder.

I’m the opposite.
I’ve taken baby steps, but historically I hide my pain. My own mother didn’t see me cry for almost a decade when I was growing up. I had an intense fear of letting others see me during a ‘weak’ moment. People don’t seem to know when I’m upset. When it does happen now, I’ve managed to be okay tearing up, but as soon as I’m alone I break down. I don’t like others fussing, I don’t like having the thought in my mind of whether or not they’re sincere…etc. I’d just prefer to be alone. But on the other hand, I really really don’t.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land What was your original posting?

@Dibley I was just snivelling about my own condition, not helpful to you at all. It was removed at my own request.You need support, not me whining “woe is me”.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land I wouldn’t of minded. I’ve had worse responses! That’s what this site is all about, peoples opinions. But thanks anyway.

Yes. Definitely yes. I never resorted to self-harming or anything. But I went through a period of completely self-destructive behaviour because I wanted people to see how hurt I was and how much I had suffered taking care of my father the whole 5 months he was life-threateningly ill and still managing to get (wonderful if i may say so) exam results all at once. It took its toll on my health majorly, I wasn’t eating or sleeping.

I felt that no one had helped me through that time so I wanted them to see how that had affected me. I drank, smoked and was out all hours of the night and broke anything and everything I could including, on a particularly bad night, smashing out the windows of my parents cars with my bare fists which landed me in A & E for a night.

I’ve gotten past that now and I can see how selfish I was. I should have been able to take care of my father and be glad that he fully recovered rather than being bitter afterwards about not getting support or appreciation from other members of the family for what I did.

I still maintain that they could have done more to help me help my father rather than sit around in grief, but I don’t hate them for it.
I still have a habit of acting out and putting myself in dangerous situations whenever I am upset. But to a lesser degree, because I am too ashamed to just outright tell people something is wrong, I want them to notice for themselves.

@Dibley I wanted to show you support, not further examples of self-pity.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land It’s not self pity. You lost your wife, your love. She meant everything to you, that isn’t self pity, that’s heartache.

@TheOnlyException Really sorry about your dad. You did some crazy stuff, but that crazy stuff got you through, your way of coping with the bad shit you had around you. I agree, people should of noticed that, but I think people can be blind to obvious.

@Dibley Thank you. And sadly yeah, they are, especially the ones closest to you. I think it is hard for them to deal with someone they love being upset so they brush it off because it is easier for them. I think I’m like that too, but I just don’t realise it.

Sometimes I do want something to happen in order for certain people to realise what I am feeling inside but then, when I think about it, if they knew the truth, they may not stick around.

Hurting yourself so someone else can see that your hurting, just makes you twice as hurt.

It’s not very logical.

These things aren’t logical. We can do crazy things when we are in pain. Or even when we are not in pain at all. I have a self-destructive streak that I have to fight against every day. I’m a smart, deeply introspective guy, but I have no idea where this comes from, nor why I don’t seem concerned with resisting it.

Sometimes I think I am just wrong. As a person. As in all the choices I make. I know I make them because I want to be happy, but in order for me to be happy it seems like other people have to be hurt. So I punish myself for trying to be happy because I hurt others in the effort to find happiness. Or maybe there’s some other reason. Or no reason at all.

I assume it all comes from some great pain—a pain we hide from ourselves, but that keeps on coming back to make itself known. We try to stuff it down because we don’t feel like we deserve any consideration for our pain. But it’s too much, and so we act out in various ways.

You might hurt yourself in order to call attention to your pain. You wouldn’t really be doing it on purpose, but it would be a reaction to the craziness and pain going on inside. I might get depressed and lash out at my wife, trying to drive her away, when what I really want is for her to prove she loves me (once again). A lot of people in my bipolar group do exactly the same thing and we get it, but it seems impossible to explain to the people who love us. It’s so ass backward. Why would you try to hurt someone in order to ask them to show you love?

I don’t know. It’s stupid. I’m a big loser. I can’t do anything right, yadda, yadda, yadda. It just doesn’t make sense. And when I’m feeling ok, I can vow never to do it again. I can believe I will never do it again. But that means I have to learn another way of coping with the pain.

As do many of us. I have heard the pain we feel compared to the pain that a junkie feels during withdrawal. It is the pain we seek to hide with cutting or sex or alcohol or anything that will give us a quick endorphin rush.

Who knows where the pain comes from? It seems that for a lot people it comes from things that happened when we were children that we have never found a way to deal with other than running from it. They don’t teach you how to handle your pain in elementary school. Or in any level of school. So we stuff it back down. And find ever more devious and ass-backward ways of calling attention to our pain, while denying we are calling attention and denying we are in pain because we are ashamed of our pain and the fact that we don’t know how to deal with it when everyone else is so perky and happy and is telling us to get over it.

How can we complain? Others get over it. What’s wrong with us that we can’t? Maybe we don’t have enough will power. Maybe we’re stupid. Maybe we’re just bad people. Whatever it is, it’s clear we are inadequate in other people’s eyes, and thus not worthy of love. Well hell! Let’s stuff it down again! The last thing we want to hear again is someone telling us to “get over it!” Sometimes stuffing it down again doesn’t work, and some of us give up completely. Life just isn’t worth it any more.

Fuck me! I’ll punish myself before someone else can do it. Or, if I’m not up to the job, I’ll prick someone else with my little needles, like the picadores do to a bull in order to enrage it. Then they’ll come after me, and that’ll serve me just as well. Go ahead! Smash my fucking lip. Break my glasses. Kick me in the balls. It’s what I deserve anyway.

Maybe they are right. The only thing to do is to stop it. Just make a choice. Or maybe we can find a way to stop letting it go through us. It’s just pain. It’s not really me. It’s just noise—a misdirected signal unrelated to anything I care about in my life. Maybe I matter, anyway. Maybe there are things I’m good at or that people appreciate and maybe I can actually let myself believe it when people say they appreciate me. And maybe it’s enough. Maybe I don’t have to save the world in order to deserve to be alive. Maybe it’s enough to just take care of my kids and try not to hurt anyone else too much. And even if I do hurt people, maybe that’s not an excuse to kill myself. Maybe I’m still worth something even if I do some harm. Although it’s hard to imagine ever being forgiven by some people—like your kids if you end up divorcing your spouse.

But we’ll live. If we let ourselves. I think. It’s hard to let the pain go when you live with it so long. Who are you without your pain? And how can you let yourself feel it—just give into it—when it feels like a death sentence?

I don’t know, @Dibley. I have no idea if this is even relevant to your question. I just know that I empathize and I think I understand, and it’s scary for me—every time I think about it. I don’t know how people can be perky and happy. It’s like a person from a distant land where they eat bugs or something. So what? I’ve got my shit to deal with. Let them eat bugs. I don’t get them. They don’t get me. What else is new?

No. I wouldn’t want to hurt someone in that way.
If they happen to discover it for themselves though, that’s different.
But I would never purposely shove my pain in someone’s face.

Hope you’re okay, DIbley.

@wundayatta Yes it does make sense to me. I just sometimes think they people think my pain is on skin deep when really it goes much much deeper, and they don’t quite understand, but I’m dealing with it, slowly.

@Vunessuh I’m better than I was, thank you.

When I was young, and stupid..and very immature, I thought this way. But definitely not anymore.

I gave up self destructive, passive/aggressive stunts for attention when I was 8.

I found out that just being me was good enough for me and fuck anybody else.

@casheroo I guess I am still young, stupid, and immature. I come from a long line of peole who cover up their pain.

I’m not really young

he’s not. he’s not even kinda young.

@Dibley Instead of hurting yourself in the manner that you do, try what I do. When the mental pain gets too much, I either run myself to exhaustion or work out in the dojo to the point of collapse. Doing this creates pain like cutting (the lactic acid buildup is excruciating), but there is an endorphin release following this that improves my mood for several hours. I’ve just finished doing this and I know my attitude will be almost normal for the next several hours. It also does wonders for muscle tone.