Am I the only person who's done this?

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I used to deliberately put myself through pain and suffering, because I felt insecure about my own endurance. When I was 15, I physically abused myself to feel stronger. When I was 16, I felt depressed because I wasn't being bullied in school anymore. When I was 17, I refused to consume anything I didn't buy myself (partly because I wanted to be independent), and ended up starving and dehydrating myself at times. I also did heavy drugs (inhalants) because I was curious about their negative effects. I often blame this on my father, who, whenever I complained about something when I was little, would always yell at me and tell me horror stories about abuse, starvation, and disease to make my troubles seem inadequate. It made me feel like I was weak and I needed to suffer more to take away the shame. I don't think he meant to hurt me by doing this; he may have even thought he was making me feel better. I don't know. I kind of don't want to blame it on other people, especially a parent, who for the most part was loving and supportive (just had some major anger issues), but I can't think of any other explanation, other than that I'm just messed up in the head.

Nobody messed you up, you were young your father said some true but wrong things to a person of your caliber that is wired in a completely different way and then converts the info he's been given by daddy and misinterprets it because our minds take things very literally to heart and that can lead to self loathing and the urge to unnecessarily reach or inflict damage/emotions upon himself/herself because they feel like they have to change/better/punish/learn them selves to understand the world.
Some of the things you do like trying to be more independent are good things but I know your pattern, that of an extremist, and frankly not surprised because we are the type of people who go all out or don't do it at all (even if it for a short period of time). I used to do something similar to myself as a kid as my mother gave me comments about how good I have it and that people are dying/starving/bla bla bla all around the world and she was very abusive and frightening.
You live and learn my man you live and learn. I learned that all that testing of pain thresholds was for nothing and will only make you bitter if you make it in to a habbit.
Grownups only say that dumb s**t to get a message through to you that you are living under better living conditions than starving children around the world, a normal kid (NT) would shrug it off and go on living we take s**t that is said to us way to seriously and we do odd things...
You're not crazy or even close you ( I believe ) feel that you must punish yourself in order to appreciate and receive a felling of that you deserve to live the lifestyle you live, but there is also a hidden sense of trying to understand what true pain means (like the dying/starving people around the globe), as you don't already have enough of it and other s**t to think about having AS.
We all feel different pain, there is no need for you to go and step on a land mine get your legs blown clean off or thrust a kitchen knife through your hand to feel hurt in any form.
I don't go around doing those things anymore because i figured it out, you just have to improve and better yourself in your own way.
Sitting around slapping yourself will lead you no where, your parents don't want you experience the pain of the people around the world they want you to understand it and acknowledge that it exists.
Now,... I don't know if they know you have AS or not but we feel our own pain everyday in our own way and our joy as well, people who are not like you and me will not understand this because we live this s**t every day, they don't and therefor have no respect for what we go through thus labeling it as "whining" and telling us to "grow up".
To experience is to learn and to learn is to experience (then I don't mean only physically, I'm talking the ability to grasp an event emotionally and psychologically = that is an experience = that is to understand and learn).

That's why I don't listen to people anymore, they will only mislead you and your thoughts, making you do what you're doing now... utterly pointless.

Maybe you'd benefit by talking to someone about it like a therapist or some other adult you trust. It's worth a shot and it could help you feel better about yourself. -Power Girl

I think part of the problem was that the tone of voice my dad used when he was telling me how lucky I was was the same as the tone he used when smacking me upside the head.

When I feel overwhelmed by circumstances, and disillusioned by negative events. The person I usually turn on first is myself. I make myself the culprit in order to understand that which seems so unfair. I don't drink or take drugs, but I punish myself internally. I can be my own worse enemy sometimes. Sometimes I even let myself know just how much I hate myself. I can't really explain why I do this. It might be the fact that I feel unfairly victomised, by others and circumstances. If no one is going to listen to me, well then I guess I only have myself. If I punish myself, than at least one person knows how I feel.

I have had masochist tendencies. In elementary school, I would beg my parents to throw me down the stairs whenever I didn't get 100% on an assignment. Sometimes, I would try to dump large quantities of water down my throat because I wanted to see what would happen; or I would shove my entire meal down my throat at once because I wanted to make myself sick. I once tried to give myself heat exhaustion and dehydration by running around in circles outside on an extremely hot day. In middle school, I tried to deprive myself of food and/or water whenever something went wrong. On occaision, I would try to make myself throw up; I wasn't bulimic, I just wanted to be sick. During my first two years of high school, I cut myself just for the heck of it and lifted weights afterwards because I thought it would increase the blood flow to my arms. I almost...enjoyed...the sharp pain and the sight of blood welling up across my skin. I only stopped because I didn't want my parents to find out. I, too, felt depressed because people didn't really make fun of me anymore (even though I hated being bullied). Several times last year, usually because the boy for whom I had a strong obsession wasn't returning my feelings, I would stop giving myself insulin (I'm a type 1 diabetic) for several days so that my blood sugar would be dangerously high and I became ill. When I went on a weekend trip to a camp in New York state last winter, I pushed myself to the limit, trying to run up snow-covered hills, slipping on ice, and getting stuck in snowbanks, with low blood sugar, all for the sake of trying to get hypothermia.

There are other, more minor examples, but this post is long enough already.

Logically, I have no idea why I've always tried to torture myself. Survival is the primal, instinctual goal of all organisms, and purposely seeking out pain or punishment doesn't seem to coincide with that goal. Oh well, it's kind of reassuring to know that I'm not the only one.