autism: self injury, do you do that ?

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I did it a lot more when I was a teen. Put my head through a door once. Used to give myself lumps on my head and bruises on my legs. It was always provoked by my mom who would provoke me all the time. Its been a good year I believe since the last time I did anything major, but I usually hit myself with my phone, remotes, or other random objects out of habit I guess? Nothing hard, but maybe it is some form of stupid stim.

Yes. I am masochistic in nature; any pain that I do to myself is meaningful and feels better than anything I have ever done before. Yes, to me, it even feels better than *that.*
If you do it, you need to be careful with it. You need to be able to distinguish "I like pain" or "I like the sensation" from "I want to hurt myself."

You guys ever thought about buying a "punching bag" or any other type of device you can take it out on? Or would a stress rubber ball work or you tried that? Just seems better than plates & that.

Only 2 reasons I know of is making yourself feel alive ( someone who had cuts all up the arm, told me it ) & channeling emotions that you can't get out ( into destroying stuff or hitting yourself etc ). I know they is probably loads more.

A little bit when I was younger. The worst point was when I was in my teens, but it was mostly just pounding fists/knuckles (and sometimes, objects) against my head -- no headbanging on concrete, cutting or anything.

Looking back, it was a combination of being high strung and being trapped in an inescapable awful situation (school). Endorphins and/or pain to distract from the mental pain.

I just remembered -- at around age 4-5 I bit my hands a lot (the skin between the thumb and the rest of the hand), but not to the point of injury.

the kind im mostly asking about is that kind, not "conkrete or cuting" .

im just courious if it is comon with autism in genral.

I kept seeing this topic and thinking no. Then I bit my nail and tore the skin next to it off until it started bleeding. So I do that. My nails are a wreck.

I have never been into self harm because I don't see the point. I have to admit that even the thought of harming myself freaks me out.
I don't understand the concept. Doesn't self harm make matters worse instead of better? How can physical pain replace mental pain.
I think that people who harm themselves must be going through an enormous amount of psychological suffering and I do sympthise with them.

Last edited by pokerface on 11 Mar 2012, 8:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have somewhat similar feelings.

When I was younger I used to practice self-harm---but nothing that would bring about injury like scars, etc. I had built my own machine/device to do the self-harm so that all I had to do was lie still while it did to me. It offered a release of tension and frustration.

I rarely do so unless I am in a very very bad meltdown mode where I have an intense anger and hatred for myself and am obligated to punish my self excessively like hit myself and scratch my arms until they bleed. I dont do it as much though but I used to when I was a child and during much of my teenage years.

Sometimes when I was younger, now I just scratch my leg so I bleed.

I self injure myself emotionally and mentally more than physically. >.<

In the "real" measurable sense, yeah, all you've done is add some physical injuries to the list of things wrong in your life. But it has the effect of making your problems, whatever drove you to that point, seem less urgent. Faraway. It leaves you with this intense calm afterwards. The world's volume is turned down. Like nothing can touch you, nothing can even get near you.

I think I injure myself most mentally. In that case I can be my worst enemy.
I need to get a slightly worse meltdown to want to hit myself, but it happens, usually the need is over pretty quickly. Once or twice I've hit myself in my head with my arms or on my legs with my fists, but those times I got really angry at myself for failing something social adequate people would manage. It's like I have 2 kinds of different melt downs, there's the less aggressive one where I only close myself off from people and attack myself with mental abuse. And there's the meltdown where I want to hurt myself, never others only me. Once or twice I cut myself, but I usually have enough self restraints to do that now that I'm not suicidal anymore.
If I'm to stressed to manage something in social situations, say work or whatever I use my nails and push them into the back of my neck or my wrists, it gives me back the needed grip on reality. It's kind of like a bad stim.

I bite my thumb sometimes. Drew blood a couple of times actually. :/

Pretty common, yeah. Even with Aspies. I've done a little bit of headbanging when I was little, but mostly it's bashing my arms against solid objects, or biting myself.

Though, I think you may be surprised at the many similarities between the "cutting" sort of self-injury (planned, controlled) and the impulsive sort that happens during meltdowns when you can't take any more. The only real difference seems to be that planned/controlled aspect--the reasons for both sorts are the same: you're stressed out and you can't take any more and you resort to hurting yourself because that seems to make it a bit better, or at least expresses your overload in a way that words can't.