I know about 5 other people who self harm.  None of them have good home lives and though they've never actually told me, I managed to figure it out.  They had no influence on my behavior because I discovered what they did after I started self injuring.

i moved up to college this year and got really close to another girl on my course an confessed to her i struggled with my eating and things and then i found out she used to have an ED and used to slef injure .....but then when i started to harm myself i felt i could tell her which i can and even tho she trys helping me by like telling me to cut my legs rarther than my arms cause there eayer to hide and stuff she still blames her self for me starting cause she says "if ud never seen my scars then maybe you would have never tryed it".....its not true though i think without her things would have just been worse so im glad she used to cut because she knows were im coming from though and says pointless telling me to stop cause it wont work i have to find that realisation my self.......

<3 you strawbs <3

I'd already been cutting for a year when I found out my best friend did too. We only cut together once and I went deeper than I ever had before because I didn't want to seem like a wimp. After that I've continued to get deeper and deeper. She's stopped now and I've tried to many times but I just can't.

There was a couple of kids at my school a while back, a boy and a girl. One day the boy announced he was trying to 'Go Goth' and carved the word 'Help' into his arm. He would proudly display it to us whenever he could, but would hide it from the teachers by wearing a sweat band. It was well known he had several emotional problems, and I knew he was cutting not so much to get our attention but to express the fact that something was wrong and he wanted us to help him through it. He kept saying we should all 'Go Goth' with him. A part of me wanted to more than anything. I had been secretly harming myself for about two years and I was amazed at his honestly and enticed by the feeling of finally being understood. The girl was enticed too, not for the reasons I was, but because she wanted some of the attention he was getting. She brought in all these pins in a case as if she was some kind of pro and would openly cut herself till someone would say something to her. then she would just smile. She made me feel ashamed, like because I cut too I was just seeking attention. I wasn't. I made every effort to hide what i was doing from my peers and never told a soul about it. Both the boy and the girl were kicked out of school. I saw the girl a few months ago and she's really grown up. I never saw the boy again. A mutual friend of ours let me see a letter he had written her. He attempted suicide at least once and had gotten in to several physical relationships that he deeply regretted. He was also still hurting himself. Sometimes I wonder if I made the right choice in keeping silent.

My best friend started in middle school. She is controling it now better then before, but as the years progressed she found out I did it too. It is scary now that i look back it. In high school you would think girls would have sleep overs where they would watch movies and pain their nails. Not me and her. We'd cut in front of each other. It is very... depressing thinking back on it...

Quite a few of my friends do. That is how I got the 'idea' to do it. At the moment I know about 4 people who do it/have done it.