Self-harm is the deliberate harming of one’s own body. It involves injuring your own body, such as cutting, scratching, smacking, or burning oneself to relieve emotional anguish, intense anger and fury.
Self-harm is often a way of numbing emotional pain or dealing with difficult situations and feelings that seem overwhelming. It can be a way of expressing feelings that are difficult to put into words.
Self-harm is usually done in secret and can be a way of dealing with shame, low self-esteem, or feeling unlovable. Self-harm quotes can become a way of coping with stress, anxiety, or depression.
If you self-harm, it’s important to get help. Self-harm is not a healthy way to deal with problems. There are other, more effective ways to cope with difficult emotions. With treatment and support, you can learn healthy coping skills and stop self-harming.
You can choose to take drugs that may make you addicted and could even lead to death, and you thought it better than living with pain you did not choose.
Self-inflicted violence (SIV) may provide a feeling of calm or emotional relief for a period, but it is followed by guilt, regret, and the resurfacing of unpleasant emotions.
SIV can cause physical and emotional pain, as well as lasting damage to relationships. If you are experiencing SIV, know that you are not alone and there is help available.
If you came here looking for encouraging words, these self-harm quotations will attempt to offer some optimism and inspiration.
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Self Harm Quotes For Uplifting
1. I was thinking about stabbing myself in the face-not actually considering stabbing myself in the face, but thinking that it would be a physical expression of how I felt.- Catherine Lacey
2. This pain is comfort. It is the solace of physicality, like a touch.- Johnny Rich
3. I found out to wait it out that it gets better. I wrote music instead of going to the blade.- Vic Fuentes
4. The past does not define me, it ignites me. The past is not a piece of me, it has placed me ― Ricky Maye
5. Unspeakable feelings need to find expression in words. However… verbalization of very intense feelings may be a difficult task. – James A. Chu
6. People say things meant to rip you in half but you hold the power to not turn their words into a knife and cut yourself.- Rupi Kaur
7. I am so angry all the time, and so sad, and it screams inside me and never stops. Cutting is the only thing that eases me.- Zoë Marriott
8. Scars don’t matter, little one. They are the marks of the battles we have won. – Helen Dunmore
9. And wishes, truly wishes, that she could say the same herself. Because hurting herself would be so much easier.- Amy Efaw
10. Self-injury is a sign of distress not madness.-Corey Anderson
11. Self-mutilation is a very different issue to suicide. It is a controlled pain personal to you, allowing you to live/exist to some degree.- Richy Edwards
12. Throughout it all, you are still, always, you: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable. ― Leila Sales
13. This might surprise you, but one of the best ways to manage your emotions is simply to experience that emotion and let it run its course. – Kim L. Gratz
14. Rehashing thoughts of painful events from the past or imagining negative events of the future is self-abuse and can be more destructive than physical harm.- Maddy Malhotra
15. It’s important to keep in mind that most people have no idea how to respond effectively to someone who self-harms.- Kim L. Gratz
Motivational Quotes To Avoid Self Harm
16. The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it…I would discover that it hadn’t washed me away. – Anne Lamott
17. I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins. – Hermann Hesse
18. What possesses them, these young girls with a talent for self-immolation?- Margaret Atwood
19. I can feel the hurt. There’s something good about it. Mostly it makes me stop remembering.- Albert Borris
20. Don’t ever forget you are beautiful, although your life, your past and your present situation may be ugly. You are beautiful.- Ricky Maye
21. Other times, I look at my scars and see something else: a girl who was trying to cope with something horrible that she should never have had to live through at all. My scars show pain and suffering, but they also show my will to survive. They’re part of my history that’ll always be there.-Cheryl Rainfield
22. Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t. – Rikki Rogers
23. Wounds turn into scars, and scars make you tough. – Aisha Tyler
24. To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.-Arthur Schopenhauer
25. In all of your living, don’t forget to live. ― Ricky Maye
26. There is no advantage in my harming myself.-Alice Jamieson
Inspirational Quotes To Overcome Self Harm Thoughts
27. Turn your wounds into wisdom. – Oprah Winfrey
28. She felt so much emotionally, she would say, that a physical outlet – physical pain – was the only way to make her internal pain go away. It was the only way she could control it. – Richelle Mead
29. Self-harm – the world will come at you with knives anyway. You do not need to beat them to it.- Caitlin Moran
30. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.-Rumi
31. Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it. – Conrad Joseph
32. Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.-Kahlil Gibran
33. Self-destructiveness may be a primary form of communication for those who do not yet have ways to tame their excruciating inner conflicts and feelings and who cannot yet turn to others for support.-James A. Chu
34. The wound is the place where the Light enters you. – Rumi
35. I no longer have any fear of pain because I’m the one inflicting it and can decide when it stops.- Maude Julien
Painful Self Harm Quotes
36. If you can sit with your pain, listen to your pain and respect your pain – in time you will move through your pain. – Bryant McGill
37. Take control of your emotions before your emotions take control of you. – Scott Dye
38. When I look at my arms, I don’t think revolutionary. I think sad, and pain, but not revolutionary.- Kathleen Glasgow
39. As convincing as it may seem, physical pain often arises merely to distract us from emotional pain. – Charles F. Glassman
40. To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence. – Arthur Schopenhauer
41. Hush little baby, Don’t you cry, Don’t cut your arms, Don’t say goodbye. Put down that razor, Put down that light, It may be hard but, You’ll win this fight.- Emily Giffin
42. In case you didn’t know, dead people don’t bleed. If you can bleed-see it, feel it-then you know you’re alive.
43. Loving the wrong person is self-harm – R.H. Sin
44. To me, I see scars of courage. Inflicting them gave him the strength to survive the pain that’s plagued him all his life. I’m grateful to every one of them because he’s still here with me.- Nicola Haken
45. When you feel at sea in an abyss of emotions, reconnecting to the beauty of your soul can be difficult, but it is never impossible.-Lorraine Nilon
46. Self-harm – the world will come at you with knives anyway. You do not need to beat them to it.-Caitlin Moran
47. Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.-Henry Rollins
48. If you can sit with your pain, listen to your pain and respect your pain — in time you will move through your pain.-Bryant McGill
49. I stopped. She was bleeding after all. Perfect lines crossed her wrists, not near any crucial veins, but enough to leave wet red tracks across her skin. She hadn;t hit her veins when she did this; death hadn’t been her goal.- Richelle Mead
50. I told her once I wasn’t good at anything. She told me survival is a talent.- Susanna Kaysen
Self Injury Quotes
51. Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on. – Henry Rollins
52. Stars are the scars of the universe.- Ricky Maye
53. Self-harm is an addiction and it’s serious whether it’s 5 cuts or 100. I myself have dealt with self-harm. I was young and alone and got beat up on all the time, and I cut to ease the pain.-Vic Fuentes
54. I can feel the hurt. There’s something good about it. Mostly it makes me stop remembering.- Albert Borris
55. The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it…I would discover that it hadn’t washed me away.-Anne Lamott
56. You don’t feel like you’re hurting yourself when you’re cutting. You feel like this is the only way to take care of yourself.- Marilee Strong
57. I moved in front of the medicine cabinet. If I looked in the mirror while I did it, it would be like watching somebody else, in a book or a play. – Sylvia Plath
58. Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.-Conrad Joseph
59. Your scars are battle wounds, but you don’t see them that way. Yet.- Tammara Webber
60. Stop looking back when your future is ahead of you- Ricky Maye
61. Every action that you take – that your disorder tells you to take – is self-harming in the short and long term. – Priyavrat Thareja
62. I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.-Hermann Hesse
63. Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.- J.K. Rowling
64. I cut myself because you wouldn’t let me cry. I cried because you wouldn’t let me speak. I spoke because you wouldn’t let me shine. I shone because I thought you loved me… – Emilie Autumn
65. A lot is being done to cure physical self-harm, and yet it’s a by-product of mental self-harm! – Maddy Malhotra
66. I asked her if she believed in love, and she smiled and said it was her most elaborate method of self-harm. – Benedict Smith
67. Scars don’t matter, little one. They are the marks of the battles we have won.-Helen Dunmore
68. The scars you can’t see are the ones that hurt the most.- Michelle Hodkin