I would like someone to help me stop this somehow. Or at least explain why and what I can do to control it.
I have been struggling with self harm lately. I am not depressed, I don’t have any desire to kill myself, I don’t even really want to cut or harm myself. I just feel like I need to. Let me explain:
Periodically throughout the day I will get this … feeling… that comes over me like a wave so to speak… starting at my head and running down my arms to my wrists which make my wrists burn or tingle. I then get images… kinda like flashbacks but I have not preformed these acts before… the arm and hands in the “images/flashbacks” look like my arms and hands preforming self harm acts on my wrists. Following that image i find myself looking at my wrists and having a strong desire to do what I just saw… i then look around for objects near me that would accomplish this task. Then I try to focus on something else, shake my head, think about something else. This will happen many times throughout the day, after awhile this process includes a voice or thought saying “cut, cut, cut,” or making sounds like “snip snip snip”. Sometimes when i look at my wrists i see blood coming from no wound dripping down my arms.
I don’t know what these are and I don’t know how to keep them from happening. I have tried drawing circles over and over on a piece of paper, and other methods of temporarily distracting myself but the desires always come back. When these “episodes” are not happening I have no desire to hurt myself. And like I said previously I have no desire to die. I know that these images I am having of self harm are not in areas that would cause me to bleed out. The veins in that area are superficial and are not the two major arteries in that area. So if they are not wanting me to die what are they wanting me to do? I don’t want a collection of scars that I have to hide or be embarrassed of. I have plenty already. I don’t know what the point of this is.
Does anyone else experience this? Is this a command hallucination? Is this something else? What does it mean? How can I stop it?