Discussion How does self harm from burning feels

[klaissura]

I'm just a little curious.

 

[DivineSpark]

Not sure, I have never seriously burnt myself. Well I once burnt my mouth for eating too hot food.

 

[sadBPDgirl0708]

It's very painful. Depends how you do it for how painful. Cigarette burns will hurt less than holding a lighter to your skin for example.

But it is very very painful and at high risk of becoming infected. If the burn is severe enough (it's not hard to give yourself a severe burn) you may need skin grafts. It's just a really nasty way to self harm and I wouldn't recommend it

 

[klaissura]

It's very painful. Depends how you do it for how painful. Cigarette burns will hurt less than holding a lighter to your skin for example.

But it is very very painful and at high risk of becoming infected. If the burn is severe enough (it's not hard to give yourself a severe burn) you may need skin grafts. It's just a really nasty way to self harm and I wouldn't recommend it

Yikes

Not sure, I have never seriously burnt myself. Well I once burnt my mouth for eating too hot food.

Same here
Any unique ways to harm oneself?
Anything about being shocked by electric currents?

 

[ketopia]

I'm conflicted as I don't want to provide a How-To, but this is primarily how I self harm. I use it when I am emotionally spiraling and feel overwhelmed, the pain brings me back to a baseline where I can begin to calm down.

I boil water, and dip the metal handle of a butterknife into the boiling water for a few seconds, and then I press it against my arm or thigh for as long as I can stand. It leaves a burn mark, but not a permanent one, and it's painful for about a day. Only once did it cause blisters because I think I held it too long.

 

[Forveleth]

Never self-harmed with heat but worked fast food for a while and got plenty of burns.

It's a very sharp pain at first, almost like stabbing. Then that fades and the area feels hot. Like you are still touching something hot to the area. How hot depends on how bad the burn is. The feeling usually comes and goes as the area heals over days or weeks. You can also feel a pulsing pain in the area solar to a headache.

If you get it near anything warm, it will feel like it's burning again. I got second degree burns on one of my hands and had to take lukewarm showers as any hot water was extremely painful (even the tepid water felt hot on the burn).

If you burn bad enough, you get a blister which then hurts whenever anything touches it and if it pops it can easily get infected

After having so many burns in my life, I went with cutting for SH. Burns were not worth it for me.

 

[sadBPDgirl0708]

Self harm via electrical shocks is possible I guess. I've never done it and don't know a lot about it as a self harm method but I imagine it's much the same as burning - high risk and a good chance of going too wrong if that makes sense.

When you're cutting yourself there's more time involved and personal inhibitors, you're using your own force and your own muscles to cut yourself, so it's hard to go deep unless you really want to (but not impossible, and if you're going to cut yourself you should do everything you can to keep it as safe as you can). But with electric shocks, unless you've got some weird set up and you can set the voltage etc I imagine you're at the mercy of whatever you use and the volts running through it? Also I imagine quite practically hard to set up.


If you do cut yourself I want to offer some harm reduction tips, as someone that has self harmed religiously for many years: always use a clean blade, you can clean it with alcohol wipes etc. in a pinch anti bacterial soap and water will do. Don't use it if it's rusty or chipped, and try to change them frequently. Choose 'safe' areas on your body, for example don't choose your inner wrist where veins and arteries are close. The back of your arm and the tops of your thighs are safer. It's good to learn where the major arteries are to avoid them. After you've cut, if blood spurts out then you've likely hit an artery and need to get to a hospital immediately. Apply heavy pressure and go, you can die in soemthing like 5 minutes? From artery blood loss. Otherwise use a clean dressing to put pressure on the wounds until they stop bleeding.
After you have cut yourself, clean your wounds and if needed apply dressings. Monitor for signs of infection which can include swelling, increased pain, pus, heat at the site and rashes. If you're unsure at any point seek medical attention.

I'm not a medical professional, these are just some things I've picked up along the way that have helped me. I'm sorry you're having to deal with this

 

[Lavínia]

It burns and itches.
I take some cutlery, heat it on the stove, and rub it on my skin. I leave it really hot, so as soon as I touch it, the autoflexo makes me take it off, hearing the sound of the skin deforming and a little smoke.
Usually the ones I do look like cuts, horizontal and vertical lines. At first it's a sharp pain, which quickly goes away. For a few days, it can continue to throb, a sensation of heat and pulse that continues. It comes and goes. It comes and goes. On a cold night, seeking comfort in the blankets, and it continues to throb. It burns, but it doesn't hurt during that period, it's like it's just a constant warning.
This type is when it just goes away quickly. Once I left a match burning until the flesh turned black. When it burns a lot, you can extinguish the nerve endings from what I know. I don't remember feeling much pain in that case, it was more agony because the sharp pain persisted. However, the after-effect doesn't hurt. But it itches, a lot, and it keeps itching. Later, when it is healing, forming scabs or even peeling off the old skin if it has been burned badly, it will itch a lot.
It is a type of self-harm that takes a lot of attention and focus, I put a lot of effort into it when I need to.

 

[ehn20]

Honestly would strongly advice against this because the risk of very unpleasant inflammation (no pun intended) is very high as the wounds take a long time to heal. As mentioned by Lavinia there is also very strong itching for days which only makes a risk for bad inflammation even stronger since it's easy to accidently scratch right over the wound and open it over and over again.