Author Topic: Has anyone come across those people that pretend to self harm to seem cool?  (Read 6340 times)

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Offline TheSelfHarmDiarys

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Hi guys, 10 year long Self Harmer here, I've been thinking a lot about some people i came into contact with when i was at school,
Its kind of a weird story so let me explain then tell me what you make of it?

So i started self harming when i was 11, I did it for quite some time before anyone found out but when they did the school reacted really badly to it, they got all my friends together and told them i was self harming and that i had issues,
Now this lead to almost all of my friends 'trying' it at some point which i don't have an issue with, i imagine if it had been the other way round i may have tried it too to see what it was all about, you know,

Anyway, From this a friend of mine called A started actually self harming, like i was a little alarmed even as a Self Harmer, because of just how badly she was doing it, like purple scars and everything,
anyway, i think i classed that in my mind as someone who was really struggling,

Anyway another one of my friend would always SAY she was self harming but never had any sort of proof, and i kind of hate myself for saying this because i know that lots of people self harm and you cant tell by looking at them, i was the same for a while, but the thing that really gets me about this girl, lets call her L, is she would lie all the time about everything.

Like, she told me she had lost her virginity about 5 different times over about a year, she always tried to tell everyone she had schizophrenia, when i really dont think she did because she only started saying she had hallucinations after it came out that i was seeing people who weren't there,
now this was a bit of an issue for me and her as friends, because she was quite nasty and rude, like i would have called it an abusive friendship if i came across it now,
but back then i dyed my hair red and so did she, i started wearing 'emo'clothes and so did she, i had hallucinations and suddenly she did as well, and even worse she would try to tell me that the person i was hallucinating had kissed her and sh** like that, just really  ??

So around this time i started thinking maybe she wasn't being truthful when she said this kind of stuff,
And once i saw her use a ruler to indent her arm and then show it to people and say she had 'self harmed' last night?
she seemed to notice that i was getting quite a bit of attention as the self harmer and decided to do it herself but never actually self harmed just pretended to?

I guess what im really wondering is why someone would do that?
I know everyone always say that even small scratches mean that someone is in pain and not to judge people who just scratch themselves rather then actually cut and stuff like that but that's not my issue here, my issue is that i don't think she ever actually self harmed but would just pretend to to get attention? is this something other people have come across? and is it okay to be a bit angry that she did that?
because looking back as an adult I'm starting to think she was just lying all the time about stuff to get attention for some reason and i'm kind of angry that she did that?

In someways this is all coming back up in therapy recently and i'm trying to make sense of it and i'm honestly now getting a bit angry about it because i really don't think she was ever hurting or anything like that she was just a liar who wanted attention for herself out of something other people do because they're in pain?
I don't know what do you guys think of all of this?


Offline Terri

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Liars are often hurting too, I'd guess. Wanting attention isn't a bad thing; it's a human need. If someone isn't getting attention in healthy ways, then often they will turn to unhealthy ways of getting it. Sounds like this girl was in a lot of pain too, but had a different way of coping with it.


It's OK to be angry though and it's good to work through this stuff in therapy.
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Offline Vermilion

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Liars are often hurting too, I'd guess. Wanting attention isn't a bad thing; it's a human need. If someone isn't getting attention in healthy ways, then often they will turn to unhealthy ways of getting it. Sounds like this girl was in a lot of pain too, but had a different way of coping with it.


It's OK to be angry though and it's good to work through this stuff in therapy.

+1. I understand your frustration, I have a relative who pretends that she's ill as soon as I get something wrong with me, her SH is always worse, she even tried to copy my dietary choices so that everyone would make a fuss. The thing is, when people self harm for attention it makes others assume that we do it 'just for attention'. I think that people who want attention that badly and pretend to SH tend to have issues of their own. It's frustrating though because they get all the help and attention and we get ignored.
I remember there was a self harm craze when I was at school, inadvertently started by me when a PE teacher spotted it in the changing rooms and decided to make sure the entire class knew about it. I don't know why teachers do that. Teenagers do tend to imitate each other so it wasn't long before people were coming into school showing their injuries off. I also think that mental illness in general is almost romanticised, suffering is sometimes portrayed as glamorous, dark or mysterious etc and I think that contributes to people wanting to imitate it. Of course, this leads to many misconceptions or it gets dismissed as being just a phase, one shrink told me that it was just a phase yet here I am12 years later.
It's perfectly understandable to feel angry, it can feel like people are treating SH lightly when to us it's an awful thing to have to live with and it's something that we don't want to do. I think that the best thing to do is focus on yourself and try and ignore those around you. They don't understand. The main thing is that your getting help and if others don't understand that's their problem and not yours. It's OK to be angry but try not let it consume you because you have enough to deal with.  :hug2:
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Offline Tucan

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I have a friend that imitates some of my symptoms from time to time. It triggers the hell out of me. But she is still there when I need her, mainly. It annoyed me that she got so much attention for copying me! But I do know she has her own issues and needs constant attention. I just have to be careful what I say to her. Often if people cope or do it for attention they normally have major issues themselves and still need some attention for it. But it can be frustrating for the rest of us.
now hand over the tea bags and we won't have any trouble.... :police:

Offline TheSelfHarmDiarys

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I'm so glad this so something other people have experienced as well, sometimes when you think it's happening to just you it makes you think that it's something you've done that's caused it or maybe your imagine it but thankfully it seems pretty common!