Why do people purposefully hurt themselves?

There's many reasons behind it, but simply put: because they're in so much pain, that it gives them relief in some way. You know how when you have an itch that you can't scratch (like when a wound is healing, for example) some people may tell you to "itch somewhere else" to distract? It's a bit like that, to distract the mind from that one thing that hurts them. People may feel so many emotions at once that's overwhelming and hurting themselves stops that, they may feel so numb that they need pain to "feel something", as a punishment, as a way to know they're real or that their emotional pain is real.. and anything in between. It's personal to them, and it's usually that last resort, because they don't have any other way to help them cope.

There can be a multitude of reasons why someone may hurt themselves. The reasons tend to be personal to an individual but often it can be due to overwhelming emotions or the opposite with a lack of any emotion.

People purposely hurt themselves for many reasons, each different in different situations. From my experience with it, it’s a coping mechanism and is very addictive. If you think of hurting yourself please seek more professional help as it’s something difficult to stop and makes you a risk to your own wellbeing.

In my experience, there are many reasons someone might purposely hurt themselves. One of the biggest being that in times when you feel so sad, hopeless and just emotionally broken, you want to be able to feel anything else. Even if that something else is physical pain.

They may want other people to see how much pain they are challenge. And they may want to test if they are still able to feel anything.

There are quite a number of reasons why someone may hurt themselves. Someone may do it to help release tension from really overwhelming emotions, or to even stop thinking about them. It could be a form of punishment for a perceived shortcoming or after a mistake was made. It could help someone feel like they have more control over their situation. A person's reasons for self harming can be as individual as the problems they are trying to deal with, and can change with time too. Its important to try and be understanding of this and be supportive in what way you can be to help them.

People use hurting themselves on purpose as a coping mechanism. Coping mechanisms can be good and bad, if they are hurting themselves on purpose, it is most likely for a reason. Sometimes when they do it on purpose it ends up becoming an addiction and they can't stop, and if they do stop, it's really hard to. Sometimes they might feel only one thing like emptiness, for example, and they want to feel something else, so they go to hurting themselves. Or, it can be the opposite and they feel too many emotions at once, and in result they might hurt themselves.