why does cutting make me feel better but then bad afterwards?

Although an unhealthy method, self-harm is used as a coping mechanism. Due to the unhealthiness of it, it can often make you feel shameful afterward. To combat these feelings, using healthy alternatives (such as distracting yourself, the Butterfly Project, and so on) can bring a similar sensation and relief, without the guilt nor harm.

From personal experience, self harm only makes me feel "better" at the exact moment when I'm doing it-because I don't think of the outcome. But afterwards when you see the cuts on your body you might start to regret what you did and start panicking. (I'm only speaking from personal experience and it may be different for other people)

So I actually have experience with this that, as I got much older, took an interest in self-reflecting to find understanding in my actions. At the time I used to cut, it was never to do away with myself. I was under an enormous amount of emotional pain/abuse as well as others. It felt as if I didn’t get it out somehow I would go mad. My father was the one who caused the majority of my feelings and I loved my mother too much in involve her. I had siblings and friends…but felt to ashamed to go to anyone. Looking back, I remember causing the pain I did felt really good initially. But why? Because it the pain out-screamed my emotional pain. For that second, for that moment, the immense amount of pain I had on the inside was drowned out. It turned out, it wasn’t the pain from the self-harm I was after, it was the longing to drown out the initial pain I carried. I also discovered I took a sort of….pleasure? from the sight of the wound. But I have to explain why. When a person breaks their arm, they SEE it’s broken. Others can acknowledge it’s broken. Tests can be ran to verify the break and reason for pain. Unfortunately, emotional pain is nothing like that is it? There’s no x-rays that can be held up to show the large holes. There’s no visible proof for others to acknowledge the pain, causing them to check in on you, showing concern and passion, asking how your holding up is there? And just as vital….you can typically watch for yourself, a physical thing going through the healing process and register when you are “all better”. Such as the doctor telling you that the cast can come off in 4-6 weeks, you are given a timeframe to be all better. No one can do that with emotional pain however. A doctor can take off the cast and announce “That’s it! All better!” Unfortunately, that’s impossible to be told with emotional pain. So I think I caused the physical pain, in a very immature and desperate means to switch an emotional pain into a physical one. Seeing the wound, made me feel better because emotional pain is not visible. Being able to “see” made me feel like I had some control. Watching over it each day, tending to it, witnessing it heal, fed the illusion that I was also healing emotionally. And once the wound was healed, I would both the physical and emotional wound as done. Sadly, I was young, scared, desperate to not drown in all that was going on. If things had happened today, I probably would have been removed from the home I grew up in. One thing for sure, is I would have taken advantage of the many resources that the internet offers today for people to reach out and be heard anonymously. If I could go back in time, and kneel beside my former tortured of a soul teenage self, I would stop her hand as she reached out to cause harm and lead her to a resource where she could TALK to someone. I had no one. I just needed ONE I could talk to, to be honest with, without fear of judgement or repercussions. I wound up stopping because despite my persistence, I discovered that even though a wound was healed…it still hurt….like hell to. That the transition from emotional to physical does not work and all I was doing was making a bad situation worse. It’s at this point that I got myself to stop. I started to find other ways to cope. End result after that was books. A lot of books that took me away, mentally, on adventures. I figured as I wasn’t able to escape and break away physically, I could try to maintain sanity by allowing myself mental retreats in books that offered a breath of fresh air that included unknown foreign lands and many character friends. On the side, I actually started to write. Being in control of characters helped me cope as well. I was able to almost, re-write my pain into characters that were stronger, braver, and escaped things. This became a much healthier outlet to the situation.

This is a very good question and I'm happy to hear that your curious about this. Cutting initially makes you feel better as it is acts as a temporary relief for whatever was making you feel like you needed relief in the first place. However, the effect is only temporary and will not address whatever it is that you needed relief from in the first place. Cutting may only help you cope with strong emotions in the short term and then the bad feelings come back afterwards.

For me I feel that is is the release that feels good and the bad comes from the guilt we feel when society tells us not to. Just a thought.

Self-harming can be a quick release of pain. It is something which can seem to help in the short term but long term it can make you feel worse. We are here for you at 7 cups. Hugs

It probably does this because you have harmed yourself. It may bring a high shortly after because you punished yourself for doing bad.

Because it's as all other bad and unhealthy coping mechanisms it has a brief temporary good effect on you. Then you feel guilty about it and you regret doing it. Cause you're hurting yourself and others even if they may not be aware of your self harm

It releases a temporary feel good chemical, but then, once that goes away, you have pain and sometimes guilt

It releases endorphins which makes you feel better but then mentally you feel worse because your brain realizes what you just did.