Quote Originally Posted by vanderkatze View Post
Of the submissives on the thread, I wonder how many have had issues with self injury, and what the underlying motivation(s) for it are. So far, two plus myself makes three. I'm definitely masochistic, but the SI was more to relieve the unbearable guilt I felt about pretty much everything. Along with doing it to relieve emotional stress when I didn't have another outlet, it was my way of punishing myself. Several years after I started, I met my first top-ish individual: the D to my s and the S to my m. He helped me to mostly stop. He identified the marks and didn't buy my initial stories about roller blading accidents or kitchen fiascos or falling into barbed wire fences or my saying, "It's a funny story, really - I honest-to-god walked into a door..." He saw it for what it was, and then he took over punishing me so that I didn't have to anymore.
One of the best arguments for D/s I've ever seen. My late wife had done some self-harm when she was younger (not cutting, but eating things she hoped were poisonous,) and had attempted suicide, and well as punishing her I was able to share fantasies about my killing her, promising her that if the time came when she definitely wanted to be killed I would make sure she died in screaming agony, which helped her let the suicidal feelings go.