100 Uplifting Self-Harm Quotes to Make You Feel Better

Are you struggling with self-injuring yourself? The following self-harm quotes will help you to feel better without hurting yourself. And if you need even more positivity, be sure to also have a look at our uplifting quotes to brighten your day.

Self-harm is a coping mechanism to deal with problems and emotional issues. It comes in many different forms, from cutting, burning, and hitting yourself to swallowing toxic substances.

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
James Baldwin

If you’re confronted with feelings that seem to be unbearable, self-harm may appear to be the only solution to release the pain. Self-injury may distract you from your problems and helps you to feel better for a while. The issue is that it’s only a temporary fix. It does not address the root cause of the problems. Instead, it provides superficial relief from a much deeper problem.

The self-harm quotes will help you to work through your emotions without hurting yourself

People who are struggling with self-harm know that as soon as the emotional issues come back, the urge to self-injure yourself increases. If you want to finally for yourself from hurting yourself, the following quotes will accompany you on your journey.

100 Self-Harm Quotes to Make You Feel Better

It is important to realize that you have everything it takes to deal with your problems without hurting yourself. In fact, harming your body does nothing to solve the issue. Instead of mutilating yourself, problems and emotional pain need to be addressed at the root. The following self-harm quotes will help you in changing your life for the better.

Here’s our collection of self-harm quotes

1.

“Other times, I look at my scars and see something else: a girl who was trying to cope with something horrible that she should never have had to live through at all. My scars show pain and suffering, but they also show my will to survive. They’re part of my history that’ll always be there.”
Cheryl Rainfield

2.

“Turn your wounds into wisdom.”
Oprah Winfrey

3.

“[Those] that cut or use anything to do with self-harm, promise me tonight that you will throw away all the blades and go to what you love instead of the blade. I believe you can do it. I will be here if you feel like giving in. I love you guys so so much.”
Vic Fuentes

4.

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
Rumi

5.

“Self-harm – the world will come at you with knives anyway. You do not need to beat them to it.”
Caitlin Moran

6.

“We need to start treating ourselves how we deserve to be treated, even if you feel that no one else does. Prove to the world you ARE worth something by treating yourself with the utmost respect and hope that other people will follow your example. And even if they don’t, at least one person in the world is treating you well: YOU.”
Carrie Hope Fletcher

7.

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
Kahlil Gibran

8.

“My scars remind me that I did indeed survive my deepest wounds. That in itself is an accomplishment. And they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted on me has, in many places, left me stronger and more resilient. What hurt me in the past has actually made me better equipped to face the present.”
Steve Goodier

9.

“Never feel this bad again. Never come back to this place, where only a knife will do. Live a gentle and kind life. Don’t do things that make you want to hurt yourself. Whatever you do, every day, remember this – then steer away from here.”
Caitlin Moran

10.

“If you can sit with your pain, listen to your pain and respect your pain — in time you will move through your pain.”
Bryant McGill

11.

“Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.”
Conrad Joseph

12.

“Throughout it all, you are still, always, you: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable.”
Leila Sales

13.

“The depth of the feeling continued to surprise and threaten me, but each time it hit again and I bore it…I would discover that it hadn’t washed me away.”
Anne Lamott

14.

“We all have scars; both inside and out. Use your experience to support those who are going down the same road of destruction you once went down. Know that your past is worth more than the pain you once carried, because it can now be used to comfort and give strength to another soul who is suffering. Cherish your trials and tribulations as gifts; embrace these opportunities to share the grace you have been given.”
Katie Maslin

15.

“Being cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer. Along with our ability to feel our own pain go our best hopes for healing, dignity, and love. What seems nonadaptive and self-harming in the present was, at some point in our lives, an adaptation to help us endure what we then had to go through. If people are addicted to self-soothing behaviors, it’s only because in their formative years they did not receive the soothing they needed. Such understanding helps delete toxic self-judgment on the past and supports responsibility for the now. Hence the need for compassionate self-inquiry.”
Gabor Maté

16.

“Self-harm is an addiction and it’s serious whether it’s 5 cuts or 100. I myself have dealt with self-harm. I was young and alone and got beat up on all the time, and I cut to ease the pain.”
Vic Fuentes

17.

“Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we do not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control.”
Epictetus

18.

“I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.”
Hermann Hesse

19.

“Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.”
Henry Rollins

20.

“As we begin to see that people who self-harm can be found in nearly every neighborhood, school, college, house of worship, or school group, we must become better informed so that we can better understand their language of pain and help them find a way out of their suffering.”
Marilee Strong

21.

“Scars don’t matter, little one. They are the marks of the battles we have won.”
Helen Dunmore

22.

“The tests we face in life’s journey are not to reveal our weaknesses but to help us discover our inner strengths. We can only know how strong we are when we strive and thrive beyond the challenges we face.”
Kemi Sogunle

23.

“Somehow however just knowing that I could fully expect unhappiness to return – if not predictably then nevertheless reliably – was strangely liberating. The point was that even chaos had a structure a beginning and eventually an end. It was possible to live through it. I’d been doing as much for twenty years.”
Caroline Kettlewell

24.

“To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence.”
Arthur Schopenhauer

25.

“But the problem with battling yourself is that even if you win, you lose. At some point – scarred and exhausted – you either accept that you must become a woman – that you are a woman – or you die. This is the brutal, root truth of adolescence – that it is often a long, painful campaign of attrition. Those self-harming girls, with the latticework of razor cuts on their arms and thighs, are just reminding themselves that their body is a battlefield.”
Caitlin Moran

26.

“Having a strong urge is like having a child throw a temper tantrum inside you, screaming “Hurt yourself!” But if you repeatedly ignore the urge’s request and don’t harm yourself, your brain will learn that urges don’t work, just as a child learns that throwing a tantrum won’t work.”
Kim L. Gratz

27.

“There is no shame in expressing your authentic feelings. Those who are at times described as being a ‘hot mess’ or having ‘too many issues’ are the very fabric of what keeps the dream alive for a more caring, humane world. Never be ashamed to let your tears shine a light in this world.”
Anthon St. Maarten

28.

“There is no advantage in my harming myself.”
Alice Jamieson

29.

“Self-destructiveness may be a primary form of communication for those who do not yet have ways to tame their excruciating inner conflicts and feelings and who cannot yet turn to others for support.”
James A. Chu

30.

“I used self-injury as a coping mechanism to help me overcome the emotional stress that I was incapable of dealing with in any other way. Self-injury was a means of escape, a way to relieve the numbness, and an expression of the pain within me. Something that the police wouldn’t care about.”
Stephen Richards

31.

“Trying to destroy yourself gives a pretty clear message and it’s not one I think you’d like. Sounds a bit like, “I’m too self-centered to be constructive, so I have to open a vein.”
Thomm Quackenbush

32.

“He kisses me, and I can forget pain, forget the urges I still have to cut for the pain that erases the emotions.”
Jasinda Wilder

33.

“Self-injury is a sign of distress not madness.”
Corey Anderson

34.

“This might surprise you, but one of the best ways to manage your emotions is simply to experience that emotion and let it run its course.”
Kim L. Gratz

35.

“Take control of your emotions before your emotions take control of you.”
Scott Dye

36.

“Those who don’t know how to suffer are the worst off. There are times when the only correct thing we can do is to bear out troubles until a better day.”
Deng Ming-Dao

37.

“I am not “cured” – I know I never will be. I will always crave that pain to keep me centered. I will always be just a little astounded when I get through a crisis without putting a blade to my flesh.”
J. Kenner

38.

“Denial can be a most useful, temporary shield. Unfortunately, such flimsy armor will not last a lifetime. It is best to face your past, and do so quickly, before your past returns to face you.”
André Chevalier

39.

“In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.”
Brennan Manning

40.

“Your scars are battle wounds, but you don’t see them that way. Yet.”
Tammara Webber

41.

“You might imagine that a person would resort to self-mutilation only under extremes of duress, but once I’d crossed that line the first time, taken that fateful step off the precipice, then almost any reason was a good enough reason, almost any provocation was provocation enough. Cutting was my all-purpose solution.”
Caroline Kettlewell

42.

“You don’t need another human being to make your life complete, but let’s be honest. Having your wounds kissed by someone who doesn’t see them as disasters in your soul, but cracks to put their love into, is the most calming thing in this World.”
Emery Allen

43.

“If someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, I shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: the harm is to persist in one’s own self-deception and ignorance.”
Marcus Aurelius

44.

“You are not created to stifle and suppress your emotions… taming and training what you do not understand. You just have to be courageous enough to face the unknowns, meet the wild you might not understand, and let each teach you a thing or two about love.”
Jackie Viramontez

45.

“I found out to wait it out that it gets better. I wrote music instead of going to the blade.”
Vic Fuentes

46.

“Emotional pain cannot kill you, but running from it can. Allow. Embrace. Let yourself feel. Let yourself heal.”
Vironika Tugaleva

47.

“Every lineament of the girl’s wasted body is a testament to her inner turmoil. Willow can only imagine what kind of pain she must be in to destroy herself that way. She knows there’s something ironic in her compassion for the other girl, but she can’t help feeling that this utter mortification of the flesh is far worse than anything that she herself has done.”
Julia Hoban

48.

“One of the things that strikes me most though is how some people don’t realize they’re self-harming. The phrase ‘self-harm’ brings up thoughts of ‘cutting’, but that’s only a small portion of it. When you drink excessively to drown your sorrows to the point you throw up and can’t see straight and/or, like a girl at my school, ended up being driven to hospital to have her stomach pumped, you’ve brought harm to yourself.”
Carrie Hope Fletcher

49.

“When clients self-harm, for example, these days, we understand their actions to be instinctive, rather than thought out—an effort to regulate or relieve, rather than punish.”
Janina Fisher

50.

“I am more than my scars.”
Andrew Davidson

51.

“Only the harshest personal experiences open our eyes to the immaculate possibilities and the splendor of our world.”
Kilroy J. Oldster

52.

“If you take drugs to feel numb and it becomes an addiction that you can’t break, you’ve self-harmed. When you starve yourself or binge eat to fit the latest fashions, you’re pushing your body further than it can go.”
Carrie Hope Fletcher

53.

“You reach a milestone in such illnesses when denial lifts and you realize that the things you do are truly damaging both to yourself and to others. By then, however, you learn to not care and you embrace the notion that this method of self-harming is both deserved and satisfying.”
Leanne Waters

54.

“Many times we are our worst enemy. If we could learn to conquer ourselves, then we will have a much easier time overcoming the obstacles that are in front of us.”
Stephan Labossiere

55.

“She felt so much emotionally, she would say, that a physical outlet – physical pain – was the only way to make her internal pain go away. It was the only way she could control it.”
Richelle Mead

56.

“Whatever awful things you go through, however miserable you feel, those feelings will pass. But don’t think for one second you can’t show them now anyway. Who does it help keeping them in?”
Alexandra Duffy

57.

“God is so much bigger than our ‘what ifs’ that he can turn them into ‘why not’s”
Gary Rohrmayer

58.

“When people self-harm themselves its not always because they want people to notice them, or because they weren’t taught better. They sometimes have all the attention a person could want and they have been taught better. People just don’t realize that even within all that. Something terrible could be happening in a person’s life, which may lead them to cutting. Don’t judge.”
Triss

59.

“We all bear scars,… Mine just happen to be more visible than most.”
Sarah J. Maas

60.

“I cut myself because you wouldn’t let me cry.
I cried because you wouldn’t let me speak.
I spoke because you wouldn’t let me shine.
I shone because I thought you loved me…”
Emilie Autumn

61.

“You don’t feel like you’re hurting yourself when you’re cutting. You feel like this is the only way to take care of yourself.”
Marilee Strong

62.

“You never really know what’s coming. A small wave, or maybe a big one. All you can really do is hope that when it comes, you can surf over it, instead of drowning in its monstrosity.”
Alysha Speer

63.

“When you feel at sea in an abyss of emotions, reconnecting to the beauty of your soul can be difficult, but it is never impossible.”
Lorraine Nilon

64.

“We both knew what it was to hurt our bodies. It’s a strange reason to bond with someone, but I think we both needed to feel understood, and, even though we couldn’t love ourselves, we could love each other.”
Melissa C. Water

65.

“Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.”
J.K. Rowling

66.

“That’s when I wanted to cut. I cut to quiet the cacophony. I cut to end this abstracted agony, to reel my selves back to one present and physical whole, whose blood was the proof of her tangibility.”
Caroline Kettlewell

67.

“If you expect life to be easy, challenges will seem difficult. If you accept that challenges may occur, life will be easier.”
Rob Liano

68.

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”
George R.R. Martin

69.

“If you want to help people, ask why they are in so much pain that they are driven (there’s that word again) to escape from it through ultimately self-harming habits or substances.”
Timothy Ferriss

70.

“It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
Chuck Palahniuk

71.

“In case you didn’t know, dead people don’t bleed. If you can bleed-see it, feel it-then you know you’re alive. It’s irrefutable, undeniable proof. Sometimes I just need a little reminder.”
Amy Efaw

72.

“Every action that you take – that your disorder tells you to take – is self-harming in the short and long term.”
Priyavrat Thareja

73.

“Well, if it can be thought, it can be done, a problem can be overcome.”
E.A. Bucchianeri

74.

“Self-harm is not a grab for attention. It doesn’t mean you are suicidal. It means you are struggling to get out of a very dangerous mess in your mind and heart and this is your coping mechanism. It means that you occupy a small space in the very real and very large canyon of people who suffer from depression or mental illness.”
Kathleen Glasgow

75.

“I know good things have happened, don’t mistake an expression of pain for a lack of thankfulness.”
Ashley Nikole

76.

“Why bother inflicting enormous pain on yourself when sooner or later Life would certainly get around to doing it for you?”
Jeff Lindsay

77.

“As convincing as it may seem, physical pain often arises merely to distract us from emotional pain.”
Charles F. Glassman

78.

“After years of being taught that the way to deal with painful emotions is to get rid of them, it can take a lot of reschooling to learn to sit with them instead, finding out from those who feel them what they have learned by sleeping in the wilderness that those who sleep in comfortable houses may never know.”
Barbara Brown Taylor

79.

“No one sees your strength, do they? No one sees the silent battle you fight against your overprotective mind that’s trying to keep you safe from harm by keeping you safe from risk, safe from connection, safe from honesty. Maybe others don’t see, but you see it sometimes, don’t you? In the mirror, in those eyes, begging for someone to notice. You have noticed. It is real. You are strong. You are fighting for something incredible. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise—especially not your thoughts.”
Vironika Tugaleva

80.

“A lot is being done to cure physical self-harm, and yet it’s a by-product of mental self-harm!”
Maddy Malhotra

81.

“There will be times in your life when things simply have to be replaced because they are tired, broken, worn out, harmful, outdated, or irrelevant. Take an inventory of the things that no longer serve your best and highest good so you can replace them with things which do.”
Susan C. Young

82.

“Negative self-talk will not change your habitual thinking; it will only make you feel bad and start to solidify a lack of self-esteem which will invariably crush developing leadership attributes. Few things are more harmful than negative self-talk.”
Chris Ewing

83.

The results of these investigations validate the century-old insight that traumatized people relive in their bodies the moments of terror that they can not describe in words.”
Judith Lewis Herman

84.

“I asked her if she believed in love, and she smiled and said it was her most elaborate method of self-harm.”
Benedict Smith

85.

“Self-harm or substance abuse being common ways in which BPD sufferers tend to block their unwanted emotions; this is not weakness but simply that the condition makes it so difficult to regulate your reactions.”
Emily Laven

86.

“Self-harm is not an uncommon experience, nor is it a shameful defect or personal failure, it happened to me because I wasn’t able to manage intense emotional distress.”
Ruby Elliot

87.

“Self-destructiveness may be a primary form of communication for those who do not yet have ways to tame their excruciating inner conflicts and feelings and who cannot yet turn to others for support.”
James A. Chu

88.

“The shadows of life add depth and dimension to our journey, like route markers along our path. They are never intended to dominate our life with darkness, neither do they determine our ultimate destiny.”
Anthon St. Maarten

89.

“The courage to live brings its own rewards.”
Rachel L. Schade

90.

“I told her once I wasn’t good at anything. She told me survival is a talent.”
Susanna Kaysen

91.

“In most cases, the more you search for a physical cause of your pain, the further away you get from the true origins.”
Charles F. Glassman

92.

“Emotional suffering comes as a result of trying to control the uncontrollable”
Matt Purcell

93.

“Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t.”
Rikki Rogers

94.

“He’s seen it before, on other girls around her age. Sometimes on boys, but mostly it’s the girls. Cutting. Self-harm. A physical release to anesthetize mental pain.”
Alex A. King

95.

“Self-mutilation is a very different issue to suicide. It is a controlled pain personal to you, allowing you to live/exist to some degree.”
Richy Edwards

96.

“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

97.

“Loving the wrong person is self-harm”
R.H. Sin

98.

“Wounds turn into scars and scars make you tough.”
Aisha Tyler

99.

“It’s important to keep in mind that most people have no idea how to respond effectively to someone who self-harms.”
Kim L. Gratz

100.

“Life will throw all kinds of obstacles our way. It’s our job to scramble over them and hunt for the little miracles tucked away, then leave some reminders for the people that follow behind us.”
Emily Page

I hope you enjoyed this collection of self-harm quotes. Do you have a favorite quote that helps you to navigate through difficult times? We’re excited to hear from you in the comment section below.

Stay victorious!