People with their limbs blown off, children in terrible pain with no relief... Imagine a slaughterhouse.
The most common reasons were to gain relief from terrible feelings (64.4%) and a desire to punish oneself (41.0%).
A range of reasons were given for the most recent self-harm, the commonest being to gain relief from terrible feelings followed by a desire to punish oneself, with one quarter wanting to die.
Females were more likely than males to select desire to punish self (43.8% compared to 29.4%, χ = 12.30, p < 0.001) and to gain relief from terrible feelings (66.7% compared to 55.9%, χ = 8.56, p = 0.003), whereas males were more likely than females to choose 'superficial reasons' such as "I was curious" or "because my friend was" (7.8% compared to 2.2%, χ = 13.96, p < 0.001).
The mystic likens her longing to be one with God to a powerful erotic longing for relief from her "terrible and painful" passion.
It led to a sigh of relief that the terrible day that some had expected after the worst drubbing in two years in markets on Thursday might not be so awful.
It has occurred to me that writing a book about anxiety might be a terrible idea: if it's relief from nervous suffering that I crave, then burrowing into the history and science of anxiety, and into my own psyche, is perhaps not the best way to achieve it.
"No, no, it was terrible," he gasped, and in relief that, for once, something had happened that we could agree on, we all collapsed into helpless laughter, crying with delight each time anybody remembered some fresh detail of the afternoon's disaster.
It would have been impossible not to have expressed relief that the terrible cycle had come to closure.
