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2004/08/17, 04:08 PM
I have recently read a post that was a little bit disturbing, but I think that a majority of the problem rises out of ignorance and not cruelty. So I did some research. On my own, I could say that cutting is a form of coping that is often started by those without better mechanisms in place, but I thought a full article from the web would be better. Please read this, and educate yourself. If you still have questions search the web some more or ask me a question and I will see what I can find. Either way let's combat the real enemy here, ignorance.
Thanks,
Daniel Love
What is self-injury?
It's called many things -- self-inflicted violence, self-injury, self-harm, parasuicide, delicate cutting, self-abuse, self-mutilation (this last particularly seems to annoy people who self-injure).
Broadly speaking, self-injury is the act of attempting to alter a mood state by inflicting physical harm serious enough to cause tissue damage to one's body.
Approximately 1% of the United States population uses physical self-injury as a way of dealing with overwhelming feelings or situations, often using it to speak when no words will come.
What is self-injurious behavior?
The forms and severity of self-injury can vary, although the most commonly seen behavior is cutting, burning, and head-banging.
Other forms of self-injurious behavior include:
• carving
• scratching
• branding
• marking
• burning/abrasions • biting
• bruising
• hitting
• picking, and pulling skin and hair
It's not self-injury if the primary purpose is:
• sexual gratification
• body decoration (e.g., body piercing, tattooing)
• spiritual enlightenment via ritual
• fitting in or being cool
Why does self-injury make some people feel better?
• It reduces physiological and psychological tension rapidly.
Studies have suggested that when people who self-injure get emotionally overwhelmed, an act of self-harm brings their levels of psychological and physiological tension and arousal back to a bearable baseline level almost immediately. In other words, they feel a strong uncomfortable emotion, don't know how to handle it (indeed, often do not have a name for it), and know that hurting themselves will reduce the emotional discomfort extremely quickly. They may still feel bad (or not), but they don't have that panicky jittery trapped feeling; it's a calm bad feeling.
• Some people never get a chance to learn how to cope effectively.
One factor common to most people who self-injure, whether they were abused or not, is invalidation. They were taught at any early age that their interpretations of and feelings about the things around them were bad and wrong. They learned that certain feelings weren't allowed. In abusive homes, they may have been severely punished for expressing certain thoughts and feelings. At the same time, they had no good role models for coping. You can't learn to cope effectively with distress unless you grow up around people who are coping effectively with distress. Although a history of abuse is common about self-injurers, not everyone who self-injures was abused. Sometimes invalidation and lack of role models for coping are enough, especially if the person's brain chemistry has already primed them for choosing this sort of coping.
• Problems with neurotransmitters may play a role.
Just as it's suspected that the way the brain uses serotonin may play a role in depression, so scientists think that problems in the serotonin system may predispose some people to self-injury by making them tend to be more aggressive and impulsive than most people. This tendency toward impulsive aggression, combined with a belief that their feelings are bad or wrong, can lead to the aggression being turned on the self. Of course, once this happens, the person harming himself learns that self-injury reduces his level of distress, and the cycle begins. Some researchers theorize that a desire to release endorphins, the body's natural painkillers, is involved.
What kinds of people self-injure?
Self-injurers come from all walks of life and all economic brackets. People who harm themselves can be male or female; straight, gay, or bisexual; Ph.D.s or high-school dropouts or high-school students; rich or poor; from any country in the world. Some people who self-injure manage to function effectively in demanding jobs; they are teachers, therapists, medical professionals, lawyers, professors, engineers. Some are on disability. Their ages range from early teens to early 60s.
In fact, the incidence of self-injury is about the same as that of eating disorders, but because it's so highly stigmatized, most people hide their scars, burns, and bruises carefully. They also have excuses ready when someone asks about the scars.
Aren't people who would deliberately cut or burn themselves psychotic?
No more than people who drown their sorrows in a bottle of vodka are. It's a coping mechanism, just not one that's as understandable to most people or as accepted by society as alcoholism, drug abuse, overeating, anorexia and bulimia, workaholism, smoking cigarettes, and other forms of problem avoidance.
Okay, then isn't it just another way to describe a failed suicide attempt?
NO. Self-injury is a maladaptive coping mechanism, a way to stay alive. People who inflict physical harm on themselves are often doing it in an attempt to maintain psychological integrity -- it's a way to keep from killing themselves. They release unbearable feelings and pressures through self-harm, and that eases their urge toward suicide. And, although some people who self-injure do later attempt suicide, they almost always use a method different from their preferred method of self-harm.
Can anything be done for people who hurt themselves?
Yes. Several websites offer self-help ideas. Many new therapeutic approaches have been and are being developed to help self-harmers learn new coping mechanisms and teach them how to start using those techniques instead of self-injury. These approaches reflect a growing belief among mental-health workers that once a client's patterns of self-inflicted violence stabilize, real work can be done on the problems and issues underlying the self-injury. Also, research into medications that stabilize mood, ease depression, and calm anxiety is being done; some of these drugs may help reduce the urge to self-harm.
This does not mean that individuals should be coerced into stopping self-injury. Any attempts to reduce or control the amount of self-harm a person does should be based on the person's willingness to undertake the difficult work of controlling and/or stopping self-injury. Treatment should not be based on a practitioner's personal feelings about the practice of self-harm.
What problems may be encountered when getting professional help?
Self-injury brings out many uncomfortable feelings in people who don't do it: revulsion, anger, fear, and distaste, to name a few. If a medical professional is unable to cope with her own feelings about self-harm, then she has an obligation to herself and to her client to find a practitioner willing to do this work. In addition, she has the responsibility to be certain the client understands that the referral is due to her own inability to deal with self-injury and not to any inadequacies in the client.
People who self-injure do generally do so because of an internal dynamic, and not in order to annoy, anger or irritate others. Their self-injury is a behavioral response to an emotional state, and is usually not done in order to frustrate caretakers.
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2004/08/24, 04:54 PM
I never realized how seious my own case was until i read the self injury list and could relate to every single one of them. Luckily I got out of that frame of mind after 2 years, but it was a very scary 2 years that i hope to never relive.
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2004/08/26, 07:38 PM
Good for you Kitty. Congratulations!!
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2004/10/05, 06:36 PM
some web sites help, most don't and never will. I cut, and i know. i used to go to a conselour, because i was what they call "depressed" they didnt know i cut, but the firgured it out, after about 3 years of conseling. the only reason they firgured it out is because i being stupid, told them, i wanted to see their reaction, well trust me i did.
...........and Ashley (please dont call me that call me ash) How do you feel about that.
its all they ever say.
...........Ashley i'm here to "help you" (more like torute me and make it all worse!)
please not think SI is an inability or some mental illness!
Because its not. we don't cut to die we cut to live!!!
There is no way to stop us. unless you'd like to see us dead. the only way to help us is to listen, trust us and be our friend. here a poem that will help you understand. its not by me and i dont know who it was by.
some web sites help, most don't and never will. I cut, and i know. i used to go to a conselour, because i was what they call "depressed" they didnt know i cut, but the firgured it out, after about 3 years of conseling. the only reason they firgured it out is because i being stupid, told them, i wanted to see their reaction, well trust me i did.
...........and Ashley (please dont call me that call me ash) How do you feel about that.
its all they ever say.
...........Ashley i'm here to "help you" (more like torute me and make it all worse!)
please not think SI is an inability or some mental illness!
Because its not. we don't cut to die we cut to live!!!
There is no way to stop us. unless you'd like to see us dead. the only way to help us is to listen, trust us and be our friend. here a poem that will help you understand.
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2004/10/05, 06:43 PM
Take a Razor
Take a razor - cut it deep,
drops of blood before I sleep,
if I die before I wake,
life was just too cruel to take.
Relief is felt and blood flows red,
feeling alive instead of dead.
Self-hatred, anger, guilt flow out,
total satisfaction without a doubt.
Fighting depression everyday,
insecurities & fears along the way.
Low self-esteem, feelings of despair,
but nobody ever said life was fair.
There's a lot of us here...you see,
abused, broken, wanting to be free.
We are afraid, scarred, needing care,
looking for help...is anyone there?
Please...don't look at us with disgust,
a non-judgmental attitude is a must.
Remember, we're still lost children inside,
running from the pain we try to hide.
Just reach out and be a friend,
don't lie to us or try to pretend.
Give us comfort when we cry,
so we don't give up and decide to die.
Scars tell a story of the pain inside,
revealing our secrets we try and hide.
Showing the misery a lot of us share,
hoping and praying that someone will care.
Maybe if you look deep in my eyes,
you'll see the child behind the cries,
& the things that have murdered her soul,
all the self-hatred that's taking it's toll.
We numb our brains to stay alive,
whatever we have to do to survive.
We cut ourselves and burn our skin,
to punish ourselves & get rid of sin.
We're looked upon as freaks & outcasts,
but we're just trying to get rid of the past.
To destroy the images & lies that were told,
that left us broken, messed up and cold.
If you really listen & try to understand,
maybe I'll trust you and take your hand.
Just listen to me when I need your ears,
give me your arms to hug away my fears.
Help me rip out the crazy thoughts inside,
help me try & find the part of me that died.
Help me like myself again,
stick with me and be a true friend.
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2004/10/05, 06:44 PM
sorry i really messed up i was trying to post the poem and post the thing i wrote twice, then finally got the poem on here. and i dont know how to edit it
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2004/10/05, 07:26 PM
Based soley on the tone of your posts and sense of the poem, you are dealing with some tough issues. Please feel free to share anytime you would like. I don't think anyone on here is a trained psychiatrist, so if things get to deep we might suggest you talk to your therapist, but I am sure we would be willing to listen during crisis or on day to day basis. I am feel for your angst and do hope that things look up for you.
Daniel Love
P.S. Once it is posted there is not editing, but don't worry about it.
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2004/10/05, 07:28 PM
whats all this about? i'm confused I think I mised a post somwhere?
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......quote the Andrew....nevermore
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2004/10/23, 12:11 PM
mmph...cutting does help, though, I must admit...I haven't been doing it for very long...but, it helps me to work out my emotions, and it helps me to root myself, to feel more real. I wonder why this is? Ah well...if it works, why not do it?
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And, forever, I will walk in twilight, searching in vain for the dawn. Sometimes, fifteen seems too long a time to have to cope.
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2004/11/04, 02:32 PM
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Ah well...if it works, why not do it?
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Because eventually you'll get to a place where you won't need to cut anymore (I hope)... but you'll still have the scars. You'll always have to wear long sleeves. You can't wear a bikini. You'll never be able to forget, and you'll never be able to move on...
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2008/06/28, 11:17 AM
Daniel,
Thank you for posting this in my family depression, skitofrenia,bipolar,ect. are all over the place. I have had very close friends and family hurt themselves and some even resorted to suicide, and I hate how judgemetal people are of them. Not that I'm promoting cutting yourself, but I think eveyone could use better understanding of what people with these issues are going through.One of my firneds who cut himself told me that he did it because it was esier to deal with the physical pain in his wrist verses the pain he was feeling. People like thisdon't want to be like this, but alot of them just can't help it.
Depression is a mental illness, and I hope everyone out there would treat their brain like any other part of there body. If its sick or hurt get help. Its not your fault you feel the way you do, but there are ways to help. I struggled with depression my self(although I never esorted to cutting. plus Im a swimmer and couldn't get away with it anyways.)and it seems like eveything has gone wrong, and that even though your sorrounded by people your alone, and that people would be better without you, and sometime the emotional pain can be woirse then any physical pain you could imagine. But remeber that there are people out there who care for you, even if I don't know you I want you to live and live a happy life because each person matters.
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2010/06/22, 07:12 AM
:love: <3 hiii need advice please :(
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