***Beware of self-injury related triggers***
I’m being a little repetitive here, as WillFindHope wrote a post on this very issue only the other week. But the question is still bugging me. What is it about self-injury, in whatever form, that is meant to be so bad? It’s a genuine query. I don’t get the horror that permeates it.
I know there’s a few ostensibly rational considerations. Cut yourself in the wrong place, and you could hit an artery, or simply go too deep. OK. Usually you’ll develop scars. Fair enough. But is the general horror surrounding the phenomenon really based on logical issues of such a nature?
Occasionally I lash out at myself in a fit of pique or whilst consumed with overwhelming anxiety, but the thing is, such injuries are by their nature superficial. They are a means to a panic-reducing end, nothing more and nothing less. A simple, quick and efficient means of relieving psychic pain.
People wank on and on about it being destructive. Why is it ‘destructive’? Being mental is fucking destructive, so surely having a means to deviate from that state of mind is, if anything, a positive thing. Yeah, I have scars. So what? They don’t bother me. I think there’s a twisted part of me that actually likes having them.
I stabbed myself on Saturday night. I inflicted several injuries, but the worst was about an inch deep. The assumption to all and sundry (and, indeed, in my above paragraph) is that I must have been going mental that night, but I wasn’t. This is a different type of injury, but one that I don’t think is unique to Little Old Me. I was, truly, simply curious to see how far I could stick the scalpel into my stomach. I also just love watching the blood flow. If find it seductive and mesmerising: I am fascinated by the paths it takes, the little tributaries it meanders into as it departs from the wound.
Is that normal? As I understand it, no – it isn’t. But ‘abnormal’ doesn’t necessarily equate to ‘harmful’, nor should it. Uniqueness and idiosyncrasy are good things. So is it dangerous? In this case, it’s highly controlled, my scalpel is really pretty small, I prepared (and later dealt with it) with disinfectant, tissues, steri-strips and dressings. I cleaned it the next day and have done so today. It’s not particularly painful. So what is it that disturbs people so much?
Paul thinks my new-ish stabbing obsession (this wasn’t the first time I did it) is about ‘reliving’ rapes. You know, the whole penetration with an object thing, blah blah. He said that “every single wound on [you] is inflicted by [Paedo].” I laughed in his face, and defended self-harm in the way I have done in this post. To be fair, Paul said that he doesn’t want me not to have this outlet – he just wants me not to hate myself, to see me as an object worthy of “something better”.
That would be all well and good if I thought my self-injury was about self-hatred, but I don’t think it is. It’s a tool. A resource that allows you some control back over your otherwise insane life. I was quite honest with him, and said that I actually didn’t care about having scars. He thinks that’s about showing the world that I have been somehow injured.
Again, I don’t know if I agree. I mean, I don’t go out of my way to hide the scars – I’m not ashamed particularly – but usually they’re covered up, largely because of the locations on which I harm myself. So it’s not some elaborate borderline “look at my poor hurt self!” conspiracy. Or if it is, then I am epically failing at it.
For me, it’s about coping, or surviving. I know there’s a danger of becoming addicted to it thanks to the physiological reactions that take place it its wake (endorphins rushing to the wound site and whatnot), but since I only do it every now and again, I don’t believe that I am a slave to its lure. The seductive element is very real, but it’s occasional. It’s exploratory and captivating – not some sort of attempt to seriously endanger myself.
So honestly – if it’s controlled, safe and at times even helpful, what is really so wrong with it, no matter how far removed from societal conventions it may be?
—
In other news, I have an appointment with a CPN next Tuesday. It’s a fucking woman. I jumped up and down in anger, screaming expletives at the letter, when I read this. I have made my distrust and fear of other females quite clear to the CMHT, and would happily have waited a while for one of the few blokes that does this job to act as my new nurse-person-thing (you’re doing a great job at being a feminist there, Pan). All the same, I’ll try not to pre-judge her – the letter was quite friendly, rather than the usual cold bile I’m used to from Psychiatry, so I concede that point to her at least. She shall be known, for the purposes of this bollocksy blog, as Christine.
After NewVCB saying that she would get me a CPN, she also said that she herself would see me again in “a couple of weeks”. By that estimation, I should have seen her last Wednesday…and guess what? I fucking haven’t! I should be getting used to this kind of pathetic ‘care’ from these wankers.
Anyway, I asked my mother to ring her tomorrow and see what’s going on, though I suspect I know the answer – the last time there was a big fuck up in my being seen, it was due to NewVCB’s secretary being off on long-term sick leave. Now the secretary is away again (to get married this time), and it seems that the Trust have (as usual) failed to hire competent temps. Hopefully, though, it can be easily sorted out – after all, NewVCB did tell me I was allowed to phone her should such difficulties arise.
A and I are going to a cottage in the country on Thursday, which is St Patrick’s Day. I do not like St Patrick’s Day. In fact, I actively hate St Patrick’s Day. People get leglessly pissed and are loud, selfish, generally pain-in-the-hole wankshafts. So we’re doing a runner to where no one will come near us, and we’re staying for three nights 
It will be just the kind of break I need before I start actively panicking about meeting Christine. I am sick of having to meet new people – or meeting people full stop. I’m sick of being mental.
—
I’ll try and continue my catch-up of posts about Paul tomorrow. In the meantime, this is the shittest post I’ve ever written – and that’s saying something. I actually don’t know why I’ve written it, but since I have, I’m hitting ‘Publish’. Now.
New Post » Why is Self-Harm Bad? http://j.mp/gm65TX #selfharm #selfinjury #mentalhealth #ukmh #mhuk #psychiatry #therapy #borderline #PTSD
omfg I couldnt agree more. I want to say more about the stabbing thing but not this publicly, so maybe I won’t!
I’m glad I’m not the only one who loves to just watch the blood trickle. It really soothes me and calms me down to watch the wiggly lines and watch the blood from different cuts meet and merge as i inevitably make more than 1 cut at a time. Personally, if i saw someone sitting on the sofa cutting themselves (as long as it wasnt a suicide attempt) it wouldn’t disturb me, whereas watching someone sitting on the sofa smoking does disturb me as they are damaging their internal organs possibly beyond repair and potentially damaging those around them. Self harm is personal and superficial. I can understand why the initial idea of self-harm is horrifying – but once you have educated yourself on the subject there is really no cause for horror any more so than knowing that your son or daughter smokes. That is what i told my mum when i first told her about cutting and she was mortified – i explained it to her and asked her if she would rather i smoked and she said neither but of the 2, S/H obviously sounded “better”.
Sorry you have been assigned a female CPN, i hope it isnt too bad for you. I am the same with men – i hate and distrust all men with a few exceptions. My initial CBT assessment was with a man and he was nice enough but deep down i knew i wouldnt get much out of it because i will never be able to make myself vulnerable with him and trust him enough to let him help me. I have since discovered that i will be getting a woman, as opposed to the man i had the assessment with so i am very happy about that!
I hope you have a lovely break with A
*hugs
xxxx
I think Cassie said something very similar on the post to which I linked in the first paragraph – it does seem completely incongruous. I’ve been back on cigarettes for a few months now, though am intending to re-give up next month. But I find it hard to see why it’s mostly OK for me to engage in a practice that destroys your body in the most painful and long-term sort of way, yet not participate in one that, if handled properly, should not do any significant harm, and indeed which is actually helpful!
It’s a weird world that we live in…
*hugs* for you hun, and for talkingtocactus too
x
I’ve never been a self-harmer so do kind of feel a bit of horror at the idea but I know that it does help my sis when she occasionally does it. I would rather she _not_ do it, but at the end of the day I’d rather that than she find herself seriously at risk of suicide, she has told me that it has prevented her making an attempt in the past.
I just wish people wouldn’t be so quick to judge. Most people don’t really get self-harm so how they think they can go about labelling it as emo, attention-seeking or just plain bad or whatever is beyond me!
Best wishes
Kate
Oh By The Way Pan,, lots of luck with the CPN, I hope she turns out to be helpful and supportive. Good luck with newVCB appt too
)
Best wishes
Kate
It’s not a shit post, seeing as you’ve written on the subject more eloquently I have, what does that make my blog post?
Seriously though, I obviously agree with you on this one. Though, a wound that’s an inch deep does sound a bit concerning…and is quite deep…
Thanks for linking to my blog and I hope meeting with your new CPN goes alright. I feel the same way about having to meet new people.
Take care,
Cassie x
I’m with you on the St. Patrick’s thing. People in the US do quite the same thing, and I’m not interested in being around drunks at the best of times.
I don’t drink beer, as I loathe hops, but the idea of green beer makes my stomach even more unhappy. Portuguese “green wines” are merely young, not green in colour, as far as I know. I have no reason to drink Creme de Menthe unless I want to vomit, and Absinthe is merely ok in my book.
I wouldn’t dream of colouring my whisky! The distillery masters of Islay would have my head!
Maybe it can be both – bad *and* useful?
I think the horror comes partly from people looking from a totally different perspective. I don’t self harm (unless you count a professionally done tattoo, applied at least partly because I couldn’t handle the level of pain in my head) but the more miserable I am and the more I hate myself, the closer I feel to understanding the attraction of it and the idea seems much more acceptable. Controlled physical pain is so much easier to deal with than overwhelming emotional pain.
Yet when I am slightly happier I am horrified by the idea and flip almost outside the realm of being able to understand it on anything other than an intellectual level. I don’t know what upsets me most about it then. It’s not, I don’t think, the potential for serious injury (though to me, in my relative ignorance, an inch sounds really deep!). I don’t think horror is that logical. It’s more a horrified sadness at the idea of attacking myself. I mean, I attack myself mentally all the time, with a constant stream of horrible berating. But that’s less visible and I don’t even notice I’m doing it, I don’t hear it as an inner voice, it’s just the TRUTH in my head. Whereas cutting myself would be more obvious.
I think the horror also comes from the expression of pain. When I imagine you self harming it horrifies me even more than the idea of doing it myself. This might be quite an irritating and futile response, but it makes me desperately want to take your psychic pain away. Who knows whether any part of you wants to elicit that rsponse in me? I don’t think Paul can *know*, but maybe you can’t either, for sure.
In a similar vein to the first line of this, I suppose both you and Paul can be right, in a way. You know what self harming means to you at the moment, at least consciously. Maybe he’s got some other potential meanings for it, that you may or may not incorporate in the future. I dunno. Sometimes I think my therapist is wrong about something and then some time later (hours, weeks, years) the meaning he was offering suddenly seems useful. I don’t know if that means he was right all along. I hope not, I hate being wrong! Maybe we are both right. Or wrong. The only person who can know what something means to me is me. But then I can also appreciate that things have other unconscious meanings that aren’t obvoius to me but sometimes become more obvious later.
Also, (apparently I could ramble about this indefinitely), isn’t hating yourself like being depressed, you get used to it? So then it’s hard er to tell where it come into play. Even if it isn’t *about* self-hatred, it maybe comes partly from that place? But equally it comes partly from whichever little bit of you is trying to cope and keep you alive?
Smoking is a good analogy. I remember being shown pictures of tar filled lungs at school and being horrified that my dad was doing that to himself. These days I look at it more as his way of coping with the horrible problem of life and his fairly obvious ambivalence about being alive. But I’d rather he smoked than sought a more final solution to life.
I’m sorry you’re sick of being mental. It does sound really fucking wearing and you deserve a break. I could also bang on forever about the concept of ‘deserving’ in the context of that last sentence, but I’ve taken up enough space here. Apologies for littering your comments section with typos!
Please don’t think I’m getting at you here but I do think self harm is bad. That doesn’t stop me doing it several times a day at the moment but I’m a bad person. Specifically I think it’s a sin. I think that it’s damaging the body that God gave me in the same way that smoking or binging is. I do those too. I know this isn’t probably a very joined up thought but it’s the way I feel. When I go to confession I confess that I’ve been self harming.
I’m sorry if that’s not what you wanted. I hope you have a fantastic break and take care of yourself lovey xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Self-harm is one of those things that freaks people out, and I can understand why, but I don’t think it’s inherently ‘bad’; I think only you can decide what it means for you and whether it’s worth it.
For me, self-harm was problematic for a number of reasons. I didn’t like the scars it left. The relief it provided was only very temporary (but I was desperate, so even that was better than nothing). And I guess you could say I was addicted – at one point I had to do it every day, and over time I had to hurt myself more severely to get the same effect, which meant worse scars and bigger risks. Self-harm became something to focus on, a distraction from my real problems (severe depression and the devastation it was wreaking on my life).
I was adamant I wasn’t going to stop until I started feeling better, and I stand by that! When I did stop, though, there were benefits – I was able to tackle the underlying problems better, I learned to ask for help directly rather than trying to ‘communicate’ how bad things were through self-harm, instead of punishing myself I started addressing the reasons why I felt I needed to be punished. Those were some of my reasons for cutting myself and yours may be different.
What frustrates me is when health professionals assume self-harm is THE problem, that stopping self-harm should be the main or only goal of treatment, or that you can tell how well someone’s doing simply by whether or not they’re hurting themselves. It’s rarely if ever that simple.
Although I’ve never done it, stabbing yourself strikes me as one of the riskier things you can do, so please do be careful and get it checked out if necessary.
Moon Tree x
I think this is a very interesting question, Pandora.
This comes from a non self-harmer mental so I can’t pretend to understand exactly. I am not religious or spiritually inclined and I don’t see things as being inherently “bad”. However, I tend to freak out at anything that damages my body in any way, especially after I studied medicine. I really feel bad for my tissues if I ever do anything to them. I don’t drink or smoke either. I don’t like having the integrity of my skin compromised. I had a surgery last month and I am still bothered by the wounds it left though they are mostly healed. It makes me impatient to have to wait for days or weeks until a wound has completed its healing process. Meanwhile I feel physically vulnerable to have a breach in my “protective coating”. Who knows what could happen while I’m down!, I think. Besides, if the wound is deep enough, the regeneration won’t happen perfectly, the connective tissue that replaces the normal skin is never as resistant or elastic as the original.
Maybe if we had immediate regenerative powers I wouldn’t see SI as that much of a big deal, though.
Also, I’m relatively stable at the moment, but I remember firmly thinking that I’d be less mental if I self harmed. I could be more functional, I could cope better with a horrible situation and move on, so I wanted to do it, but for the reasons above I couldn’t get myself to and now I am kind of glad I have that preventing me from starting. I find it to be an inadequate coping strategy. I find it to be something you can accept and deal with once is there, but not something desirable to have in one’s life. It is not the problem on itself and I believe that’s partly the issue, because it’d be ideal to address the original reasons why you started self harming, with the objective of not doing it anymore as a consequence of having processed those reasons.
I admit that I’m concerned by your stabbing. You could be in trouble if you cut deeper than the skin and enter the peritoneum. That area is not meant to be opened without knowing exactly what you’re doing. Please be careful.
I should note that the one inch deep wound is through an immense roll of fat, so (although I’m certainly no anatomist) I don’t think it’s that bad. It’ll scar, of course, but otherwise there’s no real damage. It’s well dressed and sealed too.
I should also thank you all for your comments, whether they agree with the post or not – very insightful, folks, thank you. Much love <3 xxx
Pan, it’s so weird that you and I are writing about the same subject. My thoughts on self-harm are varied and go different ways at different times. Before I forget though, I want to say that stabbing yourself in the stomach and deeply too, does sound more dangerous than “normal” (lol) self-harm, so please be careful, that worries me.
As for the rest, for me self-harm can serve several purposes: it relieves anxiety (that’s the biggest for me), it provides a release that I liken to an addict taking taking that first hit from a drug (addiction too though), it’s a distraction from mental and emotional anguish, it’s me taking control over when and how pain is inflicted on me, and I get scars.
Now the scar thing was interesting to me too, what your therapist said, because like you I do not show my scars but I find pleasure in having them. However, I also think that because of this your therapist has a point. I’ve thought about why I like having scars from self-injury and in part it’s because I look at them as battlescars. It’s a physical representation of what I’ve been through in my life. My abuse never left physical scars but now I can give myself scars, something physical that I can look at and say, ‘Yes! See, I have scars!’. BUT I never show them to anyone because the scars are for *me* not to show off, their private and they’re mine. Does that make sense?
I too sometimes wonder what the ‘big deal’ is about self-harm because you’re not trying to die you just want to feel that pain. But there is something unhealthy about it right? Needing to hurt oneself can’t be healthy and it really shows that we are suffering *inside*. Maybe that’s why it’s harmful, because if we deal with that magnitude of mental and emotional pain and anxiety but self-harm, we’re not really dealing with the root causes or issues and therefore we won’t heal, and if healing is our goal, we’re not helping ourselves. That’s the only way I can reason it. Don’t get me wrong, right now I’m in a similar boat as you so I get it, I really do. I’m looking at it right now though as someone who cares about *you* and doesn’t want you to hurt yourself because you deserve better.
The big thing is finding a different outlet for all of that anxiety etc. and I’m still working on that one.
RT @serialinsomniac: Some really interesting points on both sides in comments of last post "Why is Self-Harm Bad?" http://bit.ly/i1mm4K Than
You pose good questions. I guess I wonder, why is it bad for you, specifically? I haven’t hacked, but I’m not really horrified…so, like smoking and alcoholism maybe it’s no worse, but I don’t find much to commend those activities, either. I think I understand how you say it started, e.g. anxiety, etc. but then there’s a group of copycat morons like me out there who do self-destructive things because others do it, thinking it seems “dangerous” or “gothic” or “cool.” I know some whose scars are now conversation pieces. But in your case it seems truly like one of those existential questions about you, actually. Keep Safe!
I wondered the same thing about self-harm – i got fed up of the assumption everyone had that i wanted to give it up, and wanted their crap advice (plastic band on the wrist, anyone?). I ended up getting so frustrated that i asked my GP what was so wrong with it, considering it’s a safer coping mechanism than most (eg, smoking, drinking, etc). She paused for thought and then said that people find it very uncomfortable because it’s an expression of emotion – people don’t like to see emotion. With other coping mechanisms (such as smoking) we can fool ourselves into thinking someone is always doing it for enjoyment, whereas it’s not always the case.
A very interesting post Pandora, coupled with some very interesting comments.
I’ve never deliberately harm myself in the sense which you’re referring to, though I do–on occasion–drink alcohol, and I used to smoke. Although I certainly don’t judge you–and others that self-injure–I do also understand the horror that most people have about it. It’s not that I think you are a “freak” or “emo” or “attention-seeking” or any of the other pejorative labels that are often applied–I am simply very sad that you feel it’s necessary.
I’m also very squeamish, but that’s my issue alone.
I first read this post this morning, but other than the squeamishness and sadness, I couldn’t work out *what* disturbs me about deliberate self-injury. I’ve just read the newer comments and think Josie has hit the nail on the head–society doesn’t like to think about emotional scars (translated into physical ones in this case). I think that’s why mental illness in general is still so stigmatized: we are simply not brought up these days to connect with feeling. It is not our parents’ fault–it’s just the way most of society has developed. Probably a coping mechanism for all the horrid things in the world, such as what happened to you.
The good thing is, therapy can (hopefully) reverse a lot of this repression, and I think that society is changing again, so that properly and healthily exploring feelings and emotions can be achieved.
(Of course I’m generalizing here but I hope you get my drift.)
Sorry for taking up so much of your comments section–I think this is my longest comment on your blog (or any other) ever!!
Sincerely
Robert =]
This is a really interesting one. As a (touch-wood) ‘recovering’ self-harmer I remember strongly the relief I garnered from letting out the blood. And in some ways I miss it. But one of my most vivid and horrible memories, and one which I think informs my whole current take on the issue, is of the reaction of my mum when she saw something I had done to myself- she was, quite simply, utterly devastated. Yes its my life, my body, but it’s also one she created, and I guess to her it was the same as seeing your toddler being cut up with a knife. I couldn’t give a toss what judgements the professional made on me, but the effect on my family and friends had a great impact and did help me in the road to removing self-harm from my life.
Take care Pan, I hope the female CPN turns out to be the exception that proves the rule and that you find her easy to work with.
Loads of love xxxxxx
I’d agreed with Cassie on self-harm being a good thing, and of many great comments, I liked Moon Tree’s POV that the issue to deal with isn’t the self-harm but the reasons why.
Paul sounds quite good about it, but I wasn’t so sure how much you ‘felt’ the truth that stabbing=self-rape? (ie, that stabbing is different to slashing, hanging, burning, etc) It’s hardly a radical suggestion that one form of penetration is equivalent to another. Not asking for feelings, but would have been interesting to know thoughts! (Just that, while I defend other forms of self-harm as ‘healthy’, know that this particular one isn’t so healthy. Useful from a psychoanalytic perspective, but not healthy!)
Good luck with the CPN. Not a good start to the relationship. You probably also wouldn’t get the value that I’ve done of -having had to talk to a woman- for that person to have one of the lovely Irish accents and therefore pleasant to talk to. And having brought this down to racism (even if positive)- enjoy your March 17th escape!
Pan, you’ve inspired me to deal with the issue of having (and maybe preferring) a male therapist despite being a hardline feminist. I’ve cited your role generally, but yell if it’s not enough. it’s at http://theurbanworrier.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/girls-just-wanna-have-fun/
I gave myself four stitches once, after a night of heavy drinking. I fell down on glass the night before and got nothing but a deep gash in my calf – believe me, I needed stitches. So I sterilized and sewed myself up, the whole situation went down brilliantly. And damn was it an endorphin rush. I caught myself just puncturing my skin constantly after that because I always had pins lying around (I sew, and I’m good at it). Not cuts or anything, just pinpricks, but they were every day and always. Just take the pin and jam it halfway it into my calf, pull it out, throw it away, and continue on my merry way. And then I ran out of pins and decided it was probably time to stop sticking myself for no good reason.
That’s really the closest way I can relate to this. I was a compulsive pin-pricker. So hardcore.
Do you do it for fun? Or is there a reason? I feel like it makes a difference, although I have no idea what that difference is. Thinking.
I wrote a very similar post years ago, because I have never understood why it’s seen in such a hysterical way. I self-harmed pretty badly, and I’m scared for life and I hate it. But there were far more worrying things going on with me than self harm- yet it was consistently focused upon. I never did it for any profound reason- I didn’t do it when I was depressed, I did it often to calm down and slow my mind down. Sometimes I did it out of hatred for my body. Now I’m genuinely deformed! Body dysmorphia there, marvellous. Self harm, apart from scarring and the risk of infection and muscle damage, does no long term damage. But people aren’t sent to special teams for smoking. I think it’s a cultural thing. It’s unacceptable in Britain, culturally.
When I was in Barcelona, I had my sleeves down, for the most part. But one day, going to the beach, I took my cardigan off. A Brazilian man came over to Robert and gestured to me. I stiffened- I always do if someone gestures to me. I put my cardigan back on. The Brazillian had said to Robert that I was a goddess. I’d be adored in Brazil because of my scars. How strong and tough I was!
Go figure.
[...] another question from Confessions of a Serial Insomniac. Why is self-harm bad? Paul thinks my new-ish stabbing obsession (this wasn’t the first time I did it) is about [...]
For me, self harm was bad because it was an addiction. I was a very mild case as they go – all the scars are faded now, five years later – but once my therapist pointed it out, I realized it was starting to take on a life of its own. It had started as a form of self-medication, but I was starting to cut just for the sake of cutting, and needed more every time. Addiction runs in my family – my dad’s addiction pretty well destroyed my family growing up – so once I realized that’s what the self-harm was becoming, I knew I had to stop. I’ve seen more than enough lives destroyed by addictions, I’m not going to add my own to the list.
I’ll admit that this bit of your post rang alarm bells for me: “Since I only do it every now and again, I don’t believe that I am a slave to its lure. The seductive element is very real, but it’s occasional. It’s exploratory and captivating – not some sort of attempt to seriously endanger myself.” All addictions are captivating. Extremely few people ever intend to seriously endanger themselves. But they end up there anyway.
My dad successfully kept his addiction a secret for years, and it wasn’t one that showed physical symptoms, so he thought it was harmless to live that way. The truth was that like all addicts, he was a slave to his addiction, and over the years became completely self-centered and lost all ability to connect with other human beings. It absolutely was harmful to him and to everyone around him. His neglect and sometimes harsh treatment of his kids was a major part of why I started to self-harm – he was always right and I wasn’t allowed to get angry with him, so I beat myself with my fists instead.
Self-harm didn’t solve anything for me. It made a great safety valve for otherwise intolerable emotions – like Granuaile said, “Controlled physical pain is so much easier to deal with than overwhelming emotional pain.” Something about the sight of blood was particularly hypnotizing too. One therapist told me it’s a common reaction to objectification – “look, I can bleed. I’m a real person, not an automaton.” And the healing wounds and scars proved that I could and did overcome difficult situations, that I could heal. But in the end, it didn’t do anything to resolve problems or move me forward as a person, and it did risk becoming a serious addiction.
So yes, I think people freak out all out of proportion to a few fingernail scratches, (and I believe that’s a reflexive instinct and not something that can or should be changed) but at the same time, it is playing with fire. It reminds me a bit of the situation with the Japanese nuclear plants right now – the meltling fuel rods and slightly radioactive steam really aren’t doing measurable damage to anyone, but it’s still a very serious situation that has the potential for some real damage. It’s not likely that self harm is going to kill you, but all the same I’d get away from it as soon as you reasonably can.
Tl;dr: Addictions are nasty shit, stay the hell away from them. Can you tell this is something I feel strongly about?
Good luck with your care going forward. May it turn out better than you’re expecting!
Not bad, a week on and still comments about this one. Hi Pan, how’s things going? Yup, genuinely interested so ner. Anyway, it’s interesting to read the comments and see the differing perspecives on what is, for one reason or another, a controversial subject.
To be pedantic, could what you’re doing be defined as self harm? The principle purpose is in the name, to cause harm. If you cause yourself pain because you enjoy it then you’re generally termed a masochist and there’s nothing wrong with that (not from my perspective but then I’m a sadist so I would say that). If you do it to make a mark then how are you different to someone with a tattoo or any other form of body modification?
I’m not going to lie, I don’t understand the fascination of watching the trails of blood etc, but then the point is about harm. Are you wanting to harm yourself? Of course therein lies the vagueness of definition of harm but then the person, in her/himself, knows if they were intent on harm or not. If not then describing the act as self harm becomes counter intuitive.
Btw, for me the whole thing of cutting to take away the pain is defined as self harm as there’s no control per se.
Thank you for speaking plainly in your description of self-cutting. I would expect self-injury to confine itself to cuts of less than 1/16″–just enough to affect the epithelial layer. If I read the scientific literature correctly, the body rightly assumes that anything penetrating this layer—be it claw or weapon—is bad news and large doses of endorphins are released as part of the defense measures. Cutting to greater depths may not increase these releases much if any. I am not a cutter, but know people who are. Their cuts all appeared to exactly match the location of the epithelial layer, with few exceptions. The ones who began cutting deeper than that did so only when the shallow cutting was no longer producing the desired effects (endorphins relieve pain and elevate the mood slightly). When the deeper cuts failed to cause new endorphin releases, they became depressed. I am not a professional, but you may have reached the limits of the physiological effects of self-injury. If so, it is either time to change directions or check out a bona fide recovery program like Cutters Anonymous. What you do it entirely up to you. I wish you well in your life’s journey.
I just found your blog and wanted to say..
I don’t think self harm is “bad”. As a short term coping mechanism it works quite well but self-harm is a depressant.
At first it is great because the feelings you want to suppress become suppressed and life feels more manageable – who wouldn’t want that, right? Over the long term though, all emotions become muted and the only thing that remains is this emptiness that needs the self injury to make it through each moment. Well, that is my experience of self harm.
I would never tell someone to just stop self harming. I know it is much more complex and difficult than that. Even though I count myself as a former harmer, I still have relapses from time to time. What I will not do though is ever promote or condone self harm. It’s called self harm for a reason; it is harmful.
A lot of people self harm because they fear they cannot cope without it. I would much rather advocate that they can cope. I f the right resources and support are there, with the tools being taught, people can heal within themselves and feel able to stop self-harming. The problem with the NHS, like many mental health institutes, is that they lack those things in the self-harm support infrastructure. They still very much treat it as something we can easily control if we just want it enough. They also have nothing in place for understanding why someone might not want to stop self harming.
I have a creative project for self harmers (or former ones) to share what their scars say. It’s available here if you’re interested in contributing: http://ifmyscarscouldtalk.wordpress.com/
Brave and wonderfully frank post. I hope you’re doing okay