Self-injury

self- injury

Who engages in self-injury?

This behavior is not limited by gender, race, education, age, sexual orientation, socio-economics, or religion. However, there are some commonly seen factors:
Self-injury more commonly occurs in adolescent females. Many self-injurers have a history of physical, emotional or sexual abuse. Many self-injurers have co-existing problems of substance abuse, obsessive-compulsive disorder (or compulsive alone), or eating disorders.
Self-injuring individuals were often raised in families that discouraged expression of anger, and tend to lack skills to express their emotions. Self-injurers often lack a good social support network.

What are the types of self-injury?

-Cutting
-Burning (or “branding” with hot objects)
-Picking at skin or re-opening wounds
-Hair-pulling (trichotillomania)
-Hitting (with hammer or other object)
-Bone-breaking
-Head-banging (more often seen in autistic, severely retarded or psychotic people)
-Multiple piercing or multiple tattooing

How does self-injury become addictive?


•The first incident may occur by accident, or after seeing or hearing of others who engage in self-injury.The person has strong feelings such as anger, fear, anxiety, or dread before an injuring event. These feelings build, and the person has no way to express or address them directly. Cutting or other self-injury provides a sense of relief, a release of the mounting tension. A feeling of guilt and shame usually follows the event. The person hides the tools used to injure, and covers up the evidence, often by wearing long sleeves. The next time a similar strong feeling arises, the person has been “conditioned” to seek relief in the same way. The feelings of shame paradoxically lead to continued self-injurious behavior. The person feels compelled to repeat self-harm, which is likely to increase in frequency and degree.


Why do people engage in self-injury?



Self-injury temporarily relieves intense feelings, pressure or anxiety. Self-injury provides a sense of being real, being alive – of feeling something. Injuring oneself is a way to externalize emotional internal pain – to feel pain on the outside instead of the inside. Self-injury is a way to control and manage pain – unlike the pain experienced through physical or sexual abuse. Self-injury is a way to break emotional numbness (the self-anesthesia that allows someone to cut without feeling pain). Self-abuse is self-soothing behavior for someone who does not have other means to calm intense emotions. Self-loathing – some self-injurers are punishing themselves for having strong feelings (which they were usually not allowed to express as children), or for a sense that somehow they are bad and undeserving (an outgrowth of abuse and a belief that it was deserved). Self-injury followed by tending to wounds is a way to express self-care, to be self-nurturing, for someone who never learned how to do that in a more direct way. Harming oneself can be a way to draw attention to the need for help, to ask for assistance in an indirect way. Sometimes self-injury is an attempt to affect others – to manipulate them, make them feel guilty or bad, make them care, or make them go away.