Self-harm, or an injury inflicted on oneself, often by cutting or burning, is generally a sign of intense inner turmoil, anxiety, and/or suppressed emotions. Self-injuring behavior is not the same as a suicide attempt: Though some individuals who self-harm may attempt suicide, in general, acts of self-harm do not indicate a desire to end one’s life. A person might harm him or herself to express pain, anxiety, or other emotions or to maintain a feeling of control over his or her body when other situations in life seem outside his or her control. This behavior often develops in adolescence and, if left untreated, may continue for many years.
Most girls and young women who harm themselves are not suicidal, and they don’t want anybody to find out. They don’t want to be discovered. That’s why they wear long sleeves, so nobody will see their wrists; or, more often nowadays, they cut themselves on the upper inner thigh, where nobody will look. Cutting themselves with razor blades, or burning themselves with matches, becomes compulsive, almost addictive for some girls. There is now evidence that for at least some girls, this behavior triggers a release of endogenous opiates. Cutting delivers a weird kind of disembodied rush. “I felt like I was up on the ceiling, watching myself do it,” another girl states that “I was literally high.”
How common is it? Much more common than it used to be. Studies from the 1990’s suggested rates of 3% or lower. But more recent studies suggest that as many as one in five girls between 10 and 18 years of age are now cutting themselves with razor blades or burning themselves with matches, etc.
The stereotype is that kids who cut themselves are depressed. While that stereotype is usually accurate for boys, it’s less reliably accurate for girls. Most boys who cut themselves are depressed, but many girls are not. Janis Whitlock and her colleagues at Cornell (Whitlock et al. 2008) found that college women injure themselves differently, and for different reasons, compared to college men. Researchers have found that girls are more likely than boys to self-injure as a means of self-punishment, while boys are more likely to self-injure in the aftermath of a romantic break-up (Adler & Adler 2007; Rodham et al. 2004). But most research overlooks these gender differences. Boys who are failing in every aspect of their life, who hit the wall during an argument, are lumped into the same category with girls who seem to be doing great, but who are cutting themselves in secret.
Self-harm can be a way of coping with problems. It may help you express feelings you can’t put into words, distract you from your life, or release emotional pain. Afterwards, you probably feel better—at least for a little while. But then the painful feelings return, and you feel the urge to hurt yourself again. If you want to stop but don’t know how, remember this: you deserve to feel better, and you can get there without hurting yourself.
How can you tell if someone is self-harming?
Signs and symptoms of cutting and self-harm
Self-harm includes anything you do to intentionally injure yourself. Some of the more common ways include:
- cutting or severely scratching your skin
- burning or scalding yourself
- hitting yourself or banging your head
- punching things or throwing your body against walls and hard objects
- sticking objects into your skin
- intentionally preventing wounds from healing
- swallowing poisonous substances or inappropriate objects
Self-harm can also include less obvious ways of hurting yourself or putting yourself in danger, such as driving recklessly, binge drinking, taking too many drugs, and having unsafe sex.
Because clothing can hide physical injuries, and inner turmoil can be covered up by a seemingly calm disposition, self-injury can be hard to detect. However, there are red flags you can look for (but remember—you don’t have to be sure that you know what’s going on in order to reach out to someone you’re worried about):
- Unexplained wounds or scarsfrom cuts, bruises, or burns, usually on the wrists, arms, thighs, or chest.
- Blood stainson clothing, towels, or bedding; blood-soaked tissues.
- Sharp objects or cutting instruments,such as razors, knives, needles, glass shards, or bottle caps, in the person’s belongings.
- Frequent “accidents.”Someone who self-harms may claim to be clumsy or have many mishaps, in order to explain away injuries.
- Covering up.A person who self-injures may insist on wearing long sleeves or long pants, even in hot weather.
- Needing to be alone for long periods of time, especially in the bedroom or bathroom.
- Isolation and irritability.
How does cutting and self-harm help?
- “It expresses emotional pain or feelings that I’m unable to put into words. It puts a punctuation mark on what I’m feeling on the inside!”
- “It’s a way to have control over my body because I can’t control anything else in my life.”
- “I usually feel like I have a black hole in the pit of my stomach, at least if I feel pain it’s better than feeling nothing.”
- “I feel relieved and less anxious after I cut. The emotional pain slowly slips away into the physical pain.”
It’s important to acknowledge that self-harm helps you—otherwise you wouldn’t do it. Some of the ways cutting and self-harming can help include:
- Expressing feelings you can’t put into words
- Releasing the pain and tension you feel inside
- Helping you feel in control
- Distracting you from overwhelming emotions or difficult life circumstances
- Relieving guilt and punishing yourself
- Making you feel alive, or simply feel something, instead of feeling numb
Once you better understand why you self-harm, you can learn ways to stop self-harming, and find resources that can support you through this struggle.
Understanding cutting and self-harm
Self-harm is a way of expressing and dealing with deep distress and emotional pain. As counterintuitive as it may sound to those on the outside, hurting yourself makes you feel better. In fact, you may feel like you have no choice. Injuring yourself is the only way you know how to cope with feelings like sadness, self-loathing, emptiness, guilt, and rage.
The problem is that the relief that comes from self-harming doesn’t last very long. It’s like slapping on a Band-Aid when what you really need are stitches. It may temporarily stop the bleeding, but it doesn’t fix the underlying injury. And it also creates its own problems.
If you’re like most people who self-injure, you try to keep what you’re doing secret. Maybe you feel ashamed or maybe you just think that no one would understand. But hiding who you are and what you feel is a heavy burden. Ultimately, the secrecy and guilt affects your relationships with your friends and family members and the way you feel about yourself. It can make you feel even more lonely, worthless, and trapped.
Myths and facts about cutting and self-harm
Because cutting and other means of self-harm tend to be taboo subjects, the people around you—and possibly even you—may harbor serious misconceptions about your motivations and state of mind. Don’t let these myths get in the way of getting help or helping someone you care about.
Myth: People who cut and self-injure are trying to get attention.
Fact: The painful truth is that people who self-harm generally do so in secret. They aren’t trying to manipulate others or draw attention to themselves. In fact, shame and fear can make it very difficult to come forward and ask for help.
Myth: People who self-injure are crazy and/or dangerous.
Fact: It is true that many people who self-harm suffer from anxiety, depression, or a previous trauma—just like millions of others in the general population. Self-injury is how they cope. Slapping them with a “crazy” or “dangerous” label isn’t accurate or helpful.
Myth: People who self-injure want to die.
Fact: Self-injurers usually do not want to die. When they self-harm, they are not trying to kill themselves—they are trying to cope with their pain. In fact, self-injury may be a way of helping themselves go on living. However, in the long-term, people who self-injure have a much higher risk of suicide, which is why it’s so important to seek help.
Myth: If the wounds aren’t bad, it’s not that serious.
Fact: The severity of a person’s wounds has very little to do with how much he or she may be suffering. Don’t assume that because the wounds or injuries are minor, there’s nothing to worry about.
If self-harm helps, why stop?
Although self-harm and cutting can give you temporary relief, it comes at a cost. In the long term, it causes far more problems than it solves.
- The relief is short lived, and is quickly followed by other feelings like shame and guilt. Meanwhile, it keeps you from learning more effective strategies for feeling better.
- Keeping the secret from friends and family members is difficult and lonely.
- You can hurt yourself badly, even if you don’t mean to. It’s easy to misjudge the depth of a cut or end up with an infected wound.
- If you don’t learn other ways to deal with emotional pain, it puts you at risk for bigger problems down the line, including major depression, drug and alcohol addiction, and suicide.
- Self-harm can become addictive. It may start off as an impulse or something you do to feel more in control, but soon it feels like the cutting or self-harming is controlling you. It often turns into a compulsive behavior that seems impossible to stop.
The bottom line: self-harm and cutting don’t help you with the issues that made you want to hurt yourself in the first place.
Need help for self-harm?
Figure out why you cut
Understanding why you cut or self-harm is a vital first step toward your recovery. If you can figure out what function your self-injury serves, you can learn other ways to get those needs met—which in turn can reduce your desire to hurt yourself.
Identify your self-harm triggers
Remember, self-harm is most often a way of dealing with emotional pain. What feelings make you want to cut or hurt yourself? Sadness? Anger? Shame? Loneliness? Guilt? Emptiness?
Once you learn to recognize the feelings that trigger your need to self-injure, you can start developing healthier alternatives.
Get in touch with your feelings
If you’re having a hard time pinpointing the feelings that trigger your urge to cut, you may need to work on your emotional awareness. Emotional awareness means knowing what you are feeling and why. It’s the ability to identify and express what you are feeling from moment to moment and to understand the connection between your feelings and your actions.
The idea of paying attention to your feelings—rather than numbing them or releasing them through self-harm—may sound frightening to you. You may be afraid that you’ll get overwhelmed or be stuck with the pain. But the truth is that emotions quickly come and go if you let them. If you don’t try to fight, judge, or beat yourself up over the feeling, you’ll find that it soon fades, replaced by another emotion. It’s only when you obsess over the feeling that it persists.
References
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sax-sex/201003/why-are-so-many-girls-cutting-themselves
http://www.helpguide.org/articles/anxiety/cutting-and-self-harm.htm
http://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/issues/self-harm