Self-Injury...part 1

In my next few posts I will be talking about self-injury; what it is, what it is not and I will also be sharing some of my own personal experiences and writings about self-injury.

Self-injury is an epidemic in the US with teens as well as adults, in the secular world and even with Christians. It is an issue that needs to come out of the dark and needs to be addressed; I am living proof of these statistics.

Self-injury is the act of attempting to alter a mood state to deliberately cause harm to one’s own body. This is not a conscious attempt at suicide, though some people may see it that way. Most self-abusers are not suicidal; they are looking for a way out from their pain.

Here are a few ways that people self-injure:
· Cutting, the most common form of self-injury. It is achieved with knives, broken glass, razor blades, scissors, paper clips or any other sharp object.
· Burning or branding an object into the flesh
· Picking at old wounds and not allowing them to heal
· Hair pulling
· Extreme nail biting
· Hitting or beating on ones self
· Excessive tattooing may also be a kind of self-injury if pain or stress is a factor.


It is not self-abuse if the primary purpose is: sexual pleasure, body decoration, fitting in or being cool!

There have been numerous reports that many people who self-injure have a history of sexual abuse, physical and/or emotional abuse. Some may come from broken homes, alcoholic homes, have emotionally absent parents or where never allowed to show negative feelings growing up. Most people who self-injure are unable to handle intense feelings and are unable to express their emotions verbally. This is a copping mechanism as a way to express ones feelings and emotions and sometimes a way to punish oneself. It can also be a survival tool for not committing suicide.

You may be wondering why someone would intentionally harm themselves. Self-injury can help someone relieve intense feelings such as anger, sadness, loneliness, shame, guilt and other deep emotional pain. Many people who cut themselves, do this in an attempt to try and release all the emotions they are feeling internally. Others feel so numb, that seeing their own blood helps them feel alive because they usually feel so dead inside. Some people find that dealing with physical pain is easier than dealing with emotional pain. Self-injury is also used as a way to punish oneself. Some people carry a tremendous amount of shame and guilt and find the need to be punished for what they have done or endured in their lives.

You may also ask, aren’t people who 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 is as understandable to most people and as accepted by society as alcoholism, drug abuse, overeating, anorexia, bulimia, smoking cigarettes and other forms of problem avoidance are.

Self-injurers come from all walks of life and all economic brackets. They can be male or female; gay, straight or bi-sexual; have Ph.D’s, high school students or high school drop outs; rich or poor and can come from any country in the world. Some people who self-injure manage to function effectively in demanding jobs. Their ages range from early teens to early 60’s, maybe older and younger. 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.

We aren’t born knowing how to express and cope with our emotions. We learn from everyone in our lives. One factor common to most people who self-injure, whether they were abused or not, is invalidation! They were taught at an early age that their interpretations of and feeling about the things around them were bad and wrong. They learned that certain feelings weren’t allowed; they may have been severely punished for expressing certain thoughts and feelings. You can’t learn to cope effectively with distress unless you grow up around people who are coping effectively with distress. How could you learn to cook if you’d never seen anyone work in a kitchen?

Now that we know a little about what self-injury is, in my next post we’ll take a closer look at what happens in the mind of a self-abuser and how the body reacts. I will also share a bit of own personal attachment to this issue.