By: Barbara Stott

Barbara Stott — Sun, 01 May 2011 19:58:58 +0000

Self harm has more than one cause, and it is important to understand the motivation, even if the person hurting himself doesent, if it is going to be prevented or reduced.
I spoke to one man in psychiatric hospital who burned himself with cigarettes. He did not want attention. He did not want to hurt himself. He wanted to make a mark, a statement about himself, for himself.
What he was doing was motivated in the same way that one would immagine someone would be motivated to obtain a tattoo. Something that would not be considered likely to be associated with mental illness.
He wanted the mark to be permanent at the time, but knew that he would regret it if it actualy was permanent.
He agreed that a henna tattoo lasts for months, and would disappear, not long after he started to regret it. He was more than happy for it to be safe and painless, and for him it was a perfect solution to that problem.
This is a motivation for self harm that is rarely mentioned. Does anyone know of similar cases, whether from experience or in psychiatric literature?
In this case it was associated with obsessive compulsive behaviours which had been emphasised by psychiatric abuse(and misdiagnosed as shizophrenia).

Another motivation for self harm is as an excuse to seek comfort.

It could be to express phsically how much someone is hurting the person emotionally. This experssion could be to the person huring the injured or to someone else.

It is often considered attention seeking in the same way that making a loud noise might be.

These three reasons are often grouped together as a cry for help. They all show how much more seriously physical harm is treated than psychological harm. Self harm is often a way to display emotional neglect or psychological abuse.

Depictions on the internet are unlikely to lead to self harm, unless someone is in an emotional state where they are highly predisposed to it anyway.

Should the first response to self harm be to treat the injury and investigate the family and social situation of the injured person?

A person who is subjected to psychological abuse or neglect, may not be aware that they are, or may feel it is impossible to express how they are mistreated.

On the other hand it is easy to assume that someone has the standard motivation, and push them into expressing a sense of mistreatment that is not the cause of the problem.

When someone crys for help, shouldn’t you help? Of course you don’t want to reinforce the problem by rewarding the behavoiur. Both the immediate distress and the route cause needs to be dealt with.

As well as avoiding rewarding the behaviour, it can also be important to avoid punishing the behavoiur. If someone hurts themself physically, because they don’t feel justified in seeking comfort, the last thing they need is for the comfort they seek to continue to be refused.

Self harm can be used as a controlling or passive aggressive pattern of behaviour. That may or may not mean that the person is excessively controlling in nature. People use all sorts of differnt means to secure a their place in society. Self harm could be exhibited in an extreme situation by someone who in normal circumstances uses inteligent more than aggressive means to ensure that there interests are not disregarded to a threatening extent.

In families with rare blood groups, donors sometimes sell blood with a differential pricing($10,000 unless released), so that the authorities are strongly motivated to release someone who needs blood from an institution. This is an indicator of a family or race group fighting against state repression. If a child deliberately loses a pint of blood to get out of state care, can they really be receiving care?

Is loss of a pint of blood actually worse for a child than ongoing psychological mistreatment?

Is it the family or the sate that is excessively controlling?

That leads on the the question ‘Is passive aggressive behavoiur necessarily unacceptable behaviour?’:but that’s a separate topic.

By: charlie

charlie — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 18:15:52 +0000

I think one has to be careful about how one approaches self-injury.

First, let’s recognise that there are forms of self-injury which are socially acceptable or even encouraged. Tattooing and ear piercing are two examples. The definitions for social acceptability vary dramatically between cultures: ritual scarification is very common in many places. The above discussion focuses on youth, but does not seem to consider the possibility that youth subculture simply has a different set of standards for (in)appropriate self-injury. Even if you ultimately decide to stop these behaviors, I think that a more nuanced discussion of their cultural context is necessary to do so.

I’m a cutter and a burner, and I have been for about a decade. (I am 25, no, for real.) When I read this article, the author’s preconceptions stand out clear as day: ‘youth at risk … dangerous behavior … self-destructive behavior.’ My first reaction to this sort of attitude is typically: Screw you! they’re my arms; I know best what to do with them. Again, if you want to stop me from putting matches out on my skin, I don’t think that this attitude is going to help you.

‘Dangerous’? Playing soccer is dangerous; so is crossing the street. I know how not to cut an artery and how not to get an infection. I’m not stupid, nor is your typical cutter. Now, what would be interesting is if there were educational videos explaining how to safely self-injure – YouTube could play a positive role in a harm reduction strategy! ‘Self-destructive’? Only in the most shallow of analyses (Is BDSM a ‘destructive’ behavior? The distinction between it and self-injury seems hazy at best. What’s the difference between scratching oneself and agreeing to have a partner do it?). I cut and burn for a number of reasons, none of which I would describe as ‘self-destructive’. The discussion above would seem to acknowledge that the behaviors can actually be acts of self-preservation: ‘individuals who self-injure do so to alleviate negative emotions, express self-directed anger, or resist suicidal thoughts.’

Quite frankly, my self-injury has been a more effective tool for managing my psyche than any drug I’ve been prescribed.

Comments on: Self-Injury and the Internet

By: Barbara Stott

By: charlie