Self Injury: When Someone You Love Hurts

A concise look at what to do when someone you know and love is a self injurer. This is by no means a medical article, nor it is a treatment guide. This is simply what is happening, what you can do.

 

Self-Injury:

When Someone You Love Hurts

By Nyida Strong

 

 

 

Self-injury, self-harm, cutting, and mutilation are not phrases that are easy to think on, are they? They conjure up thoughts of frightening scenes in bathrooms and darkened bedrooms. Such negative ideas are common among those that do not know much regarding self injury. Many see self injury as a trend among teenagers today. That those who harm themselves must be seeking attention in some form and have stooped to an impossible level to get it. These ideas are not completely wrong as there are some who injure solely for the attention they can receive from it.

 

The vast majority of injurers, however, do not show off their scars. They hide the evidence, if anything. Wearing long sleeves or arm warmers in the summer and never wearing shorts or skirts are quite common among self injurers. Most hide for the same reason: fear of discovery. For most people, injury to oneself is a sick and twisted thing. My desire in this article isn’t to convince you otherwise, simply to educate you about the facts regarding self injury.

 

The reasons behind self injury are as vast as the people themselves. For some, they injure to punish themselves for feeling a certain way. For most, however, harming themselves is the only way they can cope with emotions, they never really learned how to deal with them in a healthy way. When a person gets angry, let’s say, they either can’t or don’t know how to deal and display that emotion healthily. This causes confusion and frustration, also not easy emotions to deal with. Instead of having to carry the pain of all that weight on their shoulders and in their hearts, they injure themselves. Physical pain is much easier to deal with then emotional pain. A few bandages and the person is just fine again.

 

But are they really? The deep emotional trauma of continually harming oneself in an effort to just feel better has devastating effects. Over time, the injurer will pull farther and farther away from others. They don’t trust they feel they can’t afford to. The idea of being close to someone is difficult to deal with, let alone actually attempt. Since most “normal” people think that self harm is gross, disgusting and sick, they shun and shame her. This doesn’t help, as she withdraws further into her own shell. (For the sake of simplicity, the feminine pronoun is used, though many males injure as well.)  She may already feel scared and alone, telling her she’s sick will only promote her fears of rejection and cause to isolate more.

 

The best thing to do is simply to try and understand her and her reasons for injury. The reasons alone can be as varied as the person herself. What shocks people the most is that they never would have thought she would be a cutter. But that’s the point; she never wanted you to know in the first place. Self injury was her secret.

Once you find out that your loved one –be it your son, daughter, best-friend, wife, husband- is an injurer, there are some things you can do to help. These things may not come easy to you, but think of her. The fact that now some one knows her darkest secret isn’t exactly easy for her either.

 

First, don’t judge her. She made a choice and, while it wasn’t the best one, she doesn’t need some one else besides herself to judge. She does that herself enough as it is, and the inner person can be brutal. Secondly, let her learn that she can trust you. Trust is a great and difficult thing for the self-harmer. They’ve usually been abused in some way and trust doesn’t come easy. She may even look for a reason as to why she doesn’t have to trust you. It’s nothing personal really, more like a safety mechanism.

 

Next, try to understand her. She’s need someone that can listen without judging her, someone that will at least try to see what she sees and feel what she feels. Since emotions may not have been taught and learned very well, be patient when she has difficulty expressing. Let the words and tears come as they will, let her know that you aren’t afraid of her and that she needn’t fear you. When you discover that she has hurt herself again, it isn’t wise to accuse her or give ultimatums. Falling beneath the “understanding” category, tell her that if and when she wants to talk, you’ll be waiting. Even if she never explains that injury to you, the idea that she can is very much in her mind.

 

When she cuts, it’s good to be sympathetic and ask her if she took care of the injury by cleaning it et cetera. Trying to make her feel safe is very important. After injury, one doesn’t feel very safe. Exhausted or high maybe, but rarely does she feel safe. While she may feel the high of the post-injury, endorphins released into the blood stream, making the pain feel pleasurable, she doesn’t feel very safe. Let her know that she can be.

 

This is a lot of information and I can understand if it’s a bit much to handle. I’ve noticed that far too many people don’t care about the harmers of this world. We exist and we are here. Unfortunately, we have no where to go and few places that are safe. Among some of the safe places are a few support chat rooms around the internet. There are also message boards where self injurers can receive support and information about treatments. Please use the resources available to find a safe place.

 

Families and friends, remember that an injurer is just like you, but has just never learned how to deal with emotions, or has been severely traumatized in their lives. Self injurers, I know that this is a difficult road that you find yourself on and I ask that you please be safe out there and use the many resources found on the internet and else where that you may lead a safe and healthy life and find peace.

 

N. Strong

Reviews

[Meffers]

Great explanation. I have read many other articles about SI and yours is very easy to read, me being a self injurer also, and has a lot of good points.

Thanks for the great article and showing how many others can help the sufferers of self injury, if it is themselves or a good friend/family member.

People uneducated about SI just make it worse when they think up their great ideas on how to "save" someone from it. It often just comes out a huge mess. I think this would help one of them. :)

Great article.

[Calypso]

Bless you. I wish other had this view point.

[Raef C. Boylan]

Asking whether they have cleaned/tended to the cut is a good way to show you're accepting and open-minded, as well as making sure the person is being practical about their health. I tend to advise parents etc to use that as an opening line with their kids if they've found out about their self-harm; it provides a focus and a beginning to the conversation, instead of getting angry and scaring the kid.
This is an objective and compassionate article, so well done. It's good that you make the point of saying the reasons for self-harm vary widely, as opposed to explaining it away with the impassive, sterotyped psychological reasons given in less-informed pieces. Yes, there may be factors in common but that doesn't mean there's all there is to it. So well done for that too.
You did a great job of talking about the difficulties in expressing emotions by actually giving an example; I think it's hard for other people to understand what is meant by this, and it's often only dealt with briefly.

The only constructive criticism I have to offer is that you've really only mentioned cutting as a form of self-injury and left out burning, bruising, hair-pulling etc - but then maybe this is because your article is derived from wisdom you've gained from your own S.I experiences, so you didn't want to venture into other arenas?
Overall, a good piece of writing.
It would have been handy to have been able to direct my parents to this when I was younger.

[nora]

this article is a huge help to me, if only to tell me that there are people who dont shun and hate on self-mutilators.
i have been surrounded by self-injury for a very long time; my boyfriend (he says he doesnt do it anymore, but i know he still does), my two older sisters, and my best friend are all self-injurers.
last year in school, i shouted at a boy for calling a cutter a 'freak'.
thanks for writing this, because it is a humoungous releif to know there are people out there who care :)