My journey so far: From Self Harm to Recovery part 2

Time for part 2 of my self harm blog. This particular post will be discussing why people self harm and why I did. Like I always say this blog is from personal experience. If you have any questions for me just leave them in the comment section. Anyway lets get started.

Why do people self harm? 
A person who self-harms is likely to have gone through very difficult, painful experiences as a child or young adult. At the time, they probably had no one they could confide in, so didn't receive the support and the emotional outlet they needed to deal with it. The experience might have involved physical violence, emotional or sexual abuse. They might have been neglected, separated from someone they loved, been bullied, harassed, assaulted, isolated, put under intolerable pressure, made homeless, sent into care, into hospital or to other institutions.



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.

Warning signs that a family member or friend is cutting or self-injuring

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 scars from cuts, bruises, or burns, usually on the wrists, arms, thighs, or chest.
• Blood stains on 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. 

Why do people Self Harm?
 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.

How does cutting and self-harm help?

In your own words

• “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.

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.


IN the end, if your self harming you need to seek help. Find someone you can confide in. It took me a while so find someone I could confide in. But once I did I find relief. IM here to say it gets better. And for now that is all. I can send you reference on this info if requested. Have a good day everyone.

Howard
Dark_Mousy