Information sheet: Self-Harm
Self-Harm
What is self-harm?
Many of us perform occasional acts of mild self-irritation such as nail-biting, tooth-grinding, hair-pulling, skin-picking, etc. Some of us follow a fashion for piercing our bodies and inserting rings and studs. While these acts are relatively harmless and their motivations largely unconscious, self-harm is deliberate and can be severe. Its forms include skin laceration, burning, scalding and mutilation of limbs, torso and genitals. Instruments used can be knives, razors, scissors, fingernails, lit cigarettes.
Is self-harm a special category of stressed behaviour?
Self-harm shares a common origin with other self-abusive behaviours like addiction, anorexia, overeating, bulimia, gambling, compulsive disorders and risk-taking. Such actions tend to result from unmet needs and unexpressed feelings about them.
How do unmet needs make us want to harm ourselves?
Unmet needs in our past will have caused us to feel afraid, sad and angry. We may have learned early that expression of these feelings was unwelcome to those around us, so out of fear of the consequen-ces we kept them to ourselves.
Holding back our feelings always requires that we hold-in and re-duce our breathing. The diminished oxygen supply to the brain then makes us feel confused and fragmented; but despite this we will somehow try to think of a way to get our needs met. Maybe the only option that appears to be open to us involves some form of rounda-bout, indirect behaviour such as self-abuse.
But a stress-generated action can give only an indirect expression to an unmet need. This being so, it can only result in recycling the emotional pain. After each act of self-abuse we are back where we started and we remain fundamentally unsatisfied.
What makes us want to harm ourselves?
This is not primarily what we want to do. What we want to do is experience the sensation of releasing those stresses that have made us feel fragmented. We want to restore the vital unity of the whole self. But if we have learned to fear the consequences of expressing our feelings we will have had to develop strategies to protect ourselves from dreaded outcomes.
Perhaps we found that turning our aggression back upon our-selves proved a sure way to avoid the guilt of retaliating against others. Maybe those who were hurting us made us believe that it was our angry reactions that were hurting them; so we felt obliged to protect them by hurting ourselves. We may have feared being punished for meeting our own forbidden needs, so we controlled our actions by punishing our "guilty" body parts. Or we may have preferred to mutilate our own genitals rather than leave them available for abuse.
As victims, we had no control over what others did to us. As self-harmers, however, we do have control over injuries we inflict upon ourselves. We may enjoy the power we can now exercise: we are able to decide the time, the place, the method and the duration.
What do we gain from self-harm?
Rarely is there any clear, conscious motivation. Acts of self-injury are most often the result of numbness and confusion. "I felt so awful that I just couldn't think of anything else to do," is how one self-harmer expressed herself.
Self-harm by laceration resembles the medieval practise of blood-let-ting; it was believed that "bad humours" could be discharged in a flow of blood. "Bad humours," however, are not mysterious sub-stances in the bloodstream. They are held emotions and they can be released – not in a flow of blood but in the free flow of the out-breath. It was all along the held inhalation that had kept them lodged inside the respiratory and muscular system, from where they had exerted their dark pressure.
But breath, unlike blood, is invisible. An exhaled breath fails to deliver the raw emotional impact of an open would. For this reason a laceration can look like a real "opening up" of oneself; yet it is only skin-deep. A pattern of flesh-cuts may serve as a kind of scoreboard or an array of medallions that represent our hurts, but the excisions only open up the skin and surface tissue; they discharge none of the deep, abiding stresses that haunt our bodies and minds.
A cut can be seen as a cry for help. But paradoxically, at the same time as crying out for help we may feel ashamed, so we mark the skin only where it can be covered by clothing. Self-injury then becomes a secret ritual that defeats part of its original purpose.
How is it possible to self-harm despite the pain?
When pain is not resolved, the brain produces natural biochemical painkillers called endorphins. These have an anaesthetising effect that over time can result in a general numbing of vital responses. This numbness amounts to a form of depression, and self-injury can be an attempt to cut through it with a sharp experience of pain.
Self-harm is found to be practised frequently by those who are taking psychoactive medications designed to inhibit anxiety and aggression. These substances mimic the action of endorphins and regular intake can produce enduring states of lethargy and joyless-ness. The numbed consumer may feel a need to literally cut through their inertia to achieve some semblance of physical and emotional sensation and, through this, a sense of self.
How can counselling and therapy help?
An experienced Centre worker is able to help self-harmers help themselves with the emotional stress that underlies self-punishing behaviours. A skilled, non-judgmental listener provides an oppor-tunity to get things off our chests and release hurtful memories and held feelings in a safe and confidential setting.
In counselling, the origins of our behaviours can be explored at our own pace as we grow in self-understanding. In therapy, natural encouragement is given to our innate self-healing powers which enable us to effectively move beyond stress-related compulsions so we can discover more fulfilling experiences.