Chapter Three |
“She doesn’t remember how it all began.. she remembered being angry, at her life, at herself, and then the next thing she knew she was digging into her arm with a blade from a sharpener. Just so angry..” (“Anonymous” April 2003 www.seperate-minds.tk) So where does it start? This question in itself, is actually quite difficult to answer, because out of people that I have interviewed and surveyed, only a small number of them remembered what drove them to want to begin harming themselves. Negative emotions are those felt in individuals who self-harm . Self-injury has become more apparent within the adolescent population, usually from mid-teens to those in their HSC year. Oddly enough, this disorder comes in “waves”, as one psychologist mentioned during an interview. “If there’s one person I’m aware of that’s self harming, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if there were another three or four others associated with that person somehow, doing the same thing.” (Interview #1) This may be due to what is known as “Observed Learning”. Like when a child copies the parent through watching them, people can pickup on self-injury, subconsciously or not, by observing the person originally involved with SI, seeing that this habit actually seems to help them in some form, and copy it themselves. (www.psyke.org 2001) So why would anyone do such a horrific thing to themselves? The reasons why anyone would turn to self-harm are wide and varied, but the common reasons are found within each individual that inflicts damage upon their bodies. There is a definite control issue, or, the lack thereof to be more precise. A professional view is that, “If they feel that the world’s controlling them or that their family is controlling them so much, that the one thing they can control is how they feel..” (Interview #1) I have met many self-injurers during my research for this assessment, and most of them harm themselves because they feel they cant control a situation they’re in. It comes in many forms: a strict parent; a protective partner; school work overload; friends; family; and even themselves. Self harm is a way that they can establish control of their own bodies. I have concluded that the majority of people who deliberately harm themselves have suffered from sexual, physical, or psychological abuse, but this does not necessarily mean that all people who self injure have had trauma in their lives, and by the same token, not all people who’ve been abused will perform self-inflicted damage on themselves. (www.geocities.com/aukee3/SI.html 2000) During one of my interviews with a current self-harmer, she told me that one of her reasons for her actions were so she could vent her anger on herself, before she released it on someone else (Interview #13). This is another example of not being able to control one’s emotions. The girl’s anger came on so strongly that she was not able to handle it, and so, the only way she knew how to cope with this feeling was to act it out upon herself. Self-injury can also be a form of communication. People who self-harm are stereotyped as people who are looking for attention. This is true on some level, but not in the way society believes. It isn’t a case of “Hey look at me! Look what I’m doing!”, it is more of a cry for help. As one interviewee said, “How can it be attention seeking if I’m hiding them all the time?” (Source - Interviewee #6) From my reading and interviews it appears that it is the psychological factors of self-harm are what makes or breaks the severity of the inflicted abuse. For each person, it varies, depending on what trauma they have experienced, or what emotions have been neglected or altered during the course of their life. When people are upset, or angry, they can easily express their emotions by crying, screaming, yelling, etc. But those who SI have difficulty expressing their feelings, and also have a hard time controlling their emotions. Some may have found it a danger to communicate their emotions at home, whether it is for physical or psychological reasons. Their thoughts and feelings would have been ignored, questioned or rejected. (http://wso.williams.edu, www.psyke.org, www.palace.net/~llama/psych and www.selfinjury.freeserve.co.uk/) According to Favazza, before someone begins to self harm, commonly their thoughts are turned towards themselves in a negative light (1996 pg 51). It can be self hatred, hatred towards life or those around the individual. What initially triggers a person to pick up an implement and drive it into themselves is relatively unknown but I have found through my interviews that anger seems to be the key in discovering the beginnings of self-harm. “All I knew was that if I didn’t hurt myself, I’d hurt someone else really badly. Physically. I didn’t want that to happen.” (Source - Interviewee #13) The person who performs self-harm is usually feeling depression, anxiety, anger; and most often all at once. These feelings can become overwhelming and they seek an escape. from my interviews with the 10 current self-harmers I assessed their motivations for self-harm. I learned that some desire the sight of their own blood for something else to focus on, while others want physical pain to express their emotional pain. Self-injury however, is not the problem. Too often is the act of self-injury focused on without delving into the underlying issues, the psychological obstacles. Therefore, on reflection it would be valid to conclude that self-injury is not the cause, it’s the “cure”. |