"I hurt myself today
to see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
the only thing that's real"
(nine inch nails)
You should read this because I self harm and I could be the person sitting next to you, your best mate, your partner or maybe even you.
To someone who has never deliberately hurt themselves, self-injury may seem completely negative, destructive and unnecessary. It is hard to understand how someone can choose to inflict on themselves something we mostly take care to avoid: pain and injury to our own bodies. For me it is a mechanism for releasing inner pain in smaller physical doses which I can see and deal with. Focusing on the physical pain gains me precious space, you can't just tell me to not to do it, no matter how much it freaks you out.
If I stop in the short term, pressure just builds up to unbearable levels. If you tell me to stop, I will just hide it and feel even worse. You will simply be reinforcing my feelings of guilt and isolation. It is the source of the pain not my way of dealing with it that needs the help. It is more about surviving in this world than departing to the next (smirk). So if I am not trying to kill myself and I don't think that the harming is in itself the problem, so why am I doing it? Because my problem are serious, serious to me.
Self-harm is about anger, and controlling and expressing it where no one is going to judge me. Unfortunately accidents can happen especially if self-harm is mixed with alcohol or drugs and then people will judge me whether they mean to or not. Doctors can be very judgemental; they are only human. Some have been known to refuse anaesthetics when treating self-harmers as "pushiment". Don't accept this. You have the same right to treatment as anyone else!
What can we do about it? Accept it, it happens, you haven't got the solution and it's not your fault and don't want to. I need a friend whom I can rely upon. Not necessarily someone to talk to but someone to give me a hug, someone on the other end of the phone, someone's floor to sleep on, someone not to judge me or maybe someone to take me to casualty to hold my hand.
"Most women have not even been able to touch this anger, except to drive it inward like a rusted nail."
Adrienne Rich
