Self injury fact sheet

Sunday, June 13, 2004

Self Injury Fact Sheet
source: Deb Martinson


>>>SI generally is done as a way of coping with overwhelming psychophysiological arousal. This can be to express emotion, to deal with feelings of unreality or numbness, to make flashbacks stop, to punish the self and stop self-hating thoughts, or to deal with a feeling of impending explosion. SI is more about relieving tension or distress than is it about anything else.

>>>Lack of role models and invalidation - most people who self-injure were chronically invalidated in some way as children (many self-injurers report abuse, but almost all report chronic invalidation). They never learned appropriate ways of expressing emotion and may have learned that emotions are bad and to be avoided.

>>>People who self-injure do generally do so because of an internal dynamic, and not in order to annoy, anger or irritate others. Their self-injury is a behavioral response to an emotional state, and is usually not done in order to frustrate caretakers. In emergency rooms, people with self-inflicted wounds are often told directly and indirectly that they are not as deserving of care as someone who has an accidental injury. They are treated badly by the same doctors who would not hesitate to do everything possible to preserve the life of an overweight, sedentary heart-attack patient.

>>>Studies have suggested that when people who self-injure get emotionally overwhelmed an act of self-harm brings their levels of psycho-physiological tension and arousal back to a bearable baseline level almost immediately.
scribbled Gatekeepers4@ 11:31 PM  

Concrete Angel

Mosaic Minds

Elisabetas Fortress

Prevent Child Abuse