Self Injury

Forward To Death · 03-14-2012, 08:05 PM

Its just a masochistic thing. Nothing to it. If you're depressed and masochistic, its not uncommon, nor is it attention-seeking to cut yourself. Masochism has always existed, and people are still somewhat ignorant to it.

I'm sure some people do it for attention or to look cool or whatever, but that's not always the case.

hip hop bunny hop · 03-14-2012, 08:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peppermint4life

Even the people who try to keep it a secret?

The entire point of the behavior is that you can't keep it a secret. Some may do it on a level which is secretive compared to others, but even then it's relative. The question is, then, whom do they wish to keep this a secret from and why?

For some, I'd say they want to make it anything but blatantly obvious so people will only realize it after they've some sort personnel connection. The logic being, people will easily dismiss and try to avoid becoming involved in the life of an individual who does self mutilation; whereas, if you've a connection to a person, you're more likely to contribute to the pity party.

Forward To Death · 03-14-2012, 08:24 PM

This is purely from a speculative approach, though. You can't legitimately say thats an objective view on self-mutilation. It sounds like what baby boomers say when they talk about their opinions on attention deficit disorder, and other psychological issues.

hip hop bunny hop · 03-14-2012, 08:27 PM

Everything stated in this thread thus far is speculative.

~~Sansa Stark~~ · 03-14-2012, 08:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hip hop bunny hop

Self-harm is not a cry for help; it's attention seeking dressed up as a cry for help. Give them attention and you're enabling that behavior.

Sorry, are you studying psych?

Forward To Death · 03-14-2012, 08:31 PM

I bet I could back up my argument with scientific evidence, and better logic. The very fact that masochism exists proves my point.

Paedantic Basterd · 03-14-2012, 08:32 PM

I really don't believe this is a black and white issue. I think it's going to come down to who the person is every time.

~~someonecompletelyrandom~~ · 03-14-2012, 08:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hip hop bunny hop

Self-harm is not a cry for help; it's attention seeking dressed up as a cry for help. Give them attention and you're enabling that behavior.

Can't agree. I've found some information on reasons people self-harm and they seem to be legitimately convincing arguments, the least of which indicates casual "attention seeking".

Quote:

Originally Posted by helpguide.org

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

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/self_injury.htm#how

Quote:

Many papers on self-harm (Miller, 1994; Favazza 1986, 1996; Connors, 1996a, 2000; Solomon & Farrand, 1996; Ousch et al., 1999; Suyemoto, 1998; and others), have uncovered possible motivations for self-injurious behavior:

Escape from emptiness, depression, and feelings of unreality.
Easing tension.
Providing relief: when intense feelings build, self-injurers are overwhelmed and unable to cope. By causing pain, they reduce the level of emotional and physiological arousal to a bearable one.
Relieving anger: many self-injurers have enormous amounts of rage within. Afraid to express it outwardly, they injure themselves as a way of venting these feelings.
Escaping numbness: many of those who self-injure say they do it in order to feel something, to know that they're still alive.
Grounding in reality, as a way of dealing with feelings of depersonalization and dissociation
Maintaining a sense of security or feeling of uniqueness
Obtaining a feeling of euphoria
Preventing suicide
Expressing emotional pain they feel they cannot bear
Obtaining or maintaining influence over the behavior of others
Communicating to others the extent of their inner turmoil
Communicating a need for support
Expressing or repressing sexuality
Expressing or coping with feelings of alienation
Validating their emotional pain -- the wounds can serve as evidence that those feelings are real
Continuing abusive patterns: self-injurers tend to have been abused as children.
Punishing oneself for being "bad"
Obtaining biochemical relief: there is some thought that adults who were repeatedly traumatized as children have a hard time returning to a "normal" baseline level of arousal and are, in some sense, addicted to crisis behavior. Self-harm can perpetuate this kind of crisis state
Diverting attention (inner or outer) from issues that are too painful to examine
Exerting a sense of control over one's body
Preventing something worse from happening

These reasons can be broadly grouped into three categories:

Affect regulation --

Trying to bring the body back to equilibrium in the face of turbulent or unsettling feelings. This includes reconnection with the body after a dissociative episode, calming of the body in times of high emotional and physiological arousal, validating the inner pain with an outer expression, and avoiding suicide because of unbearable feelings. In many ways, as Sutton says, self-harm is a "gift of survival." It can be the most integrative and self-preserving choice from a very limited field of options.

Communication --

Some people use self-harm as a way to express things they cannot speak. When the communication is directed at others, the SIB is often seen as manipulative. However, manipulation is usually an indirect attempt to get a need met; if a person learns that direct requests will be listened to and addressed the need for indirect attempts to influence behavior decreases. Thus, understanding what an act of self-harm is trying to communicate can be crucial to dealing with it in an effective and constructive way.

Control/punishment --

This category includes trauma reenactment, bargaining and magical thinking (if I hurt myself, then the bad thing I am fearing will be prevented), protecting other people, and self-control. Self-control overlaps somewhat with affect regulation; in fact, most of the reasons for self-harm listed above have an element of affect control in them.

In an interesting theory that combines all three categories, Miller (1994) posits an explanation for why such a large majority of peep who self-harm are female. Women are not socialized to express violence externally and when confronted with the vast rage many self-injurers feel, women tend to vent on themselves. She quotes the feminist poet Adrienne Rich:

"Most women have not even been able to touch
this anger except to drive it inward like a
rusted nail."
Miller says, "Men act out. Women act out by acting in." Another reason fewer men self-injure may be that men are socialized in a way that makes repressing feelings the norm. Linehan's (1993a) theory that self-harm results in part from chronic invalidation, from always being told that your feelings are bad or wrong or inappropriate, could explain the gender disparity in self-injury; men are generally brought up to hold emotion in.

Alexithymia

Alexithymia is a fairly recent psychological construct describing the state of not being able to describe the emotions one is feeling. Alexithymia was positively linked to self-injurious behavior in a 1996 study (Zlotnick, et el.) and is congruent with how people who self-injure often describe the emotional state before an injury; they frequently cannot pinpoint any particular feeling that was present. This is especially important in understanding the communicative function of self-injury: "Rather than use words to express feelings, an alexithymic's communication is an act aimed at making others feel [those same feelings]" (Zlotnick et al., 1996).

Self-capacities and Invalidation

A constructivist theory of self-injurious behavior (Deiter, Nicholls, & Pearlman, 2000) holds that people who self-injure usually have not developed three important self-capacities: the ability to tolerate strong affect, the ability to maintain a sense of self-worth, and the ability to maintain a sense of connection to others. The first of these speaks directly to the affect-regulation role of self-harm; the others are perhaps related to its communicative functions.

Pearlman et al. (2000) note that "when children experience shaming and punitive rhetoric or physical blows rather than responsive words" they cannot internalize others are loving and cannot develop the capacity to maintain a sense of connection to others. They further state, "The ability to experience, tolerate, and integrate strong affect cannot develop fully when strong feelings are met with punishment or derision." Having a sense that some feelings are unacceptable and not allowed also impairs this ability. And the ability to maintain a sense of oneself as a person of worth cannot be developed when a child never feels she is good enough, when her "existence and accomplishments are met with silence or abusive words or actions."

Interestingly, all of these conditions are found in invalidating environments, which Linehan and others have tied to future self-injury.

Finally, Haines and Williams (1997) found that self-mutilators reported more use of problem avoidance as a coping strategy and perceived themselves to have less control over problem-solving options. This feeling of disempowerment may in turn be related to the chronic invalidation many self-injurers have experienced.

http://www.palace.net/llama/psych/why.html

Notice specifically the subsection Communication. It makes the point that even attention seeking (manipulation) is an attempt to communicate something which the sufferer simply can't seem to communicate effectively, I'd personally imagine being for any range of psychosomatic reasons.

While I think chalking it up to attention seeking is the easy thing to do, I don't think it is the most sensitive or scientific approach. It seems to me like a shrug-off. I actually used to share a similar opinion. However, the research tends to show that there is no simple answer. As stated, this is not a black and white issue, and there seems to be no "majority cause" of this symptom. It's a difficult issue to approach subjectively, however I feel that like depression, it is simply misunderstood at this time and will eventually be brought to light as more sufferers come out and admit they have a problem.

Forward To Death · 03-14-2012, 08:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

I really don't believe this is a black and white issue. I think it's going to come down to who the person is every time.

His argument is based on an absolute blanket statement that cannot be proven correct. I agree some people probably do it for attention, but masochism exists.

Quote:

Originally Posted by These guys

Can't agree. I've found some information on reasons people self-harm and they seem to be legitimately convincing arguments, the least of which indicates casual "attention seeking".

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/self_injury.htm#how

http://www.palace.net/llama/psych/why.html

Notice specifically the subsection Communication. It makes the point that even attention seeking (manipulation) is an attempt to communicate something which the sufferer simply can't seem to communicate effectively, I'd personally imagine being for any range of psychosomatic reasons.

While I think chalking it up to attention seeking is the easy thing to do, I don't think it is the most sensitive or scientific approach. It seems to me like a shrug-off. I actually used to share a similar opinion.

This raises a very good point, that even if it is for the sake of attention, it can have meaning beyond just the attention.

**Goofle** · 03-14-2012, 08:41 PM

I do enjoy biting at my inner lip, to the point that I chew a bit of skin off and draw blood, but that's not really self-harm, more a strange trait.

03-14-2012, 08:27 PM	#14 (permalink)
hip hop bunny hop Music Addict Join Date: Oct 2009 Posts: 1,381	Everything stated in this thread thus far is speculative. __________________ Have mercy on the poor.

03-14-2012, 08:05 PM	#11 (permalink)
Forward To Death Trolier Than Thou Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Minnesota Posts: 1,336	Its just a masochistic thing. Nothing to it. If you're depressed and masochistic, its not uncommon, nor is it attention-seeking to cut yourself. Masochism has always existed, and people are still somewhat ignorant to it. I'm sure some people do it for attention or to look cool or whatever, but that's not always the case.

03-14-2012, 08:24 PM	#13 (permalink)
Forward To Death Trolier Than Thou Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Minnesota Posts: 1,336	This is purely from a speculative approach, though. You can't legitimately say thats an objective view on self-mutilation. It sounds like what baby boomers say when they talk about their opinions on attention deficit disorder, and other psychological issues.

03-14-2012, 08:31 PM	#16 (permalink)
Forward To Death Trolier Than Thou Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Minnesota Posts: 1,336	I bet I could back up my argument with scientific evidence, and better logic. The very fact that masochism exists proves my point.

03-14-2012, 08:32 PM	#17 (permalink)
Paedantic Basterd Music Addict Join Date: Sep 2010 Posts: 5,184	I really don't believe this is a black and white issue. I think it's going to come down to who the person is every time.