Because self-harm is little understood there is still a huge stigma attached to it. It frightens people. A common belief is that people who harm are attention-seeking. This is not true. It is not a suicide attempt though tragically it can go wrong. Often self-harm is seen as a life saver as it can release those feelings of deep emotional stress which may lead to a suicide attempt.
I began harming at the age of 12. I don't really know what happened. One minute something in me had stirred up in to an uncontrollable anger, the next minute I was grating a large elastic band against my chin just below my lower lip. It hurt. A lot. And it caused a wound.
Afterwards I remember feeling a huge release of pent-up emotion. All was well again.
I still have that scar on my chin though it's barely noticeable. To account for the wound, I told people that an elastic band had snapped near my face and caught my chin. I never told anyone about my shameful secret. I just knew instinctively that this was something I should never talk about.
My initial scars were fairly superficial and could be blamed away on scratches but it was after I was admitted to the psychiatric hospital for the first time that it started getting serious.
Later, I tended to cut more than anything else. I kept an old Stanley knife blade in my top drawer for emotional emergencies. I'd never heard of self-harm or see anyone do it and it wasn't until I got to university that I encountered it in an acquaintance. I never talked to her about it. I wanted to but couldn't... I felt very uncomfortable about it..but I could see her pain.
Later, in hospital when it had all come out, a close friend with her usual directness asked me why I did it and what it felt like. She was the only person to ask me. I think most were too freaked out by it to bring the subject up.
It was hard to describe to her, but after a while I told her to imagine a kettle on the boil. This resembles emotional pain and distress building up and up. The kettle has reached boiling point, but it's refusing to turn off. It keeps boiling and boiling...you can't bear to watch any more.. Just as it looks like its about to explode, it suddenly turns itself off, thus letting the boiling water cool down and be calm again. The moment the kettle switches off, is the moment of inflicting a wound - a huge release of pressure that has been building up for a while.
There are many reasons why someone resorts to self-harm. Many talk about "Matching the emotional pain with physical pain". I tend to agree with this and I would agree that seeing blood flowing has the same releasing effect. Other harmers have a different experience of things and would disagree with me. Some people may have been numb and harming is a way to feel something..anything..
For me, it was all about pain, and the blunter the instrument, the greater the pain. It also served as a sort of cleansing..afterwards I felt 'clean' and free from my internal demons again.. Unfortunately, relief from torment was only temporary, and it would gradually build up again and have to be repeated a few days later.
Ironically the majority of my severe harming episodes happened during the periods of hospitalisation receiving ECT.
The treatments gave me what I called a "bad energy" and made me very aggressive towards myself and others. It gave me hellish Restless Legs Syndrome which only made me more agitated and desperate.
Being stuck in a mental ward, which was understaffed, with nothing to channel your energies made things unbearable and looking back, it was frightening the lengths I'd go to to get objects to harm with. Once I was so desperate, I smashed up my glasses. Occasionally I would be taken to the locked ward to use the punch-bag which was very effective.
The attitudes of hospital staff towards me if I had harmed were not great. I felt discriminated because of it and I was once refused treatment at A&E because my wounds were self-inflicted. I overheard myself being described as "one of those" and sent home to patch myself up.
I've not been in that situation for a long time, but I'm told that attitudes of medical and nursing staff are beginning to improve as there is more awareness and understanding of the problem.
In extreme cases, if harming is the only way that the person can cope with the severe distress, "Safe self-harm" is practised where there is supervision, or somebody on hand, clean blades and dressings etc.
It sounds shocking that this would be allowed, but in reality it's not really that different from organisations offering clean needles for drug use.
Back then, for me self-harm was a tried and tested method of releasing emotional pain if only temporarily..but it's not a reliable way of dealing with emotional distress. I was never really told how to combat the urge to self-harm when things got too much, but I remembered back to the punch-bag on the locked ward..It got my aggression out..I felt cleansed and with a buzz at the end of the thrashing, and I decided that if I ever got in to that state again, I would engage with short, but intense bursts of physical exercise (or cleaning!). It worked and I haven't harmed for 5 years. (By the way, Wii Sports is also great for this! - Especially the boxing game).
If I see somebody out and about who has obviously harmed at some point in their lives, it does make me uncomfortable. Not because I'm thinking "that person is a weirdo and a freak", but because he or she must have experienced considerable emotional distress and gone through very dark times when the scars were inflicted. And it upsets me the thought of someone else going through that amount of suffering. Another part of me thinks 'Wow! You're so brave", and "Good on Ya for having the courage to bare all without shame or embarrassment!"
As mentioned in a previous post Self-Harm. Baring all and dealing with comments (April 2013), it took me a long time before I had the guts to bare my arms, but now it doesn't bother me. I still get the odd person staring at my arms, but I ignore them and carry on with what I'm doing.
I want to leave you with one thing.. When was the last time you had a really, really crap day and reached for the bottle of wine?..Or a manic spending spree you knew you couldn't really afford?..Or eaten huge amounts of junk food just to make yourself feel better?
If you think about it..we've all self-harmed to some extent at some point..
Kerry.
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