A Soul's Journey to Healing

Continuing on from yesterday’s post – Self Injury – a personal perspective – I will share how self injury has helped me and how it has also had a negative impact on my life.

Self Injury as a Coping Mechanism

I know a lot of people who would look at me as if I’d lost my marbles saying that BUT the truth of the matter is that self injury IS a coping mechanism albeit a maladaptive one! The first time I saw a therapist about my self injury, it was an appointment with a psychiatrist and for the first time in my life I felt that I wasn’t being judged, in fact she said “I’m not too concerned with it, what we need to work on is all the underlying stuff and hopefully that will take care of you needing to do this!” She also said that at least while I was self injuring, I was stopping short of trying to take my life and that was a good thing! I can’t tell you how good that made me feel, don’t get me wrong here, she wasn’t condoning it but she could see it for what it was – a strange type of coping mechanism.

So how does it help?

Again, I can’t speak for others but for myself and a number of people I’ve since spoken to about this, there seems to be a common theme. Like me, a lot of people see it as a way to ground themselves, when everything feels out of control in the mind, to self harm triggers your body’s natural morphine and it’s almost an instantaneous relief. From feeling so out of control you think your head will explode to an immediate sense of calm you can see how this can become habit forming. I hate using the term ‘habit forming’, it makes self injury sound like an addiction similar to that of illicit drugs or alcohol, I guess in some ways it is but again it’s a way of helping yourself and trying to stop yourself from dying!

One thing I found through therapy was that after I had come down from my natural morphine high and was grounded again I would go and clean myself up. I found this act quite strange, with tender care I would go and clean up the blood, and tend to my cuts to make sure that they never got infected. Exploring this further with my psychiatrist we worked out that it could be a way of me caring for (or nurturing) myself in a way that I may have felt was lacking either as a child or even as an adult. I’ve since heard others say similar.

After a fair amount of work and educating myself and speaking to a lot of other self-injurers (I used to manage a forum called Sharp Relief which offered support for those who self-injured) I found a way to break the cycle, it was a long process and it meant I would have to learn different coping strategies but I did it.

The After Effects of Self Injury

So, now it’s been 6 years since I self injured and I live with the scars, I have a love-hate relationship with them I guess you could say. They are there on my forearms and they’re noticeable, some moreso than others. Luckily over the years a number of them have faded but when you cut into scars they become bigger scars and they don’t fade so easily.

Nevertheless they’re part of me now, some people are diplomatic and say “what? oh I never even noticed them!” and others acknowledge that they have spotted them. I can’t see a health care professional without them saying something about them to which I answer “ah, long story from long ago” and they knowingly smile and give me a reassuring look or touch.

I’ve never been shy to discuss them if anyone is curious, simply because I’d rather correct any ignorance out there in the world. Some days I see them as battle scars of a war waged against myself which I seem to have won and other days I cringe in embarrassment when I notice someone has spotted them and become uncomfortable around me because of their own inability to respond as a human.

Generally I try and keep them covered but in the climate I live in, it’s not always possible so I try and tough it out.

And if you’re wondering whether the urge ever goes away? I can’t speak for others but for me, no it doesn’t, it’s often there when things get tough and that out of control feeling comes. It’s easy to fall back on things like this when your mind is racing and you’re feeling the need to ground yourself again, and at the moment I’m fighting depression again and in a bit of a pit so it IS flashing into my thoughts on occasion but so far I’ve managed to resist any urge.

What do you try to keep the urges away? I’d be keen to hear other’s thoughts on this too.