Why do people self-injure?
When people who self-injure get emotionally overwhelmed, studies have suggested that an act of self-harm brings their levels of psychological and physiological tension and arousal back to a bearable baseline level almost immediately. They know that when they hurt themselves it will reduce any emotional discomfort when they experience such a strong uncomfortable emotion and don’t know how to handle it. It is impulsive by nature, and often becomes a reflex response to any type of stress, be it positive or negative. Just like smokers who reach for a cigarette when they are overwhelmed, self-injurers reach for a lighter, belt or blade when things get too much.
They may still feel bad (or not) but they no longer have that panicky, jittery, trapped feeling: it becomes a calm bad feeling. This might explain why self-injury can become addictive, it works and works fast. When you need a quick fix to make all the bad stuff go away, why would you try and find something else? For most people though, eventually the negative consequences add up and they seek help.
Some people never get the chance to learn how to cope effectively.
We aren’t born with the knowledge of how to express and cope with our emotions, we learn from everyone in our lives, from our friends, parents, siblings, teachers. One common factor with most people who self-injure is invalidation – whether they were abused or not. They were taught at an early age that their feelings about things around them were bad or wrong. In abusive homes, they may have been severely punished for expressing certain thoughts and feelings. At the same time, they had no good role models for coping. You can’t learn to cope effectively with distress if you aren’t around someone who can. How would you learn to cook if you haven’t seen anyone work in a kitchen?
Although a history of abuse is common among self-injurers, not everyone who self-injures was abused. Sometimes, invalidation and lack of role models for coping are enough, especially if the person’s brain has already primed them for choosing this sort of coping.
Problems with neurotransmitters may play a role
Just as it is suspected that the way the brain uses serotonin may play a role in depression, so scientists think that problems in the serotonin system may predispose some people to self-injure by making them tend to be more agressive and impulsive than most people. This tendency toward impulsive aggression, combined with a belief that their feelings are bad or wrong, can lead to the aggression being turned on the self. Of course, once this happens, the person harming himself learns that self-injury reduces his level of distress, and the cycle begins.
Copyright Deb Martinson © 1996-2004 Secret Shame. Used with permission.
