Jun 03 2008
Mental Health Humor : Self-Injury and Cutting : Running With Scissors.
It’s called by a few different names: Self-Injury (SI), Self-Harm (SH), Self-Mutilation (SM), Self-Abuse (SA), but you might know it as Cutting or Branding. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not just a teenage girl issue. No, this mal-productive coping skill can be seen across the board of race, culture, or socio-economic strata. What are cutters doing? Are they trying to kill themselves? Is it suicidal behavior? Rarely, cutting is meant to be an attempt of suicide. Yet, death can happen if the cuts are too deep or get infected. People who cut or burn are looking for ways to defuse other serious emotional trauma.
I started cutting myself in my early teens. No, it was not because I liked running with scissors. I started on my upper leg and arm areas so it would not be found. One day, my mother spotted blood on my shirt and saw what I was doing. Because my cuts looked like my initials, she assumed I wanted a tattoo. “If you ever get a tattoo, I’ll burn it off with an iron,” she once told me. In truth, I probably would have enjoyed it. The cutting turned to “branding” in my early 20’s and I still deal with it even now when I’m at my most breaking point.
This is the point - I was never trying to kill myself when I was cutting or branding. It’s just the opposite, I was stopping myself! If we better understand the issue and the person dealing with it, we can provide better support and help!
“Breaking the cycle of self-abuse is possible if you reach out to someone you trust. Finding new ways of coping with your feelings can help to tone down the intense urges you feel which results in you hurting yourself. Recovery is a continuous process and learning how to stop this addictive behavior is within your reach if you work at it.” -
Self-Injury: Types, Causes and Treatment
So, what do you think?
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Thanks for dropping by:
Chato B. Stewart
Mental Health Advocate - Cartoonist - and a few other things!
http://www.mentalhealthhumor.com
“Using Humor to Heal and Educate with badly drawn cartoons.”
Hi Chato,
I don’t think people realize how many individuals experience cutting, good job on raising awareness. I’m going to add you to my blogroll…keep up the good work,
Samantha
I’ve been here before myself. Briefly, but I’ve been here. It can happen to anyone.
I had a friend that did this, she is not doing it anymore, but it is a strange thing to hear about and see. I could never do that becasue my tolerence of pain is zero. You do have a great blog and I love the cartoons.
Good post Chato on a very sensitive and rapidly increasing issue.
To respond to blondiewriter, there are many kinds of pain and some of them are worse then physical pain. If your brain is concentrating on the physical pain it can block out the rest at least for a while. That’s my understanding anyway.
Katie-Anne