I am often humbled and amazed by the work others are doing for complete strangers, all because they speak the same language of unspoken loss, pain and misery.
I was trying to find articles that could describe the emotional depth that goes behind self-harm, self-punishment, or Self-Injury. I honestly don't think most well-adjusted people, including therapists, truly understand the idea that there are levels and depths to pain. In fact, I have often refered to my own inner strife to Dante's Inferno, as that story best describes the complexity of darkness I would feel myself falling into those periods I called The Abyss. Chambers of loss, depths of crying... I believe these are things many adult-adoptees feel, but do so silently.
I really don't think there are that many quality "Adoption Authorities" out there who specialize in personal pain, inner-turmoil and agonizing angst. I see traumas as layers. The more layers, (traumatic events), the more complex the feelings towards individual pain and punishment become. In many ways, it's visceral. If trauma is all a person knows, and it is absent, what is a person likely to do when all sense of pain is gone? If a person sees himself as the cause of pain, is it natural or normal to seek self-punishment so "bad patterns" change? I believe the natural normal course of action for many is to seek "comfort" through another source of trauma. It's not necessarily for drama's sake as much as it to fill the missing piece of familar pain. After all, are we not creatures of habit, seeking our own sense of home? Given the number of adopted children in this world, I would think the mental health field should take a closer look at their own practice, and start looking at the actual structure of the brain as a human organ, like the heart, liver and lungs. The technology is there; there are no more excuses. Between fMRI's and MEG machines, scientists CAN see if there are anatomical deformities in the brains that is causing this type of behavior. Does neglect damage the physical structure of the brain, ( like atrophy) if so, can it be repaired in a way that drugs are not necessary? What do neurologists think? People are performing surgical proceedures on themselves, at home, with steak knives, because no one sees the wounds they keep and hide inside. Children and adults are experimenting with chemical agents because it may or may not be safe, and the side-effects might be fun. Humans are willing to subject themselves to a life-time of misery and pain because that's all they know and have grown comfortable to accept as being "life". Why is this morally and medically acceptable? Something needs to be done to help these walking wounded, because life should not be nothing more than a series of painful experiments, done at our own body's expense.
If people need more to read, I found a website that says is far better than I ever could.
Brave people write these stories. Keep in mind, the following examples are extreme. "Sick Pleasures" can go in all sorts of directions... these are just a few:
"Cutting. But I have tried many other methods. Apparently I used to slap myself as a baby when I got mad-- talk about an early start-- and later I went back to it. So head banging, slapping myself (sometimes so hard that I can't hear right for a day in one ear), burning (most painful and most messy-- horrible infections), bruising myself with a hammer, scratching, scratching slowly until I take the skin off (gets really painful later), biting, sticking needles and safety pins into my skin, there must be more, but I can't remember."
[female, age 24, began to SI at age 16 1/2]
"I never let wounds heal, and I scratch myself with needles (I sew a lot), safety pins (some safety!), and push pins."
[female, age 14, began to SI at age 14]
"I cut and burn mostly and sometimes I pull my hair out a couple of strands at a time."
[female, age 16, began to SI at age 15]
"Mainly cutting, although I do all three [cutting, burning, hitting]. I do the nail thing too. I dig them into my skin."
[female, age 16, began to SI at age 13]
"My main way is using my fists to beat my thighs with as much force and hatred until my arms are literally too tired to continue. I used to actually use my fists to beat my forehead when I was much younger. Thank God I realized how all too easy I could have caused brain damage to myself!! I also bite my fingernails down to the quick and in fact I use a nail clipper to rip pieces of skin from my finger tips as well."
[female, age 43, began to SI at age 11]
"Cutting...I hit myself on stuff sometimes, I've kicked through glass to see what it would do and make it seem like an accident...when I was little I would climb up on top of really tall stuff and jump off."
[female, age 15, began to SI at age 12 or earlier]
"The main thing I do is burn myself with matches or the metal top of lighters. I also cut myself with razor blades once in a while. When there are other people around or no other "tools" I scratch the same place on my arms until there is no skin and they bleed. I have also hit myself--that's what I first did... hitting myself with belts and other things, as well as just punching or smacking myself."
[female, age 23, began to SI in 6th grade that she can remember]
"I usually cut with a blade I took off of a pencil sharpener, sometimes glass, and sometimes pins. If i feel like I need to cut in school i'll take my compus from my geometry kit and go to the washroom and cut or use my nails or teeth. Sometimes when i'm really frustrated I'll pierce my skin all the way through (like my ears) with a saftey pin."
[female, age 15, began to SI at age 11]
My main method of self-injury has always been cutting, because it implies all of the components of the highest pleasure mentioned before (making myself suffer, watching blood flow and bearing extreme pain), just the extreme pain doesn't last so long unless I'm cutting all the time. My favorite is cutting within the same wound again and again, deeper and deeper, then it's getting more painful. Then reopening it next day and repeating the same all over again. That way I don't get so many scars, of which there are many anyway though. Always used a razor or several at the same time, used a knife maybe 2-3 times. Cutting along veins/arteries for more blood preferred.
And yes, I have other method, which doesn't really imply "injury", because the result is not seen, but it brings pain nevertheless: I found many positions in which my muscles and tendons are being pulled and therefore are being stretched, and some of the positions don't require any effort or motion but can cause really strong pain. That way you can relax and concentrate on the pain completely.
Other things: piercing myself with needles of different size, sometimes leaving them inside my skin for several days. The advantage is that no real scars left if you don't leave needles inside for long. I left them once for more than a month, was too deep to be healed, was hurting all the time and then got all inflamed, and the scars are left.
Disadvantage: not so much blood.
Also took blood from the arteries using a syringe and drank it from the glass, perfect taste btw.
[female, age 18, began to think of SI at age 6 and can't remember when she began to SI, high school student]
cutting, mainly, although I'm a pyro and have done quite a bit with burning. also picking skin-- using my nails to scrape and scrape and scrape...
[female, age 17, began to SI at age 14, HS student]
Cutting with knives/razor blades. Sometimes I burn myself with matches. I find that this is sometimes a better way of hurting myself without having to explain large cuts/scabs. The small burn marks are easier to hide if I want to. Everybody that is close to me thinks that I no longer SI and that I am better.
[male, age 32, began to SI at age 28, Security]
I started by concussing myself, I then moved on to use similar methods that were used to discipline me, for example leathering myself with the buckle ended side of a belt. I also started biting, scratching, grazing myself and eventually I started to break my own bones by throwing myself into objects and down stairwells.
A short time after I had progressed to braking my bones I discovered self harm existed and became aware of using knives and an assortment of blades to both stab and cut my flesh.
I carried on to use a concoction of these methods, I also experimented with burning and scolding myself with fire, acids and boiling water, but not as often as I would pick and mix the other acts.
Since becoming aware of self harm I have indulged in starvation and over exercise as a form of self injury too, regardless of the other means I find starvation and consumption control offers me a constant fix in-between sessions.
[female, age 16, began to SI at age 6, College Student]
Cutting. When I was young I employed strange ways of depriving myself of food. I never lost too much weight, but rather became incredibly pale and sickly-looking, just malnourished. As a cutter, I started out using those small beauty scissors, now I tend to use an exacto. I still, to some extent, use deprivation of food as a form of punishment.
[female, age 20, began to SI at age 13 or (cutting very recent), College student]
Cutting is how I usually end up hurting myself. The first time I cut I used a sharp pencil...I just got gradually sharper, going to a letter opener, a pocket knife, razor blades from a disposable shaving razor, a hobby knife kit, a steak knife (my favorite), and xacto knives. Right under cutting is burning, which is usually when I'm not feeling like cleaning up after blood. I've hit myself before (I had stopped SI for about a year, and all it took was one trigger - a friend of mine died - I started punching myself in the face), tried wrist-banging (which is very helpful when I'm angry, I like to bang out the beat to an angry song when I do it).
[female, age 20, began to SI at age 15, college student]
Self injury...for me it wasn't a choice to do it as it was a choice to keep living. Cutting is breathing free. It's a place where nobody can hurt me or anything hurts me. I control alot of things around me...I don't feel a lack of control in my everyday life. I just can't let go of the inside stuff, or things that bring it all back. Nightmares, flashes, memories, anxiety,regrets,and anger/rage. I feel such rage it scares me. Cutting is containing a dam of emotion. I have so much grief and nothing can make it better...nothing. For it to be better...People that should love me...would have to when they never will.Bad things would have to be erased from time. In other words life would have to have never happened the way it did.
I want my life to be something other than a mistake..as my Mother claims, and I want to be loved for just who I am even though there are years of my life that I can't even recall. Self injury is a tool and if you've never had anyone to care about you then...it really only hurts you and that's okay if it keeps you alive to find someone who may really love you one day. My husband loves me, it's a good relationship. Do I still cut even though he love's me? Yes, why?
Because it keeps me alive so that one day somebody will really love me "again".
My children...a friend...who knows. I use to think if just one person loved me...really loved me it would be enough. I found that it's not that way. I missed out on what feels like a whole life of being loved. I am a bottomless pit of wanting love but always terrified of it. I can never be loved enough or by too many people.
I think until the people I wanted to love me do... then ...it will never be enough, and even then I may very well find that once there it may still not be enough just because of all the times they could have loved me and hurt me instead.
[female, age 30, began to SI at age 16 or younger, mom of 5 and artist]
My favourite way is by the blade. Cutting is probably the first way I tried to SI. I used to burn a lot but I stopped for some reason after a while. I also punch hard surfaces like walls, hard wooden dressers, etc. My right fist (right handed) is fucked. I've made my knuckles bleed and I'm like 95% sure my pinky knuckle is broken or dislocated or something. I've never gone to see a doctor for anything so if I did mess it up then it healed wrong. Sometimes my knuckles swell up like golf balls.
Nightmares, flashes, memories, anxiety,regrets,and anger/rage. I feel such rage it scares me. Cutting is containing a dam of emotion. I have so much grief and nothing can make it better...nothing
Rage and grief, turned against one-self. That's deep and that's serious. As far as I'm concerned, these people need help. Yet, metaphorically speaking, I can understand the need to bleed, or purge as a cleansing experience.
I believe there are lesser degrees to this set of behaviors that fits more into S & M, (not that I'm into any of that stuff, I'm just facinated by the people who do it!)
As far as "self-harm"; I always have a habit of testing an injury. Even if it's just a bruise, I'll push it, to see if it still hurts. "Does it hurt?" (how about now?) I don't like the pain, but I find relief knowing the pain is still there. I used to pick scabs, too. I had a friend who used to eat his. That was gross, and cool. I would eat the skin to blisters, though. For some reason that seemed "clean' to me. I know people who would pick facial hair, like their eye-brows and eye lashes, out of nervous habit, (much like biting nails is), but I also know a few people who pick their pubic hair, deliberately. I don't understand why they don't just shave, like normal people, but maybe they have razor issues? [sorry, that was a bad joke for a serious topic -- but if we can't make fun of ourselves, who can we make fun of?]
As I'm writing this, I'm noticing how curious I am about other people's pain-tollerence compared to my own. For instance, my facination with old torture prisons focuses on the question, "would I have been able to endure that?" I like to imagine how long a man/woman can endure certain tortures before death; then I'm facinated by the death process itself. I started reading about methods of embalming, because my friend started dating a mortician. I like to imagine, "What if the guy wasn't dead, but in a coma, and he woke-up during the embalming process - what would that be like?"
Sick stuff, isn't it? I wonder if my brain has all the right pieces in all the right places?
Couple of years ago I wrote these lyrics to a song that never existed.
I don't want to sound like a drama queen or anything,
but somewhere down the line life stinks you know.
Some days it is like the smell of rotten corpses,
but what do I know of odours anyway.
It's not that I don't see any fun, I just don't feel like laughing.
Fun feels so fake these days, though I still keep my sense of humour.
Some days there is just emptiness, but the truth is I am full of shit.
I could get a job, could get a life, could try,
but what is the point when nothing seems worth doing.
Of course there are TV shows all day,
soap opera's, game shows, talk shows,
that way I can at least lead somebody elses life.
And there is food and there are cigarettes
and if it is worth the effort I could go and get me a joint,
but usually I don't even feel like moving an inch.
The kitchen is at least 10 feet away from my chair
and you know I couldn't even be bothered to go there,
too much of a mess anyhow.
Of course I need to get to the toilet every now and then,
but I try to delay that as long as possible, have two turns in one go.
My bladder must have the size of curled up hedgehog by now.
At least it feels like one.
I stare with troubled eyes
My skin's a greyer shade of pale.
My head is full of lies,
My flesh is nearly turning stale
And then those people that keep telling me I should try this or I should try that.
I am so tired of them, I can't even be bothered to say fuck off.
Oh I get angry, but usually when they are gone,
Then I have those eloquent tirades, I almost wet my pants,
but I'm not sure if that is from laughter or from crying.
Last night I stuck a knife in the palm of my hand to find out if it hurt,
well it did and now I can't even jerk off properly anymore.
Those friends that are still around tell me I shouldn't pity myself so much,
they could be right, what do I know about anything anyhow?
I stare with troubled eyes
My skin's a greyer shade of pale.
My head is full of lies,
My flesh is nearly turning stale
Summers are the worst or maybe it is spring.
Wasn't there a poet who wrote that April was the cruelest month.
I don't give much for the sun anyway, live by night, sleep by day, that's my regime.
Fortunately by now we are heading towards winter,
I can't be bothered with snow, far too pristine for my taste,
but I like the cold and I like the shortness of the days.
Well I'd better stop by now, tool time is on
I always found it to be very manipulating and leading when a therapist would ask "Do you think about hurting yourself, or think about killing yourself?"
But there's a different between a facination with blood and gore and suicidal ideation. Parents need to be aware of this because from personal experience, I'm not so sure school counselors are.
Oddly enough, anyone who has witnessed war or childbirth knows how gross and bloody both can be.
Not too long ago, I was talking to a girl who got raped by her adoptive brother, and although this happened decades ago, she still beats on herself, literally. She will punch her thighs and breasts until she gets bruises.
I've punched walls and such. I'll throw things, wishing to smash them to smitherines, but I can't imagine punching my own breasts out of rage and hate. I think I'm too much of a wimp to inflict that sort of pain on myself.
The sad thing is, she knows she does this, AND she knows why she does it. She hates her body, and hates what he did to her. So why would she take it out on herself like that?
I can only speak for myself and what I have encountered in the nursing realm, and talking to so many who have done harm to themselves as a result of self-punishment. One, it's not a foreign feeling to them, experiencing pain, and often the person doing this is in a state of detached- black-trance, the immediate pain is not even felt, until afterwards. It's a pattern that seems to form for those who have been treated badly by their family during childhood that explains such behavior. Think of it as abused conditioning, and accepting it as a life-order.
I see it as this self-induced ritualized punishment is being served (continuously, because they were trained and treated this way) each time something good, postitive or pleasurable is felt as being possible for the one treated like an animal most of his/her life. Typically the repeated verbal phrase spoken during these fits is: "How could I have been so stupid?!?"
To relate it to "normal every-day behavior", there was a long time ago a V-8 vegetable juice commercial that used to have the people klunk themselves in the head after eating something fattening, realizing "I could have had a V-8!"
Comments
Sick Pleasures and Pain
I am often humbled and amazed by the work others are doing for complete strangers, all because they speak the same language of unspoken loss, pain and misery.
I was trying to find articles that could describe the emotional depth that goes behind self-harm, self-punishment, or Self-Injury. I honestly don't think most well-adjusted people, including therapists, truly understand the idea that there are levels and depths to pain. In fact, I have often refered to my own inner strife to Dante's Inferno, as that story best describes the complexity of darkness I would feel myself falling into those periods I called The Abyss. Chambers of loss, depths of crying... I believe these are things many adult-adoptees feel, but do so silently.
I really don't think there are that many quality "Adoption Authorities" out there who specialize in personal pain, inner-turmoil and agonizing angst. I see traumas as layers. The more layers, (traumatic events), the more complex the feelings towards individual pain and punishment become. In many ways, it's visceral. If trauma is all a person knows, and it is absent, what is a person likely to do when all sense of pain is gone? If a person sees himself as the cause of pain, is it natural or normal to seek self-punishment so "bad patterns" change? I believe the natural normal course of action for many is to seek "comfort" through another source of trauma. It's not necessarily for drama's sake as much as it to fill the missing piece of familar pain. After all, are we not creatures of habit, seeking our own sense of home? Given the number of adopted children in this world, I would think the mental health field should take a closer look at their own practice, and start looking at the actual structure of the brain as a human organ, like the heart, liver and lungs. The technology is there; there are no more excuses. Between fMRI's and MEG machines, scientists CAN see if there are anatomical deformities in the brains that is causing this type of behavior. Does neglect damage the physical structure of the brain, ( like atrophy) if so, can it be repaired in a way that drugs are not necessary? What do neurologists think? People are performing surgical proceedures on themselves, at home, with steak knives, because no one sees the wounds they keep and hide inside. Children and adults are experimenting with chemical agents because it may or may not be safe, and the side-effects might be fun. Humans are willing to subject themselves to a life-time of misery and pain because that's all they know and have grown comfortable to accept as being "life". Why is this morally and medically acceptable? Something needs to be done to help these walking wounded, because life should not be nothing more than a series of painful experiments, done at our own body's expense.
If people need more to read, I found a website that says is far better than I ever could.
Brave people write these stories. Keep in mind, the following examples are extreme. "Sick Pleasures" can go in all sorts of directions... these are just a few:
http://self-injury.net/intheirownwords/words/how-do-you-self-injure/2/
In Their Own Words:
Sick Pleasures
I was reading this, and some of it scared me.
Nightmares, flashes, memories, anxiety,regrets,and anger/rage. I feel such rage it scares me. Cutting is containing a dam of emotion. I have so much grief and nothing can make it better...nothing
Rage and grief, turned against one-self. That's deep and that's serious. As far as I'm concerned, these people need help. Yet, metaphorically speaking, I can understand the need to bleed, or purge as a cleansing experience.
I believe there are lesser degrees to this set of behaviors that fits more into S & M, (not that I'm into any of that stuff, I'm just facinated by the people who do it!)
As far as "self-harm"; I always have a habit of testing an injury. Even if it's just a bruise, I'll push it, to see if it still hurts. "Does it hurt?" (how about now?) I don't like the pain, but I find relief knowing the pain is still there. I used to pick scabs, too. I had a friend who used to eat his. That was gross, and cool. I would eat the skin to blisters, though. For some reason that seemed "clean' to me. I know people who would pick facial hair, like their eye-brows and eye lashes, out of nervous habit, (much like biting nails is), but I also know a few people who pick their pubic hair, deliberately. I don't understand why they don't just shave, like normal people, but maybe they have razor issues? [sorry, that was a bad joke for a serious topic -- but if we can't make fun of ourselves, who can we make fun of?]
As I'm writing this, I'm noticing how curious I am about other people's pain-tollerence compared to my own. For instance, my facination with old torture prisons focuses on the question, "would I have been able to endure that?" I like to imagine how long a man/woman can endure certain tortures before death; then I'm facinated by the death process itself. I started reading about methods of embalming, because my friend started dating a mortician. I like to imagine, "What if the guy wasn't dead, but in a coma, and he woke-up during the embalming process - what would that be like?"
Sick stuff, isn't it? I wonder if my brain has all the right pieces in all the right places?
Turning stale
Couple of years ago I wrote these lyrics to a song that never existed.
I don't want to sound like a drama queen or anything,
but somewhere down the line life stinks you know.
Some days it is like the smell of rotten corpses,
but what do I know of odours anyway.
It's not that I don't see any fun, I just don't feel like laughing.
Fun feels so fake these days, though I still keep my sense of humour.
Some days there is just emptiness, but the truth is I am full of shit.
I could get a job, could get a life, could try,
but what is the point when nothing seems worth doing.
Of course there are TV shows all day,
soap opera's, game shows, talk shows,
that way I can at least lead somebody elses life.
And there is food and there are cigarettes
and if it is worth the effort I could go and get me a joint,
but usually I don't even feel like moving an inch.
The kitchen is at least 10 feet away from my chair
and you know I couldn't even be bothered to go there,
too much of a mess anyhow.
Of course I need to get to the toilet every now and then,
but I try to delay that as long as possible, have two turns in one go.
My bladder must have the size of curled up hedgehog by now.
At least it feels like one.
I stare with troubled eyes
My skin's a greyer shade of pale.
My head is full of lies,
My flesh is nearly turning stale
And then those people that keep telling me I should try this or I should try that.
I am so tired of them, I can't even be bothered to say fuck off.
Oh I get angry, but usually when they are gone,
Then I have those eloquent tirades, I almost wet my pants,
but I'm not sure if that is from laughter or from crying.
Last night I stuck a knife in the palm of my hand to find out if it hurt,
well it did and now I can't even jerk off properly anymore.
Those friends that are still around tell me I shouldn't pity myself so much,
they could be right, what do I know about anything anyhow?
I stare with troubled eyes
My skin's a greyer shade of pale.
My head is full of lies,
My flesh is nearly turning stale
Summers are the worst or maybe it is spring.
Wasn't there a poet who wrote that April was the cruelest month.
I don't give much for the sun anyway, live by night, sleep by day, that's my regime.
Fortunately by now we are heading towards winter,
I can't be bothered with snow, far too pristine for my taste,
but I like the cold and I like the shortness of the days.
Well I'd better stop by now, tool time is on
The Strange Difference
I always found it to be very manipulating and leading when a therapist would ask "Do you think about hurting yourself, or think about killing yourself?"
Kids can get depressed. [Read Depression in Children]
But there's a different between a facination with blood and gore and suicidal ideation. Parents need to be aware of this because from personal experience, I'm not so sure school counselors are.
Oddly enough, anyone who has witnessed war or childbirth knows how gross and bloody both can be.
self-mutilation
Not too long ago, I was talking to a girl who got raped by her adoptive brother, and although this happened decades ago, she still beats on herself, literally. She will punch her thighs and breasts until she gets bruises.
I've punched walls and such. I'll throw things, wishing to smash them to smitherines, but I can't imagine punching my own breasts out of rage and hate. I think I'm too much of a wimp to inflict that sort of pain on myself.
The sad thing is, she knows she does this, AND she knows why she does it. She hates her body, and hates what he did to her. So why would she take it out on herself like that?
Rituals and Reactions
I can only speak for myself and what I have encountered in the nursing realm, and talking to so many who have done harm to themselves as a result of self-punishment. One, it's not a foreign feeling to them, experiencing pain, and often the person doing this is in a state of detached- black-trance, the immediate pain is not even felt, until afterwards. It's a pattern that seems to form for those who have been treated badly by their family during childhood that explains such behavior. Think of it as abused conditioning, and accepting it as a life-order.
I see it as this self-induced ritualized punishment is being served (continuously, because they were trained and treated this way) each time something good, postitive or pleasurable is felt as being possible for the one treated like an animal most of his/her life. Typically the repeated verbal phrase spoken during these fits is: "How could I have been so stupid?!?"
To relate it to "normal every-day behavior", there was a long time ago a V-8 vegetable juice commercial that used to have the people klunk themselves in the head after eating something fattening, realizing "I could have had a V-8!"
<smack!> "How could I have been so stupid?"
Crowd pleasing
I was born into a strangers house,
I was born into a trough
A chosen child, a frozen child, a child to fill the void
Some part of me is human,
some part a paper trail
a written conformation of the blood rush in my vains
One day I play Jesus
and the other I play Faust
I even play the joker, though I hate that dreadful part
Only in the company of vagrants
and in my deepest solitude
i can break the spell, break my shell, break out of my own hell
One day I play Jesus
and the other I play Faust
none of them suits me, but I have no way around
I've never been a soldier
and I've never been a slave
I've never been a father, mother, brother nor a son
There is no home no consolation
no place to rest my soul
just another face, another place, another day to die
One day I play Jesus
and the other I play Faust
and when I meet my maker
and when I meet my maker
and when I meet my maker
will he have me around