This may be the aspect of self-harm that is most puzzling to those who do not do it. Why would anyone choose to inflict physical damage on him or herself? Self-injury is probably the result of many different factors and reasons. Among them:

• For Attention: A lot of people self injure as a cry for help. They DON'T want people to pity them or scream "EEWWWW!!!!" or say "Oh s/he's just doing it for attention" as if there is no problem there at all. These people want you to know that there is something wrong in their life, and that they need your help.

• Anger Release: Unfortunately, a lot of people who are dealing with deep anger issues, will turn to self-injury. Unlike the attention seeker, these people are just letting out their anger in the safest way they know how. I know, I know, you are thinking "SAFE? How can injuring yourself be SAFE?" Well, put on their shoes for a moment . . . they aren't physically hurting the person they are mad at, and they aren't physically hurting anyone around them, are they?

• I'm Ugly or I Want To Look Less Attractive: Sometimes people hurt themselves because they think they are ugly, and are so angry with themselves for being ugly, that they use self-injury as a punishment. On the other hand, there are people who want to make themselves look less attractive. These people will walk around with the scars in visible areas, such as the face, arms (with no intention of hiding the marks) and legs (again, with no intention of hiding). This may be because of abuse issues, where the perpetrator told him/her constantly how pretty and beautiful s/he was, that they couldn't help themselves. Therefore, the victim believes that if s/he harms herself in a visible area, the wound and scar will make him/her look ugly so that the perpetrator will discontinue the abuse. Unfortunately, the abuser will probably never quit abusing until the crime is reported and the vicitm and perpetrator are separated.

• Punishment: If a person is constantly put down, if a person is abused, if a person feels they look ugly, if a person feels there is too much pressure to be 'perfect' or be 'the best' at something, self-injury may result.The person may see the scars as a constant reminder of what they did, and feel stupid or ashamed for dealing in that way, and thus harm themselves again and again and again.

• Control Issues: If a person's life or behavior is being controlled in any way or has been controlled in the past, then usually the only thing left to control is your body. A person can control how much food s/he eats (which may lead to an eating disorder) and also whether or not to harm oneself. Tattoos, piercings, and scars are all visible marks that the person made on him/herself and which will never go away.

• Lack of role models and invalidation - most people who self-injure were chronically invalidated in some way as children (many self-injurers report abuse, but almost all report chronic invalidation). They never learned appropriate ways of expressing emotion and may have learned that emotions are bad and to be avoided.

• Biological predisposition - evidence is accumulating that indicates self-injurers have specific problems within the brain's serotonergic system that cause an increase in impulsivity and aggression. Impulsive aggression, combined with a belief that expressing it outwardly is a very bad thing, might lead to the aggression being turned inward.

• Studies have suggested that when people who self-injure get emotionally overwhelmed, an act of self-harm brings their levels of psycho-physiological tension and arousal back to a bearable baseline level almost immediately. In other words, they feel a strong uncomfortable emotion, don't know how to handle it, and know that hurting themselves will reduce the emotional discomfort extremely quickly. They may still feel bad (or not), but they don't have that panicky jittery trapped feeling; it's a calm bad feeling.

• Escape from emptiness, depression, and feelings of unreality.

• In order to ease tension.

• Relief: when intense feelings build, self-injurers are overwhelmed and unable to cope. By causing pain, they reduce the level of emotional and physiological arousal to a bearable one.

• Expression of emotional pain

• Escaping numbness: many of those who self-injure say they do it in order to feel something, to know that they're still alive.
• Obtaining a feeling of euphoria

• Continuing abusive patterns: self-injurers tend to have been abused as children. Sometimes self-mutilation is a way of punishing oneself for being "bad."

• Biochemical relief: there is some thought that adults who were repeatedly traumatized as children have a hard time returning to a "normal" baseline level of arousal and are, in some sense, addicted to crisis behavior.

• Obtaining or maintaining influence over the behavior of others

• Exerting a sense of control over one's body
• Grounding in reality, as a way of dealing with feelings of depersonalization and dissociation

• Maintaining a sense of security or feeling of uniqueness

• Expressing or repressing sexuality

• Expressing or coping with feeling of alienation

Information on this page was adopted from these websites:

http://www.oocities.org/Februarydove/reasons.html

http://www.palace.net/~llama/psych/injury.html

http://incestabuse.about.com/health/incestabuse/library/weekly/aa021801b.htm?rnk=r1&terms=self+injury