Facts

Just as the decision to begin self injury is a persons, so must the decision to stop or become "out" with their SI. Like many other web pages, i hope that this will help you to come to the realization that there are other ways of coping, that you can find help, and that you are not alone in your struggles.
Before you continue, as with all my pages, some of the information that you are about to read can be triggering and possibly, for a few moments, intensify the feelings to harm. if you are needing ideas now on how to no self injury, please check out the urges page.
I have taken MANY parts found on this page from Deb Martinson Secret Shame site, so if you have checked that page out (and i recomend that you do, you will find MANY similarities, and some reproductions):
How do you know if you self injury? Self injury is delebrate immediate harm being done. This can include (but is not limited to) cutting, hitting, burning etc.. by asking yourself the following questions it makes it a bit easier to make that determination
1. Do you deliberately cause physical harm to yourself to the extent of causing tissue damage (breaking the skin, bruising, leaving marks that last for more than an hour)?
2. Do you cause this harm to yourself as a way of dealing with unpleasant or overwhelming emotions, thoughts, or situations (including dissociation)?
3. If your self-harm is not compulsive, do you often think about SI even when you're relatively calm and not doing it at the moment?
if you anwser yes to #1 and #2, you are acting in a self injurous behavior and if #3 also got a yes chances are you are a compulsive self injurer (but more on that later).
another good judge is by seeing if the following statements apply to you. I often think about self injury; sometimes I can’t explain where my injuries come from; I get anxious when my wounds start to heal; I often believe that if I don’t self injure I will go crazy; No one can hurt me more than I can hurt myself; I can’t imagine my life with out self injury; I often self injure as a way to punish myself, show others how I feel; I carry something, or have available, to self harm.

Karen Contero, co founder of SAFE (self abuse finally ends) published a study in 1988 about the "typical" self injurer where she stated a “typical self mutilator” was a white woman in her late twenties who began cutting herself at age fourteen. She had injured at least fifty times, usually by cutting but also by other methods including bruising and self-hitting.

Mosby's Medical, Nursing, and Allied Health Dictionary (1994) contains the following definition:
Self-mutilation . . . defined as a state in which an individual is at high risk to injure but not kill himself or herself, and that produces tissue damage and tension relief. Risk factors include being a member of an at-risk group, inability to cope with increased psychological/physiological tension in a healthy manner, feelings of depression, rejection, self-hatred, separation anxiety, guilt, and depersonalization, command hallucinations, need for sensory stimuli, parental emotional deprivation, and a dysfunctional family.
Groups at risk include clients with borderlines personality disorder (especially females 16 to 25 years of age), clients in a psychotic state (frequently males in young adulthood), emotionally disturbed and/or battered children, mentally retarded and autistic children, clients with a history of self-injury, and clients with a history of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse.

something that is important to remember, just because you or someone else SIs it does NOT mean that he or she was abused as a child. you are not weird, odd, psychotic or anything similar to that. for whatever reason you have chosen a coping mechanisim, however "unhealthy" as it may be, and it works for you. i hope that you will continue to see that throught out these pages... but on with the research.)
Self injury has been classified into three different groupings (as disscussed in Bodies Under Seige, Armando Favazza) Major Self Mutilation, Stereo typical self mutilation, and superficial or moderate self mutilation. The most common of the three is Moderate Self mutilation. Major self mutilation usually includes such things as castration, limb removal and others common during psychotic states. Stereotypical is mostly seen in autistic patients and is a sort of rythmic head banging. and finally the major emphisis of this page, moderate self mutilation. cutting, hitting, burning, skin picking, hair pulling.
Favazza, as well as many other researchers, have said that self injury is not related to suicide, though many confuse the two. However it is possible for a self injurer, in desperation, can become suicidal.
Why do people Self Injure? this is perhaps the most diffacult question in dealing with this topic. While there are a few theories out there, no one knows for certain, though there are a few theories that are out there. May self injures say they do it (myself included) as a release. A way to take emotions that are on the inside and bring them outside. Escaping a numbness (dissasociative episode). Punishment for being "bad" etc... Princess Diana confessed to cutting during an interview on BBC where she described it as "You have so much pain inside yourself that you try and hurt yourself on the outside because you want help."
Please Continue to the next page.