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Who Self Harms?What type of person hurts him or herself to cope with unbearable feelings and experiences? In Bodily Harm, Karen Conterio & Wendy Lader point out: “There is no way to build a profile of the ‘typical’ self injurer, or to say that all self-injurers have had one kind of experience or another…While some self-injurers come from relatively healthy homes, the vast majority grew up under harrowing circumstances.” Conterio & Lader go on to give the following profile: “The ‘typical’ self injurer, if there is one, would be a white, middle-class woman of above-average intelligence who began cutting herself in adolescence.” I’m female, white, was an ‘A’ student and I first cut myself at age 15. ”She has low self-esteem and may suffer from bouts of depression.” I did have low self esteem and although I didn’t realize it at the time, I was depressed. Looking back at the diaries I kept, I can now see that what I thought was typical teenage angst was infact depression. I was also diagnosed with depression in 1999 and tried several antidepressants over the period of a year and a half. ”She has trouble relating to people and forming intimate relationships.” As a teenager, I felt that no one understood me. At times I hated people in general. I’m also a shy person. As for relationships, I met my husband on the internet. This allowed me to ‘be myself’, more than I was able to in day to day life. ”Despite her smarts and education, she has an extremely hard time articulating her thoughts and feelings and a seemingly insatiable need for love and acceptance.” This describes me well. My husband agrees. ”Because she did not internalize positive nurturing skills from her parents, she does not take very good care of herself and feels that she is too bad a person to ‘deserve’ comforts or luxuries.” I still don’t always take the best care of myself – I don’t eat too well when my husband is at work. He has to remind me to look after myself. I used to think I was a really bad person, but I do feel better about myself nowadays. I still have the ocassional day when I feel like a bad person. Conterio and Lader also summarize common situations among families of self-injurers:
I think this is where my problem stems from. Approximately 6 or 7 years before I was born, my parents were in a car accident. My mum wasn’t badly hurt, but my dad was nearly killed. He recovered but he lost one eye, his sense of smell and suffered brain damage. It’s difficult to notice the brain damage, as he isn’t impaired at all physically and he has a job. But you can see a couple of dents in his forehead where he had brain surgery. I’ve always known him this way, so it’s hard to know how much to attribute his behaviour to the brain damage. My mum certainly excused his bad moods and physical violence towards me with the explanation that he’s brain damaged. She told me to ignore him and so I ignored the feelings I had when he was unreasonable, insulting or violent. After arguing with him I would be so frustrated or upset that I’d take out my feelings on myself by self harming. My first self harming episodes were not triggered by my parents though. I also think I’m predisposed to depression because my mum suffered post natal depression after having my brother. It was severe enough that she was hospitalised. Another family situation mentioned by Contario and Lader is:
I was never sexually abused. But I did fight physically with my parents, when we argued. Once my Dad punched me and gave me a nose bleed. I do take some responsibility, as I knew how to provoke him but we did have a messed up family situation. We would also verbally abuse each other. A common phrase in the house was “I wish you were dead”. If you can't relate to the first two family situations, Conterio & Lader mention another two:
So that’s the deal with me and self harm. Some context for you. You can read about the first time I self harmed on this page, which wasn’t really to do with my parents.  |