“I hurt myself when I was washing up” or “When I was cutting bread, my knife slipped”…. So or similar cuts on the forearms or wrists can be explained plausibly. After all, who would assume that someone would intentionally cut their skin, with razor blades or knives. Cuts until blood flows, and deeper, and even further. But there are more and more people who regularly self-harm to provide relief from a deep psychological distress. Dissociative automutilation is what medical experts call this behavior, with 0.7 to 1 percent of the population inflicting injuries on themselves in a variety of ways, and the trend is rising, experts say.
Intelligence or social status don’t matter
They come from all social classes and educational groups, and overwhelmingly they are girls and young women. There is no consistent scientific explanation for the unequal gender distribution. However, social and societal behavioral norms are discussed, for example, which require women to deal with aggression and anger differently than men. As a result, women are more likely to carry negative feelings and thoughts inward and direct them against themselves than men. However, it is generally agreed that traumatic experiences play a major role in the life histories of people who self-injure. Because strikingly often these people had to experience sexual abuse, were physically abused or mentally neglected.
SVV due to experience of loss or chronic illness.
But loss experiences such as parental divorce can also pave the way for self-injurious behavior (SVV), or chronic illness and repeated surgeries. The consequence of a wide variety of traumas in the course of life, especially childhood life, can be a disturbed development of the personality. A personality that is then much more vulnerable than that of other people and that has difficulty perceiving and expressing feelings. And which, through self-injury, finds its own way to deal with problems and conflicting feelings or injuries and to regulate its innermost being.
Wide range
There are several forms of self-injury. Cutting, also called scribing, is the most common form. Most scratch themselves with razor blades, broken glass or knives, preferably in places that can be hidden from others under clothing, such as the arms, legs, breasts and torso. But also burning with cigarettes, irons or on hotplates, scalding, biting, hitting one’s own body up to broken bones, pulling out hair or extreme nail biting are examples of self-injury. So are eating disorders such as bulimia or extreme exercise.
Often early onset
Most often, self-injurious behavior first appears between the ages of 16 and 30. But children today are thought to inflict wounds on themselves for the first time before the age of 12. Self-injury is not a one-time act, but has an addictive character for those affected: the craving for the “drug self-injury” is perceived as indomitable, a renunciation of it leads to extreme mental distress with restlessness, anxiety and disturbed perception of the environment. And sufferers continue to increase the “dose” by injuring themselves more frequently and severely.
A never-ending vicious circle
Even seemingly minor interpersonal disagreements can be an unmanageable burden for sufferers. And lead to them falling into severe emotional distress without the environment noticing. The inability to cope with negative feelings or to deal with them objectively results in great helplessness, frustration and anger spreading, directed against oneself. This feeling of self-hatred splits perception: those affected report a great emptiness, they feel inwardly as if dead, as if dazed, their body disconnected from consciousness, from reality, numb. And only one wish dominates their thinking: to feel something again, to finally end this terrible state. And suddenly the whole “ritual” of self-harm runs as if automatically. Very few people at this moment feel the pain they inflict on themselves by cutting, burning or hitting themselves. But no matter what form of self-injury it is, performing it immediately brings infinite relief.As if a balloon inflated to just before bursting were suddenly released and all the pressure could escape. With one stroke, relief spreads, relaxation, and with the blood that leaves the body warmly through the skin, the unbearable tension leaves the body. “And a short time I can feel myself again, feel that I am alive!” This is roughly how many explain the state they suddenly find themselves in. But the positive feeling lasts only a short time, because with the “awakening” the affected persons distance themselves from their act and now feel disgust and shame.
A cry for help carved into the skin
Those who self-harm need help. Because even if those affected usually act secretly and are afraid and ashamed of the reactions of those around them, this cruel way of dealing with oneself is a cry for help. And although a frightening number of people who self-injure have suicidal thoughts, the injuries themselves are almost never committed with the intention of taking one’s own life. Incomprehensible to others, self-injury is even a form of caring for those involved, taking care of their bodies, “caring” for them in the only way that is accessible to them.
Don’t look away
Most outsiders react helplessly when confronted with self-injurious behavior, looking away or blaming the sufferer. However, it is important to know: Those affected blame themselves enough. They suffer greatly from their behavior and from not being able to prevent it. The right thing to do, on the other hand, is to approach the person concerned gently; to encourage and also support him or her in seeking professional help. The sooner the better. The first step can be to open up to a doctor you trust. Treatment involves psychotherapy and possibly psychotropic drugs.
Take heart
The path of treatment is usually long and often rocky. For those affected have to learn, so to speak, a new, previously unknown language: namely, to translate their skin cuts into words, to find a new, better form of expression for them. And they must learn to renounce their old, false, but for them well-functioning principle, self-injury.
