Blog Post 1: Introduction to Self Harming

A. What is self harming? 

Everyone deals with their stress or problems differently. Some people like to listen to music, go on the computer, read a book or watch a movie. These are some of the healthy ways of coping with stress. Well to some people, dealing with stress is like trying to swim when you don't even know how. It wears them down to the point that they can't take it anymore. That's why some people succumb to the unhealthy ways of coping with stress like using illegal drugs or self harming. But, what is self harming? Self harming is an act of intentional and direct injuring of ones own body tissues most often done with suicidal attempts or intentions. It is impossible to grasp and accurately graph the number of people, most especially adolescents, who self harm. This is of course, because of the fact that teenagers has this secretive personality and they do not tell anyone what really is going on or how are they struggling to cope up with their everyday lives. 

According to this article that I have read written by Natasha Tracy entitled 10 Ways People Self Harm, Self Injure there is list of top 10 ways on how people usually do it:

1. Scratching or pinching – this act includes severely scratching or pinching with fingernails or objects to the point that bleeding occurred or marks remained on the skin. 
2. Impact with objects – this act includes banging or punching objects to the point of bruising or bleeding. 
3. Cutting – this behavior included self mutilation and most common in females.
4. Impact with oneself – this act includes banging or punching oneself to the point of bruising or bleeding.
5. Ripped skin – this way of self-mutilation includes ripping or tearing skin. 
6. Carving – this way of self-harm is when a person carves words or symbols into the skin.
7. Interfering with healing – this way of self-mutilation is often in combination with other types of self-harm.
8. Burning – burning skin is a way of self-mutilation. 
9. Rubbing objects into the skin – this type of self-harm involves the rubbing of sharp objects, such as glass, into the skin.
10. Hair-pulling – this way to self-harm is medically known as trichotillomania. In trichotillomania, a person feels compelled to pull out their own hair and in some cases even ingest that hair.

So there, the most common ways of self harming. Moreover, I want to quote what Ms. Tracy said, "Eating disorders and addiction behaviors are not typically considered methods of self-harm, but in some cases they may be if the intent of their use is specifically to cause harm to the body." I quite agree on this statement that she have indicated. In my opinion, intentionally starving yourself or abusing your own body by using illegal drugs can be considered as a way of self harming.

B. The truth behind Self Harming

People often think that people who self harm are usually "attention seekers". Apparently they are not. Those are just some ridiculous stigmas and stereotypes about them. What are the true reasons people self harm? Based on this article written by Simon Crisp entitled Explainer: what is self harm and why do people do it? Some reasons include:  Severe intellectual disability, acute psychosis, childhood history of physical or sexual abuse, and personality disorders. He also said that the main reason these people who have experience certain scenarios or born with the circumstances self harm is because it is their way of how they deal with their frustration or anger, difficulty in managing the symptoms of their trauma, having hallucinations or delusions (for people with acute psychosis) and self blame or loathing that often follows from abuse. The act of Self Harming also becomes the way or the key to release their tension or anger, to substitute emotional for physical pain, to be able to "feel something" when feeling emotionally disconnected or dissociated or sometimes to induce dissociation to avoid aversive emotion  as is common in the case of abuse or trauma.

I would like to quote what Mr. Crisp have said about the stereotypes of Self Harming, "Despite self-harm being one of the major risk factors of attempted or completed suicide, a large proportion of people who self-harm have no desire to die whatsoever. Some may even have very strident views against suicide." This pretty much breaks all the strongly built walls of stereotyped ideas about people who self harm. They do not want to die. They just wanna escape the horrible truth of their problems because they don't know how to deal with it.