December 18, 2009

• sharing some of my story

  Originally posted November 2009

  Warning to self-injurers the following post my be triggering. Stay safe.
  
  I thought I would share some of my story. I am a cutter. I do not say I was a cutter because I will always be a cutter just like an alcoholic will always be an alcoholic. I have been cut free for over a year.
  
  I started cutting when I was in 7th grade. To be honest though that was not my first form of self injury….I used to bang my head before that. For some reason unknown even to me, when I was in 7th grade I took an exactoknife  blade from art and used it to cut myself. That was the first of many many times of cutting.

  I used to cut my arms, my legs, my stomach etc.

  I got most of my blades to cut with by taking apart disposable razors.

  This is a topic that many people do NOT want to talk about. It is a topic that seems to scare people because they do not understand it.
  
  I am hoping that this post will help.

  Self-injury usually indicates that somewhere during development that person didn’t learn good ways of coping with overwhelming feelings or stress. They’re not sick or insane; they just never learned positive ways to deal with feelings and emotions for various reasons. Positive coping skills can be learned at any point in life. People who self-injure can learn to use new and healthier coping mechanisms. This process may take years to develop. It is my husband who has helped me learn healthy ways.

  Self-injury is also termed self-mutilation, self-harm, or self-abuse. It can be defined as the deliberate, repetitive, impulsive, non-lethal harming of one’s self, including but not limited to;
  1)cutting,
  2)burning,
  3)picking or interfering with wound healing,
  4)infecting oneself,
  5)punching/hitting self or objects,
  6)inserting objects in to skin,
  7)bruising or breaking bones, and
  8)some forms of hair pulling.

  Self-injury, like many addictions, is often a coping mechanism to deal with some manner of internal pain, many who struggle with it also struggle with other issues such as eating disorders and alcohol and drug abuse. While self-injury may be someone’s way to cope with or relieve painful or hard-to-express feelings and is generally NOT a suicide attempt.

  We aren’t born knowing how to express and cope with our emotions — we learn from our parents, our siblings, our friends, schoolteachers, — everyone in our lives. One factor common to most people who self-injure, whether they were abused or not, is invalidation. They were taught at an early age that their interpretations of and feelings about the things around them were bad and wrong. They learned that certain feelings weren’t allowed. In abusive homes, they may have been severely punished for expressing certain thoughts and feelings. At the same time, they had no good role models for coping. You can’t learn to cope effectively with distress unless you grow up around people who are coping effectively with distress. How could you learn to cook if you’d never seen anyone work in a kitchen?
  
  Although a history of abuse is common among self-injurers, not everyone who self-injures was abused. Sometimes, invalidation and lack of role models for coping are enough, especially if the person’s brain chemistry has already primed them for choosing this sort of coping.

  So….My name is Kristen and I am a cutter. I am in recovery and hope to stay cut free. I will continue to do the things I can to stay that way. So I don’t shave because I would rather be hairy then be triggered. I would never write this type of post while home alone because it can be triggering so I wrote it while my husband was home to stay safe.
  
  Do you know anyone (Everyone knows someone but may not know it) who self injures? Do you or have you injured yourself? Feel free to share your thoughts.

  • 10:24 am
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