Pain / Stress Relief through Self Injury? - Needs Attention & Treatment

We are not talking about suicidal attempts here. Self-injury may get converted into a fatal/life-threatening act, but still, it is different from suicidal attempts in the sense of intentions, emotions and thought processes. 

Self-injury is defined as ‘the act of harming your own body on purpose.’ It takes many forms like cutting, scratching or stabbing with a sharp object, burning with a lit match, cigarettes or heated sharp objects, carving words or symbols on the skin, self-hitting, punching, biting or head banging, piercing the skin etc. 

There is no one single or simple causal factor to self-injuring behaviour. Though some personality traits are vulnerable to this such as perfectionism, impulsivity and narcissism, in general, it is a result of poor coping skills and inability to deal with emotions. It is a mental health condition where emotional complexity is expressed through physical acts.

Why does someone injure himself? 

Still, it is not understandable to laypeople how one can injure himself/herself to gain relief from the pain/stress he/she is going through. It may seem contradictory, but it is a true picture of mental processes in the context of mixed emotions and their unfulfilled expressions. 

If there is severe distress, anxiety, anger, guilt, rejection, panic, loneliness, helplessness etc. & many more mixed emotions & one cannot express them / suppress them for a long time, the mind will be burdened with those unexpressed emotions. It may lose its control & search for a vent. 

The mind has some defence mechanisms to get relief from emotional stress. But some of them are unhealthy and push us into a vicious cycle, Self-injury is one of those. 

When one feels uncontrolled, lost, trapped, anxious, panicked, helpless etc. Self-injury gives him/her control over those emotions, even control of your body and life situations. Through bodily pain, one gets distracted from emotional pains. If someone cannot tell anyone what he /she is going through, self-injury is one of the ways to seek help by conveying inner emotional intricacy to the outer world. If someone is feeling emotional emptiness, it is his/her way to fill that gap by injuring himself/herself and feeling ‘something’. 

But these ways of expression through self-injury are very temporary and much less than expected. It pushes oneself into the same or more complex & intense emotional multiplicity. Then again one gets injured to relieve oneself from that emotional stress. It becomes a pattern for some people to cope with stressful life situations. 

Self-injury needs attention and proper treatment. Some may need medication along with counselling. Understanding, expressing and channelizing one’s emotions, healthy coping strategies and critical thinking skills can be taught through psychotherapeutic interventions. 

All of us need to know that self-injurious behaviour or thoughts of self-injury can be dealt with in various ways. It should get destigmatized and help should be asked for. 

Meenakshi 

23-02-2024