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Few people will forget the image of Vancouverite Bethany Storro at a news conference after allegedly being the victim of an attack in which a stranger threw a cup of acid in her face. Fewer still will forget the news that followed a few weeks later — the attack never actually happened. A "pretty black woman" had not thrown the acid in her face in front of her local Starbucks. No one else was involved. She had injured herself.
The news left many people in the community shocked and saddened. Her parents say they don't have answers. And people around the world wonder why a young woman would do this to herself. Many experts describe this as a sort of self-injury or self-mutilation. According to the Mayo Clinic:
Self-injury is the act of deliberately harming your own body, such as cutting or burning yourself. It's not meant as a suicide attempt. Rather, self-injury is an unhealthy way to cope with emotional pain, intense anger and frustration.
The American Self-Harm Information Clearinghouse, based out of Seattle, reports that one percent of the U.S. population "has, at one time or another, used self-inflicted physical injury as a means of coping with an overwhelming situation or feeling." Some reports suggest that number may be dramatically higher among teens.
What causes a person to want to harm, injure or mutilate themself? Have you ever done it? What did you do? And, more importantly, why? What result were you hoping for? Do you know someone who has chosen to injure themselves in any way? How did you try to help?
Tagged as: mental health · police · vancouver
Photo credit: Visible Ducts / Creative Commons
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Self harm is more common than portrayed. All dysfunctional behavior involves degrees of self harm. Smoking, Drinking, Prescription and Illicit Drug Abuse, wife abuse, child abuse and any type of a myriad of addictions like overeating, gambling, pornography or internet addictions.
Seems the capacity to inflict self harm is very common and broadly abused. Why do you keep beating yourself?....because it feels so good when I stop.
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I'm curious about our focus right now. We're talking about how Vancouver has been changed, and I'm wondering has Vancouver been changed? What are the quantifiable changes we are seeing in the Vancouver area?
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As to Emilys' comment about getting a shot; veterinarians will slap a horse before they stick the needle in, and I believe that the slap is to temporarily numb the area so that the horse does not feel the needle. Horses are used to being touched, patted, and slapped to get them to move over but are not used to being stuck with a needle.
You might want to try that next time.
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Is it the physical, concrete way to actualize the emotional experience? People understand a broken leg, but they don’t understand a broken mind. If you feel it in the physical is it easier to comprehend? When the physical injury feels better, does it ease the mind also? Is this a kind of pain-relief through relativity? Does one injury help us forget about the other? Which is the chicken? Which is the egg? Is self-injury the symptom of something else, or is it the disease in itself?
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P.S. This may be an impertinent statement, but I can’t help but think self-injury must have some relation to sadomasochism. Perhaps that is too cheap, but even average sex seems to have some element of violence. It is unfortunate that especially with topics like S&M our culture can’t discuss them in an inquisitive way, or analyze the motivation and ask questions without being seen as passing judgement. Now everything must be considered normal and healthy or entirely detrimental---but we are more then capable of doing both. For example, we can think that transsexuals should be respected like anyone else, not discriminated against, and still wonder how it occurs, why it occurs---there is a huge difference between thinking something is wrong or nefarious or just recognizing that something isn’t commonplace or isn’t the average constitution, and trying to figure out if there is a reason why.
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The first question that comes up for me is what religion was the person raised in?
I picture the photos of Muslims and Christians flogging themselves to psychically join in their prophets suffering.
The other thing is that old King Solomon instruction to parents; that if they "spare the rod, they will spoil the child".
Many many people actually follow that religious instruction and it is a very powerful role modeling for children to do to themselves to control their own behaviors and emotions. Kids learn that hurting themselves is the way to live.
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I used to cut, started as a teenager, I'm going to be 30 this week. I have never really lost the urge, and am not sure where it came from, I was popular in highschool was active in sports, and still have great friends. The lifesaver for me to stop was tattoos. It became a way for me to have the pain but turn it into something artistic and beautiful. Over the years I've collected a few, and this spring went through a breakup of four years. The urge was never stronger, I went and got a new tattoo. It helped a lot. Sometimes I wonder will the urge ever go away.
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Is there something about our society that's making this worse? Have we developed such a meida-saturated, "Survivor" culture that makes people feel inadequate in order to get them to buy stuff - with the side effect of making some people feel so inadequate that they resort to this kind of behavior?
I tend to think that this is a symptom of how dysfunctional our culture has become. When the subtle yet constant message pumped out by popular media sources is that you are inadequate without "our products" what effect does this message have on the psyche?
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My own fight with SI had nothing to do with not having "stuff", but with my own feelings and emotions that stemmed from my own mental disorders as well as an unhappy childhood. I feel like my battles with anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder, and bipolar disorder are trivialized by statements like this. It's not that I'm ill, it's that I'm a victim of our consumerist society and a bombardment of negative media messages? I think not.
You could have a point, and there probably are people out there who struggle with their self-images because of our current culture, but the root of the problem is still internal. A person isn't going to have those problems unless they're predisposed. Someone who is isolated or shielded from the media could still wind up with a negative self image, and someone bombarded with these "subtle yet constant" messages could turn out to be well adjusted and stable.
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Thank you for covering this subject in a public forum. As one who has struggled my entire life with self-harm, it is wonderful to hear it discussed in the open. The perceived need to hide harm and inability to talk about it the way one might about other problem behaviors can make it even more emotionally burdensome. In case there are others reading these comments who are struggling with compulsive skin picking (CSP) here are a couple of great online resources:
http://trich.org/
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/Pickaderms/ -
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I have been hurting myself since I was 13 years old, and for a while it was a very serious problem. I was a cutter, which meant I primarily used a knife to cut myself. I also burned myself with cigarettes and ice/salt. I don't know what made me start self-mutilating, exactly, but I do know that it was very addicting and as time went on I had to cut myself more and/or deeper to the get the same result. What was on the outside of my body was a direct reflection of what I was feeling inside, and hurting myself was the only way I could really understand the things I was feeling. It had a very calming effect and helped me numb myself, much like drinking would numb the pain of an alcoholic. That's why it was so hard to stop--if I wasn't cutting I had to think my thoughts and feel my feelings. Additionally, it's sometimes the only control I had over my life, and to give it up was to give up the one thing I had power over.
I'm 28 now. I've never really stopped completely, it is still something I struggle with. If I'm having a really hard time with my anxiety or depression, about 75% of the time I think to myself "oh wow, I just want to cut myself" but for the most part I am able to overcome my urges. It's not a frequent occurence these days, however. The last time I hurt myself was December, and before that it was some time in 2006. Prior to 2006, the last time was some time in 2004.
I know other self-injurers. A couple of my close friends have struggled with it, and my niece has admitted to doing it in the past. There's safety and relief in being able to admit to people who understand, and that's how my friends and I have helped each other: by talking each other through the difficult periods, or sitting with each other when the urges are strong. We've also supported each other as we've gone through therapy, and held each other accountable.