Self Injury

Most times when people think about self-injury, the image that comes to

mind

is the goth teenager who perhaps scratches their wrists for attention.

This

is a false belief.

Take a look around you. Self injury knows no boundaries. Perhaps someone

"goth" but perhaps too your best friend. Your teacher. Your dad. Your

brother. The mailman. The lawyer. The manager at the store you buy your

clothing from. Self injury has many faces and many names - cutting,

burning,

banging, slitting the wrists, slashing - but one thing that is the same

across self injurers is the feeling they get when they hurt themselves

that

allows them to go on with their lives.

It may seem wrong that hurting yourself would make you feel better - after

all, the human condition seems to require us to step away from anything

that

may cause us pain - but this, for many people who SI, is the reality.

English: Drug overdose

Self-injury

An injury to one is an injury to all.

As a

former SIer and as someone who maintains a support group as well as who

knows many people who do hurt themselves, I can tell you that the reasons

people hurt themselves are not always necessarily the same. Some do it to

feel less numb. Some do it because it gives them a sense of relief and

release from what they're feeling. Some do it as punishment, and some just

do it out of old habit. To many people, these acts are disgusting - but

they

only seem that way because of the ignorance about SI in our society. It is

estimated that about 1% of the population at any given time SI's. While

this

seems like a small number, it actually means that there are millions of

people who need to hurt themselves to live. The ignorance about self harm...