Let’s just start with the elephant in the room: you probably know someone who engages in self-harm. It’s an unfortunate, uncomfortable, and scary fact that 1 in 5 females and 1 in 7 males engage in self-injury every year. Regardless of your relationship to that person in your life who may engage in self-harm, it is important to be able to recognize myth from fact so that you interact with that someone in a way that is supportive and understanding versus unaccepting and shaming. Reacting negatively to someone who self-harms doesn’t deter them from engaging in that behavior, it just makes it worse. You don’t have to fully understand the thought processes behind a person’s reason to harm, but you should understand that you don’t understand and thus shouldn’t try and fill in the blanks.
The following are 5 myths that perpetuate damaging notions about those who self-harm.
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Myth #1: Self-Harm = Cutting
It may be the most “popular” or the most well known, but cutting is not the only form of self-injury out there. Burning, picking or reopening wounds, punching, hitting, stabbing, bruising, or breaking bones of oneself are all forms of self-injury. Even certain forms of hair pulling can be a form of self-harm. The point is that if you think someone could be harming themselves, to look for signs just beyond cutting, or realize that if you missed all the signs, it was probably because you weren’t looking for the right things. This is meant to be both a cautionary tale and a reassurance to not beat up on yourself for not noticing it sooner.
Myth #2: Self-injury is a form of suicide.
Just like a square-is-a-rectangle-but-a-rectangle-isn’t-a-square, suicide is a form of self-injury, but self-injury is not derivative of suicide. Self-injury is most often done with the intention of numbing feelings of intense pain or trauma, not with the intention of ending one's’ life. Certainly, there are some people who self-harm who contemplate suicide, but that does not mean that they are attempting to take their life by self-harming.
Myth #3: People who self-harm do it for attention.
It’s actually quite the opposite. Most people self-harm because they do not know how to cope with the severe challenges they are facing, and don’t know anyone they can talk to, or they don't want to “burden” their loved ones with their problems. Therefore, they try to help themselves, and sadly sometimes self-harm is the only thing that comes to mind. They aren’t doing it for attention. They’re doing it for themselves. To find a way to keep on living despite the magnitude of hopelessness and despair that they feel.
Myth #4: People who self-harm can stop any time.
Self-harming is a coping mechanism. Even worse, it can become addicting. Analogous to alcohol and drug addictions, the benefits that self-harm provides are temporary. It temporarily distracts someone from the immense emotional pain they are experiencing. Eventually, the feelings they were trying to ignore return, tempting them to self-injure again in order to make those feelings go away. And because the body begins to develop a tolerance to the pain caused by self-harm, the self-harmer resorts to inflicting increasingly severe injuries upon themselves to achieve the same effect as before. It’s a vicious, addictive, and devastating cycle that can’t just be stopped.
Myth #5: People self-harm because they have a personality disorder or have been abused.
Any intense and debilitating sense of pain and suffering can lead someone to self-injure. While abuse and trauma and borderline personality disorder can serve as a source of such pain, other causes can include addiction disorders, eating disorders, depression, and anxiety disorders. Even this is not a comprehensive list of the causes, as it really can encompass an innumerable amount of environmental stressors and pressures.
Self-harm is a tremendously uncomfortable subject, but it’s a reality we are faced with today that is becoming more and more common, especially among teens. Academia supports that if a teen begins to self-harm, they are highly susceptible to continuing to harm well into their adult years. And while self-injury is not inherently suicide, self-injury can lead to suicide, with those who self-harm (regardless of age) being nine times more likely than the average person to report a suicide attempt. Don’t panic completely, though, as it has been found that over half of the self-harmers do not contemplate suicide.
I believe that the increasing prevalence of self-harm is a product of our society’s disturbing lack of progress when it comes to addressing and treating mental health. The heavily stigmatized nature of mental health and mental illness drive those who suffer to conceal their conditions for fear of judgment. You can be part of the solution by staying well-informed, reaching out for help if you need it, and busting any myths you encounter from others in your day-to-day life.
