When all other exit plans fail, physical pain becomes an exit plan.
I bet that if you asked a thousand people who ever engaged in self-harm why they practice it, you would probably get a thousand different responses. But I’m equally sure there is a common denominator that unites all of us: a desperate desire to escape. Something. Anything. Escaping the pain, responding to pain with pain. Hoping that a different kind of pain will eliminate the original pain, the one that compelled us to inflict another form of pain on ourselves. Escaping from pain into the arms of another kind of pain is sometimes the most constructive exit plan we can devise in a given moment.
So, what is the main catalyst for self-harm?
Pain. Plane and simple. An emotional and mental pain so overwhelming that the physical pain pales in comparison. There comes a dreaded point when physical pain almost becomes a necessity. We want our outsides to match our insides. With every new scar, there is a new, fresh moment of relief. Consequently, the more I cut, the more moments of release I will experience. My pain will start diminishing with every fresh scar, the inner pain decreases as the physical pain increases.
I don’t want to seem like I’m condoning self-harm in any way, not even for a minute.
Self-harm is tragic.
Self-harm is the most vicious act you can commit against yourself.
Self-harm is a crime, and it never goes unpunished. The punishment is profound, unapologetic shame, merciless guilt and self-loathing. And it’s not easy to rid oneself of those. It might take a lifetime. A lifetime might not be enough.
Self-harm is self-loathing, or at least an unbreakably intertwined with it. There is no way you can inflict pain voluntarily, well knowing of the damage you are causing, on someone you love and respect. The self-loathing is so vicious, so cruel that it has the power to torment you into terrible actions against yourself. It can manipulate you into thinking that the world would be better off without you, that you are nothing but a piece of garbage, not even worthy of the oxygen that you are breathing. The least you can do is to punish yourself, for everything, for merely existing. You don’t deserve anything, you’re not worth anything, you are fifty feet under the ground, that’s the only place where you belong.
That’s one way that self-harm can occur. But there are a myriad of different ways, triggers and reasons.
Here are only a few, the ones that I know.
The cacophony of self-loathing and self-hatred overpowers the natural reasoning of the mind. Simply put, the mind talks you into the belief that pain is all you deserve, that if nobody else will punish you for all your faults and flaws, you should take it upon yourself and do it. The hatred is so devastating that you can’t even look in the mirror, the mere idea of yourself disgusts you to your core. You just wish you were dead, even better, you wish you had never been born. But whatever, if the world is so unlucky to have you in it, the least you can do is to punish yourself for all the wasted oxygen and space you are taking up.
This episode usually takes a while, I’m usually not satisfied until my entire right thigh is covered in bloody stripes caused by the scissors. Also, the scars don’t redden fast enough, it takes a while for the skin to really show how deep you cut. And since the redness doesn’t show immediately, it gives the illusion that I haven’t cut enough, or deep enough, so I start cutting even more viciously. I want it to show, I want it to be red and bloody and repelling. Just like I am.
Attention seeking is a common accusation. It might be the reality for some cutters, but I believe most of us are lone wolfs. I would never cut in a place that is plainly visible to the outside world. My right thigh has always been the optimal choice for me. Tight shorts or bathing suites are out of the question. I have only ever cut my arm once, even then only because there was not an inch of skin on my thigh that wasn’t already covered in scars. That was a particularly destructive and relatively long-lasting episode, one of the only two times when my self-harm progressed to burning. But that’s a whole other story, and an exception, thankfully.
I can’t speak for those peers of mine for whom self-harm is just a desperate cry for help, if they even exist, which I honestly doubt. Knowing self-harm the way that I do – which is exclusively my version of it, so I must emphasize that I can’t speak for anybody else – I simply can’t imagine myself reaching for the scissors to show off my dramatic deed tomorrow at work. Nor to my parents or my partner, to make them pay more attention to me. I can’t fathom how anyone would be capable of inflicting such physical pain on their own body just for the sake of attention, and it’s so easy to attach the ‘dramatic’ label on some poor souls who do so.
In my opinion, it’s not worth it to carry the label of being dramatic, or attention seeking. For most of us, it remains our dirty little secret. We can share it with the closest people in our life, but even they do not deserve the responsibility this knowledge imposes upon them. Once you share your secret with someone, you unintentionally make it their business, their job to do something about it, to dissuade you from continuing this horrible habit of yours. Unwillingly, they become responsible for something they can’t control and, frankly, something that doesn’t concern them. Painful as it is, they cannot save you. It is not their job to save you. Their only job, if they signed up for it voluntarily, is to love and support you, to give you the best possible companionship that you can have. You can share your innermost feelings and secrets with them, including the worst of the worst, your most abhorrent inner demons, but ultimately they don’t have the power to save your life – so you end up hiding from them completely, which can destroy you even more.
I have shared my history of self-harm with a tight group of friends. My partner is the one who takes the brunt of it, obviously, but she is the most understanding, most caring soul in the entire world. I did share it with my best friends, though, when it was the most acute, and they gave me nothing but support. They have tried to talk me out of it numerous times, of course, but I never put the responsibility on them to save me from myself.
Escaping pain, though, is what I believe to be the main and number one reason why people practice self-harm. Moments when the pain inside is wanting for an external outlet, when the desired outcome of the act is simply a release of inner pain. You practice self-harm the most when you are hurting the most, the deeper you cut, the more probable the relief is. For me, this usually occurs in a minus three or a minus four. Cutting was my go-to fix for about two years in my young adult life, surprisingly not when I was a teenager. I was twenty-five when I practiced self-harm for the first time, and I just recently relapsed not too long ago, at twenty-nine.
In regards to self-harm, mixed episodes for bipolar folks like me are a whole other story.
Self-loathing doesn’t necessarily need to be involved, nor any other particular reasoning. For some reason, it just happens. Almost every mixed episode of mine culminates in some sort of self-harm. Mostly cutting, burning only twice.
A mixed episode is probably the hardest thing to explain in the whole arena of bipolar disorder. In a way it’s easier to describe a chronically low state, as every person in the world is familiar with feeling down, so it’s relatively easy to make people understand the basic tenets of clinical depression. Mania or hypomania is one level above, a manic or hypomanic state is a much harder concept to grasp for a mind that never experienced clinical heights.
But when these two horrifying states of mind present themselves concurrently, even the person experiencing them can run out of words. Simply put, the Low occurs with all its destructiveness, with the unspeakable intensity of the High. Yes, you despise yourself. Yes, your entire world is a giant black hole and there is no way out. Yes, you want to die more than anything in the world. But unlike in an episode of pure depression, when you don’t even have the energy to do anything about your desire to die, now you have all the energy in the world to act on it.
That’s what a mixed episode is.
The most horrifying state of mind I have ever been in. It’s like being locked inside an elevator with flashing lights and deafening techno music and no doors and windows. There is a desperate need for release, and nothing has proved itself more effective than physical pain. Even just one cut can shock me out of the episode (although mostly a lot more than one will be necessary). The most radical mixed episode I have ever had resulted in me stabbing myself in the wrist with a burning cigarette.
Indisputably a horrific habit, and definitely not the wisest problem-solving technique, but self-harm did make me escape some of the most terrifying mixed episodes I have had so far. But the damage it does every time makes its effectiveness more than questionable.
I’m not talking about the physicality of it. Pain subsides. Scars heal. Some slower than others, and the marks of these episodes remain carved on my skin for a long while, constantly reminding me of the torment my mind has gone through. The scars do heal, but the marks they leave inside mind and soul are much harder to erase.
It’s the same script every time.
Usually the bathroom floor, occasionally the bedroom. I’m done, out of the episode, or having finished a self-loathing rant which resulted in me finding myself on the floor with scissors in hand. I just sit there, and take a look at the product of my self-destruction; I see the scars, the blood, my shaking hands, my shortness of breath. I’m out of the episode, and out of all this destruction an unexpected visitor emerges.
Compassion.
All of a sudden, I’m inundated by the purest, most compassionate, most loving wave of emotions. The antithesis of that hateful, vengeful creature that made me inflict all that pain on me, here comes emerging this beautiful soul full of empathy, love, gentleness, kindness. All I want to do is just to gently hold myself, wrap myself in love and compassion, and tell myself that it’s okay. I know it hurts. I’m so, so, so sorry for inflicting all this pain on you. I’m so sorry. I love you so much.
I would like to believe that this latter part of me is who I really am.
I really hope so.
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