The first time I left the hospital the therapist set me up with a lady who specializes in PTSD and long term depression cases. Everything was going fine til the third meeting when I made a mistake by being honest. The new therapist asked how I had been since our last meeting and I replied that I had a very bad night which ended up with me taking a razor to my inner forearm causing a good amount of damage. This lady who specialized in difficult cases asked to see my arm and I complied then she said something I will never forget “You are too unstable to treat”. The odd thing is for the longest time when I was cutting my mental stability was pretty solid as this negative coping mechanism was a way to allow my inner turmoil out before it lead to me blowing up at someone or ending my life to escape the pain. Not a great way to fight for your life but at least I was fighting.
The one comment about self harm that has always stuck with me and I wish I could remember when I first heard it first goes like this “If you think the scars on the outside are bad you don’t want to see the scars on the inside”. Self harm is about pain, pain so intense that you are willing to make yourself hurt to make the pain go away. I am talking about emotional pain on a level where I debated with myself about taking a hammer to my hand so my focus could be on the physical and not the emotional. A line from the movie Girl Interrupted sums this up well “to hurt yourself on the outside to kill the thing on the inside”
The stats are all over the place when it comes to self harm/self injury and it is difficult to be pin point accurate as a large percentage of people who self harm will never be seen by a doctor for that reason. The people who do come forward either accidentally went to far or there in the middle of a mental health crisis. Most statistics point at females being the majority of self harmer’s which I believe is accurate but not as wide of a difference as most research points. A female is a lot more likely to go to her doctor then a male as it is with a number of mental disorders just do to society standards alone but that is slowly changing.
Hopefully with more awareness of this issue then more people will come forward with their problems relating to self harm and the medical/therapeutic community will have the knowledge to treat instead of the reaction that happens way too often now. Self harm is not a cry for help but it is a scream that needs to be heard.
Related posts:
- Self Harm Awareness Day March 1 2009
- Self Harm Awareness Day
- Pain And Self Harm
- Self Harm Self Mutilation Self Injury Self Violence
- The Worst Part Of Self Harm
- Bad Fricken Day
- The Big Piece Of The Puzzle Continued
- A Beef – Self Harm Pictures
- A Letter To My Parents Regarding Self Harm
- Alternatives To Self Harm
Hi, I just wondered if you were seeing the same therapist I was. She was horried. She threatened me constantly and finally dumped me for the very thing I came to her for help with. I ended up hospitalized 6 times in 4 months because of her and overdosing twice. Please run from this so-called specialist. Don’t let what happened to me happen to you. She nearly killed me. She accused me of something I didn’t do, threatened me over and over again and never once gave me a solid piece of advice I could hold on to. It took me 4 months of almost daily therapy to undo what she did in 8 months. The ex-therapist I saw told me I needed to be “long-term” hospitalized. Funny. I am away from her and have had intense therapy and have not once self-injured in over 4 months.
When the “therapist” said I was too unstable to treat it was the end of our sessions together. She did say once I was more stable to come back but there is no chance I will ever give her another shot at my brain.
It is so unbelievably frustrating that so many mental health providers are simply unwilling to treat self-injurers. I know exactly what you mean when you say that you “made a mistake by being honest.” I was kicked out of a day treatment program because I “confessed” to my therapist that I had been cutting. Part of my treatment had been “practicing” asking for help (something I’m terrible at), and when I finally made the mistake of admitting that I was cutting and that I needed help, they kicked me out for breaking the rules (no self-harm) of the program. I ended up inpatient a few days later…
“You are too unstable to treat” – what does that even mean? Do you think it’s that doctors are too worried about liability when it comes to treating self-injurers? Why is there so much resistance when it comes to getting treatment for self-harm?