Self Harm Scenarios – Trigger Warning

I was watching Lock Up last night on MSNBC and a number of inmates were talking about self harm, for those who don’t know Lock Up is a documentary series about prisons and the people who live in them, and two scenarios were described which had me thinking about the different mentality of those who self harm and those who don’t.

Scenario One

The inmate was in solitary confinement and he was trying to reason with the prison guards on why they should give him a razor so that he could self harm. The inmate reasoning was that if they did not give him a cutting device the self harm would manifest into something else: ie. If I don’t have a razor I will punch the walls, if I am unable to punch the walls I will bang my head, if I am restrained on a bed I will bite my tongue/lip/cheek. The inmate was trying to explain to the guard that if he was allowed to cut briefly than he could regain control hence no future trouble. When I heard this I found myself in total agreement which is probably not a great thing but something that I understand.

Scenario Two

The next inmate was explaining to the Lock Up producers on why he self harm and the statement went along the lines of the following “After staring at the same brick wall day after day, week after week, I began to see faces and shapes in the wall and it began to talk to me. By self harming it snaps my brain back to reality and the delusions go away”. Again I found myself in complete agreement and understood where the inmate was coming from.

To the people who do self harm or have self harmed in the past the hardest thing to explain to someone else is why they do it. I have been asked by too many doctors, nurses and therapists why I chose to participate in this rather dangerous behavior and the best answer I have is “Because it works”. Unfortunately this last statement is accurate as self harm does work in the moment but it leads to other problems such as addiction (it becomes the solution to everything, possible infection, scars and it does not work long term. Self harm addiction is like any other addiction which is your tolerance keeps increasing to where the damage caused becomes more and more dangerous and it gets to a point where it dictates your life.

It has been sometime since I have self harmed but the thoughts and urges have never gone away. A stressful moment will hit or my brain is not behaving and the urge to cut can get pretty severe. I have a safe plan and thankfully my medication (read Seroquel) help to keep the urges down plus keeps my brain going at the right pace but I know that once I slip one cut will lead to ten and ten will lead to a hundred and pretty soon I will once again contemplate of taking a hammer to my hand to regain control. Take care

Helping someone who self harms

Incoming search terms:

• scenarios for self injury
• self harm triggering
• self injury triggers
• self harm reasonings
• self harm trigger
• self injurious scenario
• triggers for self harm
• what are self injury triggers

Related posts:

1. A Beef – Self Harm Pictures
2. Self Harm Awareness Day March 1 2009
3. Self Harm Self Mutilation Self Injury Self Violence
4. Self Harm Awareness Day
5. Self Harm Awareness Day Continued
6. The Worst Part Of Self Harm
7. Pain And Self Harm
8. Dealing With Self Harm Thoughts
9. Other Things To Do Than Self Harm
10. Self Harm – Way too many scars