Causes of Self Injury and Cutting
Depression, Schizophrenia and Inappropriate Emotional Responses
Sep 30, 2009
Self-injury seems incomprehensible to people who don’t engage in self-injurious behavior. Why would someone choose to cut or otherwise hurt themselves? It’s important to remember that self-mutilation provides individuals with some degree of comfort or relief. The relief itself rapidly gives way to feelings of shame over self-injuring, which encourages more self-mutilation.
Emotional Responses and Self-Injury
People self-injure for a number of reasons, but the most common is an inability to handle intense or negative emotions. For whatever reason, self-mutilators cannot express such emotions in a healthy manner, and instead deal with negative feelings by hurting themselves. Reasons given for self injury by people suffering from the disorder include:
- calming intense emotions through pain
- punishing oneself for perceived faults
- substituting physical pain for emotional pain
- the physical expression of anger or other strong emotions
- Using physical pain to feel something when emotionally numb.
People who self-harm may have histories of sexual or emotional abuse. Others come from families where strong emotions such as anger are frowned upon. People who self-harm often lack social support.
Adolescent Self-Injury and Emo Cutting
Adolescent self-injury is on the rise. In part, this may be because teens are still learning to regulate their emotional states. So-called “emo cutting” is very common amongst teens, some of whom see acts of self-injury as rebellious or as a way into a select subculture.
While various subcultures embrace body modification (including piercing, tattooing and branding), self-injurious behavior should not be confused with such acts. Self-harm is an inappropriate response to emotional stimuli. Far from empowering individuals or granting them access into an elite group, cutting and other forms of self-harm produce feelings of shame and guilt.
Unfortunately teen self-injury is seen as normal by some teenagers. Websites offering advice on self-injury and techniques for self-mutilation strengthen the illusion that self-harm is a lifestyle choice rather than a serious illness.
Mental Illness and Self-Injurious Behavior
Self-injurious behavior often occurs in combination with other mental illness. Cutting and other forms of self-harm may manifest in people suffering from:
- borderline personality disorder
- eating disorders
- obsessive compulsive disorder
- schizophrenia
- substance abuse.
Self-injurious behavior is classified as an impulse control disorder, a broad family of disorders that includes kleptomania (impulsive stealing), pyromania, trichotillomania (hair-pulling) and dermotillomania (skin and wound picking).
Self-Harm and Suicide
Damage caused by self-injurious behavior is not the result of attempted suicides, although the causes of self-injury and suicide attempts sometimes overlap. The greatest damage of self-harm is that possibility that the individual will cause sufficient injury to cause accidental death, or that symptoms of self-injury will worsen to the point the affected person actually becomes suicidal.
Identifying the cause of self-mutilation is very important. A person who cuts to alleviate emotional turmoil requires very different care than someone who injures themselves as a complication of depression or other mental illness. Successful self-injury treatment requires an understanding of the impulse control disorder’s cause.
Resources
Cutter,D., Jaffe, J., Segal, J. (Retrieved 30 September, 2009). Self-Injury: Types, Causes and Treatment.
Healthy Place. (Retrieved 30 September, 2009). Self-Injury: Types, Causes and Treatment.
Disclaimer: The information contained within this article is for informational purposes only, and is not intended to be a substitute in any way for care and treatment by a qualified health professional
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