'Cause I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all...

"Some turn to alcohol, narcotics, or other destructive substances. Others binge, purge, or starve themselves. For more and more people, however, comfort comes from the razor blades, knives, scissors, and other household implements that they use to carve physical expressions of their anguish on their skin. By most accounts, self-injury is rapidly displacing eating disorders as the most serious mental and physical health problem confronting our society.

What is self-injury? We define it as the deliberate mutilation of the body or a body part, not with the intent to commit suicide but as a way of managing emotions that seem too painful for words to express. It can include cutting the skin or burning it, or bruising oneself through a premeditated accident. It can mean scratching the skin until it bleeds, or interfering with the healing of wounds. In more extreme cases, self-injurers break their own bones, amputate their own digits, eat harmful substances, or inject their bodies with toxins.

The only photo I ever took of any of my self-mutilation.
This was done with a paring knife.

Leaving aside the more dramatic examples, there are aspects of the syndrome that are prevalent among "normal" people and among people with milder disturbances. Self-injury encompasses a range of behaviors, some of them not so distant from the stress-busting strategies of the healthy population. How many people do you know--yourself included--who bite their nails, pick at acne lesions, or scratch mosquito bites until they bleed? How many people have gone on starvation diets to fit into a certain pair of pants? Where does one draw the line between the harmless things that people do to their bodies and those that merit serious attention?"

-Excerpt from the book "Bodily Harm" by Karen Conterio and Wendy Lader, Ph.D. with Jennifer Kingson Bloom