Self-Injury Versus Suicide
"Self-injury is a distinctly different activity from a suicide attempt, but the boundaries often seem murky, and many self-injurers do indeed have suicidal thoughts or have committed acts aimed at ending their lives. On rare occasions a self-injurer will carry her actions a step too far, inadvertently causing death.
Paradoxically, self-injury is usually a life-sustaining act, a mechanism to cope with stress, relieve inexpressible feelings, and gain attention. Most sufferers say it is a mechanism to stave off suicide or more serious forms of emotional disorganization; it is a "life preserver" rather than an exit strategy. Indeed, in many cases the superficial cutting and burning patients use is not the type of behavior usually associated with people who kill themselves.
To be sure, a small percentage of self-injurers do end their own lives, either on purpose or as an unplanned side effect of an extreme bout with self-injury. Some patients have told us they've come so close to dying so many times that they don't really believe they can die. Others engage in a macabre game of Russian roulette, testing fate to see whether they are meant to live or die.
In our experience, the handful of people who have committed suicide were those who also suffered from a very long-term and profound depression, with sustained feelings of hopelessness. If self-injurers were suicidal as a group, we would be hard pressed to help them to the degree we have, and we would be far less confident of their prospects for recovery.
In terms of its dangers, self-injury can be compared to anorexia, bulimia, or drug and alcohol abuse. All are potentially lethal problems when carried to an extreme. But people seldom think of anorexics or alcoholics as suicidal; people view them as having a difficult problem that can be overcome through perseverance and treatment. We look at self-injury the same way."
-Excerpts from the book "Bodily Harm" by Karen Conterio and Wendy Lader, Ph.D. with Jennifer Kingson Bloom
I didn't know this about you! Thank you for sharing- this has been informative.
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