Self-harm - not so cut and dried.

On Brewski's current post he mentions people who self-harm... he brings this up in his usual 'what the fuck is going on?' kind of way (quote: "And what's with every cunt self-harming these days anyway? The world has fucking left me behind pal.") and in the midst of a typically humorous post, so rather than bring everyone down by getting all serious in his comments box I have decided to write on the subject here...

Now, I have worked with (in a mentor / student capacity) and been friends with many people who have or still do cut themselves and to my mind they fall into three distinct categories:-

1) The ones that genuinely want to kill themselves. These are the ones I have met least, partially because... well, you don't know who they are until they do it. Only those who fail in the attempt get brought to your attention, and only if you are close to the individual or work in some kind of medical or social field where you would need to know. Your average person in the street would be oblivious to this type of self-harmer as they tend to keep the scars well covered to avoid detection.

2) The ones who feel like they are letting out the pain. This is kind of like a medieval style blood-letting and as well as the psychological idea of "bleeding out the bad" there is some degree of physical truth in the concept that calmness and "lightness" comes with a loss of blood. This type of self-harmer does this purely for themselves and is usually embarrassed about it. As a result they also tend to keep their scars covered to avoid detection.

3) The attention-seekers. Okay, that is a harsh phrase to use to describe them but it sums it up. They are maybe crying out for help, maybe simply wanting someone to notice them. Some just want to look 'hard', although I have not met many like that. These tend to be most obvious, the most noticeable to other people, as they ones rarely cover up their scars - the point of them is to be seen. Whereas types 1 and 2 will often be left with permanent scars type 3 will rarely cut that deep... of course, there is always the chance that - if ignored - a type 3 will graduate to type 2 or 1.

Okay, there is certainly some generalisation there and my intention is not to offend any readers who themselves self-harm. I do, however, base this on my observations and conversations with self-harmers, some of whom have been very close to me.

The basic fact is the people who we most hear about and see, the people who Brewski describes as "slicing 'I am a cunt' into your pallid skin, you poncey emo fucks you", they tend to fall into category 3. But there are so many more people out there who do this than we realise... your best friend; your kid; your secretary; your teacher... I guarrantee that all of us have people in our lives that cut themselves, yet we don't even know.

As usual your thoughts are welcomed...

Cheers m'dears!

For those who are interested here is a link to The National Self-Harm Network of the UK. For those outside of the UK there are other sites that may be more use - you just need to do a search.