Public Entry - Spread the Awareness!
SIAD is a global awareness day, and yet it is not supported by any nations' governments, because it is a grass-roots idea.
Somehow, in the mists of time, the date was set as the 1st of March, and organisations around the world make extra efforts to raise awareness ready for SIAD.
SIAD stands for "Self Injury Awareness Day." Self Injury is deliberate behaviour that inflicts physical harm on your body, aimed at relieving emotional distress. It is classified as an unhealthy coping mechanism.
This may be the aspect of self-harm that is most puzzling to those who do not do it. Why would anyone choose to inflict physical damage on him or herself? Because they cannot imagine themselves doing such a thing under any circumstances, many people dismiss self-injury as "senseless" or "irrational" behavior. And certainly it does seem that way at first glance.
Injuries can prove to an individual that their emotional pain is real and valid. SI can escalate in frequency and severity since it becomes a natural response to dealing with stress.
So... what does it do for those who self injure? Here's a list:
- Escape from emptiness, depression, and feelings of unreality.
- Easing tension.
- Providing relief: when intense feelings build, self-injurers are overwhelmed and unable to cope. By causing pain, they reduce the level of emotional and physiological arousal to a bearable one.
- Relieving anger: many self-injurers have enormous amounts of rage within. Afraid to express it outwardly, they injure themselves as a way of venting these feelings.
- Escaping numbness: many of those who self-injure say they do it in order to feel something, to know that they're still alive.
- Grounding in reality, as a way of dealing with feelings of depersonalization and dissociation
- Maintaining a sense of security or feeling of uniqueness
- Obtaining a feeling of euphoria
- Preventing suicide
- Expressing emotional pain they feel they cannot bear
- Obtaining or maintaining influence over the behavior of others
- Communicating to others the extent of their inner turmoil
- Communicating a need for support
- Expressing or repressing sexuality
- Expressing or coping with feelings of alienation
- Validating their emotional pain -- the wounds can serve as evidence that those feelings are real
- Continuing abusive patterns: self-injurers tend to have been abused as children.
- Punishing oneself for being "bad"
- Obtaining biochemical relief: there is some thought that adults who were repeatedly traumatized as children have a hard time returning to a "normal" baseline level of arousal and are, in some sense, addicted to crisis behavior. Self-harm can perpetuate this kind of crisis state
- Diverting attention (inner or outer) from issues that are too painful to examine
- Exerting a sense of control over one's body
- Preventing something worse from happening
BRAIN RESEARCH about SIB (Self Injurious Behaviour)
Brain chemistry may play a role in determining who self-injures and who doesn't. Simeon et al. (1992) found that people who self-injure tend to be extremely angry, impulsive, anxious, and aggressive, and presented evidence that some of these traits may be linked to deficits in the brain's serotonin system. Favazza (1993) refers to this study and to work by Coccaro on irritability to posit that perhaps irritable people with relatively normal serotonin function express their irritation outwardly, by screaming or throwing things; people with low serotonin function turn the irritability inward by self-damaging or suicidal acts.
SI includes, but is not limited to : cutting oneself, banging limbs, burning oneself, overdosing on medication, etc.
Okay, what can I do to help?
- There are wristbands for sale from http://www.selfharm.org/services/wristbands.html that you may purchase to distribute to family and friends.
- Via mail or in person... you can deliver fact sheets, brochures, and information packets to schools, hospitals, mental-health centers, crisis lines, community organizations, and any place where there's a need for accurate information about self-injury. You can be anonymous or use your own name; you can mail packets or just hand-carry them to your targets. Some people arrange talks at their universities and get press releases out to the local media.
- Write a Letter to your Local Newspaper.
- Notify anyone, whether it be a teacher, a parent, or someone at your work... remember, the point is to spread the word so that more can be educated on the highly misunderstood area which is self injury.
- For more information, there are several sites you or others can visit, including http://www.RecoverYourLife.com (Recover Your Life), http://www.buslist.org (Bodies Under Siege), http://www.palace.net/~llama/psych/injury.html (Secret Shame), http://www.selfinjury.org (American Self-Harm Information Clearinghouse), and http://www.selfharm.org (LifeSIGNS).
Take care...
Jes
Somehow, in the mists of time, the date was set as the 1st of March, and organisations around the world make extra efforts to raise awareness ready for SIAD.
SIAD stands for "Self Injury Awareness Day." Self Injury is deliberate behaviour that inflicts physical harm on your body, aimed at relieving emotional distress. It is classified as an unhealthy coping mechanism.
This may be the aspect of self-harm that is most puzzling to those who do not do it. Why would anyone choose to inflict physical damage on him or herself? Because they cannot imagine themselves doing such a thing under any circumstances, many people dismiss self-injury as "senseless" or "irrational" behavior. And certainly it does seem that way at first glance.
Injuries can prove to an individual that their emotional pain is real and valid. SI can escalate in frequency and severity since it becomes a natural response to dealing with stress.
So... what does it do for those who self injure? Here's a list:
- Escape from emptiness, depression, and feelings of unreality.
- Easing tension.
- Providing relief: when intense feelings build, self-injurers are overwhelmed and unable to cope. By causing pain, they reduce the level of emotional and physiological arousal to a bearable one.
- Relieving anger: many self-injurers have enormous amounts of rage within. Afraid to express it outwardly, they injure themselves as a way of venting these feelings.
- Escaping numbness: many of those who self-injure say they do it in order to feel something, to know that they're still alive.
- Grounding in reality, as a way of dealing with feelings of depersonalization and dissociation
- Maintaining a sense of security or feeling of uniqueness
- Obtaining a feeling of euphoria
- Preventing suicide
- Expressing emotional pain they feel they cannot bear
- Obtaining or maintaining influence over the behavior of others
- Communicating to others the extent of their inner turmoil
- Communicating a need for support
- Expressing or repressing sexuality
- Expressing or coping with feelings of alienation
- Validating their emotional pain -- the wounds can serve as evidence that those feelings are real
- Continuing abusive patterns: self-injurers tend to have been abused as children.
- Punishing oneself for being "bad"
- Obtaining biochemical relief: there is some thought that adults who were repeatedly traumatized as children have a hard time returning to a "normal" baseline level of arousal and are, in some sense, addicted to crisis behavior. Self-harm can perpetuate this kind of crisis state
- Diverting attention (inner or outer) from issues that are too painful to examine
- Exerting a sense of control over one's body
- Preventing something worse from happening
BRAIN RESEARCH about SIB (Self Injurious Behaviour)
Brain chemistry may play a role in determining who self-injures and who doesn't. Simeon et al. (1992) found that people who self-injure tend to be extremely angry, impulsive, anxious, and aggressive, and presented evidence that some of these traits may be linked to deficits in the brain's serotonin system. Favazza (1993) refers to this study and to work by Coccaro on irritability to posit that perhaps irritable people with relatively normal serotonin function express their irritation outwardly, by screaming or throwing things; people with low serotonin function turn the irritability inward by self-damaging or suicidal acts.
SI includes, but is not limited to : cutting oneself, banging limbs, burning oneself, overdosing on medication, etc.
Okay, what can I do to help?
- There are wristbands for sale from http://www.selfharm.org/services/wristbands.html that you may purchase to distribute to family and friends.
- Via mail or in person... you can deliver fact sheets, brochures, and information packets to schools, hospitals, mental-health centers, crisis lines, community organizations, and any place where there's a need for accurate information about self-injury. You can be anonymous or use your own name; you can mail packets or just hand-carry them to your targets. Some people arrange talks at their universities and get press releases out to the local media.
- Write a Letter to your Local Newspaper.
- Notify anyone, whether it be a teacher, a parent, or someone at your work... remember, the point is to spread the word so that more can be educated on the highly misunderstood area which is self injury.
- For more information, there are several sites you or others can visit, including http://www.RecoverYourLife.com (Recover Your Life), http://www.buslist.org (Bodies Under Siege), http://www.palace.net/~llama/psych/injury.html (Secret Shame), http://www.selfinjury.org (American Self-Harm Information Clearinghouse), and http://www.selfharm.org (LifeSIGNS).
Take care...
Jes