I can remember my first experience with a razor blade. I was around nine years old, and had always enjoyed watching my mother arch her eyebrows with a razor...I thought it was so cool. Like most little girls, I wanted to imitate my mother, so one day I slipped into the bathroom with a hand mirror and my dad's straight razor. By the time I was finished, my fingers and my face was a bloody mess, and after my mother cleaned me up, I got one of the worst whippings I'd ever had.

I didn't go near a razor again until I was a teenager in high school.

By then I'd mastered arching my eyebrows, but I'd also began using the razor in another way. I didn't understand why and didn't ask anyone for fear of being seen as crazy. On occasion, I felt the most irresistable the need to cut myself. I didn't associate it with anything at the time, but I couldn't resist the urge to do it. At first it would only be a matter of pressing the point of the razor into my skin to draw a little blood. But as time passed, I began to cut lines into my arms, wrists or my thighs. By the time I'd graduated high school, I'd carved my nickname, Bukey, into my left thigh...and I knew I had to stop. So I made a promise to myself...I'd never use a razor to disfigure my body again as long as I lived. I was pretty proud of myself for sticking to that...until I began reading about self-injury recently.

My interest in the subject of self-injury came from discussions with members of my online survivors club Charon's Journey. During my inquiries, I discovered that although I don't cut myself with a razor anymore, I'm still a self-injurer. Why? Because from the time I was a youngster until this day, I've NEVER allowed a wound on my body to heal without interference!!! From pimples and mosquito bites, to accidental scratches and surgical incisions, I HAVE to pick at it until it bleeds, and as soon as the scab forms, I dig into my skin until I pull it off...and I continue to pick at it until it becomes an awful scar. If I develop a skin rash, I scratch until it's bloody. And the pain I feel while doing it doesn't deter me one bit. Yes, I feel guilty afterwards, but I also feel some sense of...relief.

After all this time...I discovered that I was still a self-injurer.

Are you or someone you love a self-injurer? I know that there must be others out there who are as much in the dark about it as I was. Here's some questions that need to be asked if you truly aren't sure:

1. Do you deliberately cause physical harm to yourself to the extent of causing tissue damage (breaking the skin, bruising, leaving marks that last for more than an hour)?

2. Do you cause this harm to yourself as a way of dealing with unpleasant or overwhelming emotions, obsessive thoughts, or dissociation?

3. If your self-harm is not compulsive, do you often think about self-injury even when you're relatively calm and not doing it at the moment?

Self-injury can be achieved any number of ways, but cutting is the most regularly used form. Methods include cutting with knives, razors, needles, glass, nails or scissors; burning yourself with cigarettes, open flames or hot burners; biting, scratching or skin-picking until bloody; banging your head against the wall or hitting yourself with some blunt object; breaking your own bones; interfering with the healing of your wounds; pulling your hair out; exposing your body to extreme weather conditions without wearing protective clothing; severe nail biting and laxative abuse, among others. How you do it isn't nearly as important as recognizing that you do.

Mosby's Medical, Nursing, and Allied Health Dictionary defines self-mutilation as a "state in which an individual is at high risk to injure but not kill himself or herself, and that produces tissue damage and tension relief." It also states that "risk factors include being a member of an at-risk group, inability to cope with increased psychological/physiological tension in a healthy manner, feelings of depression, rejection, self-hatred, separation anxiety, guilt, and depersonalization, command hallucinations, need for sensory stimuli, parental emotional deprivation, and a dysfunctional family."

Recent estimates are that 1000 per 100,000 people in the United States self-injure. They suffer from what is called by some Deliberate Self-Harm Syndrome or Repetitive Self-Harm Syndrome. Those who harm themselves frequently refer to themselves as 'cutters' or 'self-injurers'.

Intelligence has nothing to do with whether a person becomes a self-injurer or not. Surveys show that self-injurers tend to be middle or upper-middle class, extreemly intelligent, well educated, artistic, sensitive individuals who are just hyper-sensitive to the world around them.

For the most part, self-injurers are survivors of incest, child sexual abuse (CSA), or physical abuse. While the majority are women between the ages of 13 and 30, there's still quite a number who fall outside of that group. It's been said that women are not socialized to express violence externally, and that's the reason we tend to vent on ourselves when confronted with the rage that many self-injurers feel.

Self-injurers have a tendency to feel depressed, irritable and sensitive to rejection, along with some other underlying tension, even when not in the process of injuring themselves. Most come from dysfunctional families with a history of mental illness, alcohol and/or drug abuse.

Mutilation can allow the self-injurer to focus better. Their anxiety or depersonalization symptoms become overwhelming until they release the tension by causing pain...it reduces the level of emotional and physiological distress to a more bearable one.

Studies have shown that there are two major emotional states commonly present in self-injurers--anger and anxiety--and that they don't tend to regulate their emotions well. SI allows them to express the emotional pain which may otherwise go unrecognized. Their impulsivity seems to be biologically-based, leading many to find relief only through medication.

Some self-injurers do it in order to feel something other than the numbness which they are usually surrounded by. It's an escape from a feeling of unreality and emptiness. It's also used as a way of obtaining and maintaining a sense of control over one's body. Self-injurers report a feeling of euphoria after an episode of SI.

Overall, people who self-injure are individuals who may exhibit some, many or all of these psychological characteristics:

**feel a strong dislike or invalidation of themselves

**are hypersensitive to rejection

**are chronically angry, mostly at themselves

**tend to suppress their anger

**have high levels of aggressive feelings, which they disapprove of strongly and often suppress or direct inward

**are more impulsive and more lacking in impulse control

**tend to act in accordance with their mood of the moment

**tend not to plan for the future

**are depressed and often suicidal or self-destructive

**suffer chronic anxiety

**tend toward irritability

**do not see themselves as skilled at coping

**do not have a flexible repertoire of coping skills

**do not think they have much control over how they cope with life

**tend to be avoidant

**do not see themselves as empowered

The self-injurer has to learn to effectively deal with the distress which causes them to feel the need to hurt themselves. Self-injury is addictive behavior, but it can be brought under control. While it appears to transform unbearable feelings temporarily, the individual never really faces whatever it is that is causing the behavior. By channeling their emotional distress into physical pain, we never lessen the intensity...we only postpone it, until the next time.

Ultimately, the self-injurer must want to walk away from self-harm. It won't be an easy project, but there are some criteria which the self-injurer must find to be true before deciding to stop the behavior. This includes making sure there are at least two people to call when the urge to SI surfaces; having a solid emotional support system; and having at least ten things to do instead of SI.

If you are a self-injurer, please make the decision to deal with those unbearable emotions which have so much power over you. If you face them head on, in time, you will develop your own coping skills and then you will build a tolerance to the distress which caused you to cut in the first place.