Articles: I Couldn't Stop Hurting Myself
By Christine Robers, Molly Ginty
From the outside, I seemed like a normal girl--happy and well-adjusted, outgoing and pretty. But on the inside, I was angry, guilty, and sad.
In junior high, in the Chicago suburb where I grew up, I seemed to fit in as well as anyone. I was in the gifted and talented program, had a couple of good friends, and was actively involved in choir, cheerleading, student council, and the school newspaper.
But no matter how hard I tried to pretend that everything was okay, it definitely wasn't. I had been sexually abused by a family member from the ages of 7 through 12. When my mom and stepdad found out, they sent me to a therapist. No one else knew what had happened, and I didn't feel safe talking about it. I was afraid that other kids would laugh at me if they knew.
At school I put my energy into my studies and all my extracurricular activities-and into keeping this awful secret. But no matter how many things I did or awards I won, I still felt terrible about myself. In seventh grade, I developed an eating disorder and became very depressed, so my parents sent me to a hospital for treatment.
The hospital was its own protected little world. But when I was discharged after six weeks, I still wasn't doing very well. One night, I was at home in my bedroom and feeling anxious about going back to school. I grabbed a pair of scissors, sat down on .my bed, and scratched my wrists with them. I was 13.
I didn't tell anyone about it, and I didn't hurt myself again until the next year, when I was a freshman. I was having a rough time that fall because my family was taking my abuser to court. And I wasn't getting along well with my two younger sisters or my mom, who was busy starting her own business.
One day, I noticed that a friend of mine from typing class had all these scratches on her hand. I asked her what had happened, and she said something like, "I did it to myself because it makes me feel better." At first, I was surprised and felt bad for her. But then I thought about it some more and decided to try it again myself.
A couple of nights later, I shut myself in my bedroom. I was afraid to use anything sharp, so I scratched one of my arms really hard with my fingernails and it started to bleed a little bit. I watched the blood run, then grabbed some tissue and cleaned up my arm. It hurt, but emotionally it was like a runner's high. For some reason, I felt calmer afterward.
I was scared by what I'd done and didn't think I wanted to try it again. But a few days later, I did. This time, I used a razor blade on the lower part of my left arm. During the next year, I started regularly injuring myself in secret
After awhile, I couldn't stop hurting myself no matter how hard I tried. My emotions were all jumbled: I was angry and guilty and sad all at once. And the cutting seemed to feed off itself. I would feel bad about injuring myself, then have to do it more to feel better. In a way, it made me feel tougher. Nobody can really hurt me, I thought, because what I'm doing to myself is even worse, and I can take it.
I told a counselor at school about what I was doing, and she told my parents. They got worried and sent me back to the hospital. But the staff there didn't know what to do with me. I guess they'd never seen this problem before. They would ask, "Why do you do this?" I would say, "I don't know." They had me write with crayons because they thought I might hurt myself with pens or pencils. But that didn't stop me: I used my fingernails when I was alone in my room.
When I got out, my mom found a therapist who had experience treating self-injurers, and I started seeing her twice a week. I learned to really trust her--to feel comfortable enough to tell her almost anything. She made me sign a contract promising that I wouldn't harm myself, and I seemed to get better.
Then came junior year. in the winter, I missed a few weeks of school because I was sick. By the time I went back, there were only two weeks left in the quarter and then finals. I had a lot of hard classes, and I was faced with having all this stuff to make up. I felt like there was no end to it. It hopeless, I thought. I'm going to fail all my classes and never go to college!
Right before exams, I ended up injuring myself badly. I cut myself with a razor blade on both arms-probably ten times total. The cuts were deep, and they bled more than usual, but it felt like a tremendous release. I knew I probably needed stitches, but I was fed up with the doctors and nurses. ("What are you doing? What are you thinking?" they kept saying.) So I put butterfly bandages on the cuts and tried to hide what I'd done.
Of course, my parents found our. They were upset, but still supportive. My mom said, "You don't have to go back to the public high school. You can take classes at the community college, you can learn at home, or we'll find a private school." I chose a private Christian school and started the second semester of my junior year.
My new school was small and welcoming. I made many good friends, and I liked my teachers. I started to feel a lot better, and I stopped cutting myself. I also stopped going to therapy, because I felt like I didn't really have anything to work on anymore. Life went smoothly until after graduation.
I wasn't ready for a huge change like moving out of state, so I derided to go to the local community college. But when classes began, it was a shock-the school had 36,000 students. I missed my close-knit relationships with my high school friends and teachers. The first day, not only did I get lost looking for my classes, I couldn't find my car in the parking lot.
Trying to manage school and my job at a local video store started to wear me down. Five days a week, I would work really late, until midnight or 1:00 A.M. Then I would go home and do homework for class the next morning. I was getting just six hours of sleep a night.
My eating habits started to slip, and all these emotions-loneliness, sadness, fear-were running through me. I kept thinking about how self-injury had helped me feel better in the past. That October, I cut myself on several different occasions. The injuries weren't serious, but by November, I was still cutting myself about once a week and hiding the results by wearing long sleeves. It was something I really struggled with: I wanted to do it all the time.
Then I heard about a special treatment program for self-injurers that was near my home. In February, I enrolled in the S.A.F.E. (Self-Abuse Finally Ends) Alternatives Program. I stayed for 37 days.
At S.A.F.E., I discovered that a lot of other people have this problem. Nearly all of the other patients were women, most in their 20s or 30s. I met people who hurt themselves with knives and with scissors, and some who also burned themselves. To the outside world, most of the patients were smart, highly functioning women. But many had eating disorders, and almost all had been sexually abused. The staff was used to dealing with all of it. Nobody thought it was strange, and I started to feel less embarrassed.
We learned to record our feelings in books called impulse logs. We would write down an impulse (like wanting to injure yourself), the feelings behind it (sadness or anger), and what would happen if we followed the impulse (like feeling worse or wanting to injure yourself more). Before, I had trouble identifying my feelings. But the writing exercises really helped.
We also had group and individual therapy. It took some time for me to feel comfortable enough to open up to everyone and talk. I'd always felt I had to keep my secret so people wouldn't be disgusted and rum away from me.
The big breakthrough came when I was able to talk about being abused. When I got to S.A.F.E., I could barely admit that it happened. I had always tried to avoid discussing it with my therapist, focusing more on day-to-day things. I'd tell people, "Well, I don't remember very much," which was a total lie, because I remembered a lot more than I admitted. When I told my S.A.F.E. therapist what had happened to me, I was so scared that I couldn't look her in the eye. But she was perfectly calm about it. She gave me a hug, and didn't treat me any differently afterward.
After I learned to talk about the abuse, I started to feel less guilty. I also felt a lot more anger toward my abuser, who never went to jail for what he did. But I realized that being molested was a horrible thing that happened to me and that I couldn't just pretend it didn't. That used to be my strategy: If I didn't think about it, it would go away.
Since leaving S.A.F.E. last April, I've put what I learned into practice. The program changed the way I react to situations and taught me not to be so hard on myself. I go to school only part-time now and limit my job to 30 or 35 hours a week. I try not to take things so personally. If I get a bad grade on a test, I'll think, Okay. I need to study more, instead of automatically thinking, Oh, I'm so stupid. If my boss criticizes me at work, his comments don't throw me as much as they used to.
I go to a relapse-prevention group each week, and when I feel really bad, I write in my impulse log or talk to my college roommates or my friends. Since leaving the program, I did slip and try to injure myself once. I was feeling down and grabbed a tack off my wall and scratched myself. But it wasn't the same: It didn't bring the same release or make me feel better like I wanted it to. I realized there were other things I could have done instead.
At the moment, I'm very focused on the future. I'm 20 and will be starting my junior year at the local community college in the fall. I'm taking premed classes and want to go on to graduate school and maybe become a doctor. I'd like to get married and have a couple of kids-to lead a normal life.
I don't think I'll ever injure myself again, but I have scars that remind me of it every day. They are pink, and a few are raised on my skin. You can't see the ones on my upper arms very well, but there are six on my lower left arm that are quite visible.
I'm embarrassed about them. When strangers notice, I usually say, "I got scratched by a cat" or "I was in a car accident." I put lotion on them and hope they will fade. But other times I look at them and realize they were part of a really rough period in my life, a time when I didn't have all the tools I needed to deal with my feelings. Now I do, and I don't have to hurt myself anymore.
FOR HELP
Two to three million Americans struggle with self-injury. More information is available through S.A.F.E. Alternatives, 800-DONT-CUT (800-366-8288) or www.selfinju.com, and in the following books:
In junior high, in the Chicago suburb where I grew up, I seemed to fit in as well as anyone. I was in the gifted and talented program, had a couple of good friends, and was actively involved in choir, cheerleading, student council, and the school newspaper.
But no matter how hard I tried to pretend that everything was okay, it definitely wasn't. I had been sexually abused by a family member from the ages of 7 through 12. When my mom and stepdad found out, they sent me to a therapist. No one else knew what had happened, and I didn't feel safe talking about it. I was afraid that other kids would laugh at me if they knew.
At school I put my energy into my studies and all my extracurricular activities-and into keeping this awful secret. But no matter how many things I did or awards I won, I still felt terrible about myself. In seventh grade, I developed an eating disorder and became very depressed, so my parents sent me to a hospital for treatment.
The hospital was its own protected little world. But when I was discharged after six weeks, I still wasn't doing very well. One night, I was at home in my bedroom and feeling anxious about going back to school. I grabbed a pair of scissors, sat down on .my bed, and scratched my wrists with them. I was 13.
I didn't tell anyone about it, and I didn't hurt myself again until the next year, when I was a freshman. I was having a rough time that fall because my family was taking my abuser to court. And I wasn't getting along well with my two younger sisters or my mom, who was busy starting her own business.
One day, I noticed that a friend of mine from typing class had all these scratches on her hand. I asked her what had happened, and she said something like, "I did it to myself because it makes me feel better." At first, I was surprised and felt bad for her. But then I thought about it some more and decided to try it again myself.
A couple of nights later, I shut myself in my bedroom. I was afraid to use anything sharp, so I scratched one of my arms really hard with my fingernails and it started to bleed a little bit. I watched the blood run, then grabbed some tissue and cleaned up my arm. It hurt, but emotionally it was like a runner's high. For some reason, I felt calmer afterward.
I was scared by what I'd done and didn't think I wanted to try it again. But a few days later, I did. This time, I used a razor blade on the lower part of my left arm. During the next year, I started regularly injuring myself in secret
After awhile, I couldn't stop hurting myself no matter how hard I tried. My emotions were all jumbled: I was angry and guilty and sad all at once. And the cutting seemed to feed off itself. I would feel bad about injuring myself, then have to do it more to feel better. In a way, it made me feel tougher. Nobody can really hurt me, I thought, because what I'm doing to myself is even worse, and I can take it.
I told a counselor at school about what I was doing, and she told my parents. They got worried and sent me back to the hospital. But the staff there didn't know what to do with me. I guess they'd never seen this problem before. They would ask, "Why do you do this?" I would say, "I don't know." They had me write with crayons because they thought I might hurt myself with pens or pencils. But that didn't stop me: I used my fingernails when I was alone in my room.
When I got out, my mom found a therapist who had experience treating self-injurers, and I started seeing her twice a week. I learned to really trust her--to feel comfortable enough to tell her almost anything. She made me sign a contract promising that I wouldn't harm myself, and I seemed to get better.
Then came junior year. in the winter, I missed a few weeks of school because I was sick. By the time I went back, there were only two weeks left in the quarter and then finals. I had a lot of hard classes, and I was faced with having all this stuff to make up. I felt like there was no end to it. It hopeless, I thought. I'm going to fail all my classes and never go to college!
Right before exams, I ended up injuring myself badly. I cut myself with a razor blade on both arms-probably ten times total. The cuts were deep, and they bled more than usual, but it felt like a tremendous release. I knew I probably needed stitches, but I was fed up with the doctors and nurses. ("What are you doing? What are you thinking?" they kept saying.) So I put butterfly bandages on the cuts and tried to hide what I'd done.
Of course, my parents found our. They were upset, but still supportive. My mom said, "You don't have to go back to the public high school. You can take classes at the community college, you can learn at home, or we'll find a private school." I chose a private Christian school and started the second semester of my junior year.
My new school was small and welcoming. I made many good friends, and I liked my teachers. I started to feel a lot better, and I stopped cutting myself. I also stopped going to therapy, because I felt like I didn't really have anything to work on anymore. Life went smoothly until after graduation.
I wasn't ready for a huge change like moving out of state, so I derided to go to the local community college. But when classes began, it was a shock-the school had 36,000 students. I missed my close-knit relationships with my high school friends and teachers. The first day, not only did I get lost looking for my classes, I couldn't find my car in the parking lot.
Trying to manage school and my job at a local video store started to wear me down. Five days a week, I would work really late, until midnight or 1:00 A.M. Then I would go home and do homework for class the next morning. I was getting just six hours of sleep a night.
My eating habits started to slip, and all these emotions-loneliness, sadness, fear-were running through me. I kept thinking about how self-injury had helped me feel better in the past. That October, I cut myself on several different occasions. The injuries weren't serious, but by November, I was still cutting myself about once a week and hiding the results by wearing long sleeves. It was something I really struggled with: I wanted to do it all the time.
Then I heard about a special treatment program for self-injurers that was near my home. In February, I enrolled in the S.A.F.E. (Self-Abuse Finally Ends) Alternatives Program. I stayed for 37 days.
At S.A.F.E., I discovered that a lot of other people have this problem. Nearly all of the other patients were women, most in their 20s or 30s. I met people who hurt themselves with knives and with scissors, and some who also burned themselves. To the outside world, most of the patients were smart, highly functioning women. But many had eating disorders, and almost all had been sexually abused. The staff was used to dealing with all of it. Nobody thought it was strange, and I started to feel less embarrassed.
We learned to record our feelings in books called impulse logs. We would write down an impulse (like wanting to injure yourself), the feelings behind it (sadness or anger), and what would happen if we followed the impulse (like feeling worse or wanting to injure yourself more). Before, I had trouble identifying my feelings. But the writing exercises really helped.
We also had group and individual therapy. It took some time for me to feel comfortable enough to open up to everyone and talk. I'd always felt I had to keep my secret so people wouldn't be disgusted and rum away from me.
The big breakthrough came when I was able to talk about being abused. When I got to S.A.F.E., I could barely admit that it happened. I had always tried to avoid discussing it with my therapist, focusing more on day-to-day things. I'd tell people, "Well, I don't remember very much," which was a total lie, because I remembered a lot more than I admitted. When I told my S.A.F.E. therapist what had happened to me, I was so scared that I couldn't look her in the eye. But she was perfectly calm about it. She gave me a hug, and didn't treat me any differently afterward.
After I learned to talk about the abuse, I started to feel less guilty. I also felt a lot more anger toward my abuser, who never went to jail for what he did. But I realized that being molested was a horrible thing that happened to me and that I couldn't just pretend it didn't. That used to be my strategy: If I didn't think about it, it would go away.
Since leaving S.A.F.E. last April, I've put what I learned into practice. The program changed the way I react to situations and taught me not to be so hard on myself. I go to school only part-time now and limit my job to 30 or 35 hours a week. I try not to take things so personally. If I get a bad grade on a test, I'll think, Okay. I need to study more, instead of automatically thinking, Oh, I'm so stupid. If my boss criticizes me at work, his comments don't throw me as much as they used to.
I go to a relapse-prevention group each week, and when I feel really bad, I write in my impulse log or talk to my college roommates or my friends. Since leaving the program, I did slip and try to injure myself once. I was feeling down and grabbed a tack off my wall and scratched myself. But it wasn't the same: It didn't bring the same release or make me feel better like I wanted it to. I realized there were other things I could have done instead.
At the moment, I'm very focused on the future. I'm 20 and will be starting my junior year at the local community college in the fall. I'm taking premed classes and want to go on to graduate school and maybe become a doctor. I'd like to get married and have a couple of kids-to lead a normal life.
I don't think I'll ever injure myself again, but I have scars that remind me of it every day. They are pink, and a few are raised on my skin. You can't see the ones on my upper arms very well, but there are six on my lower left arm that are quite visible.
I'm embarrassed about them. When strangers notice, I usually say, "I got scratched by a cat" or "I was in a car accident." I put lotion on them and hope they will fade. But other times I look at them and realize they were part of a really rough period in my life, a time when I didn't have all the tools I needed to deal with my feelings. Now I do, and I don't have to hurt myself anymore.
- * Name has been changed to protect privacy.
FOR HELP
Two to three million Americans struggle with self-injury. More information is available through S.A.F.E. Alternatives, 800-DONT-CUT (800-366-8288) or www.selfinju.com, and in the following books:
- ° Bodies Under Siege by Armando Favazza (Johns Hopkins Press, 1996)
° Bodily Harm by Karen Conterio and Wendy Lader (Hyperion, 1998)
A Bright Red Scream by Marilee Strong (Viking, 1998)