Healing Self-Injury

Recently I watched the TV show “Intervention.” The focus was a young woman named Danielle who was struggling greatly with drug addiction. In the midst of telling her story and giving the viewer a sense of her struggle with drugs it was also mentioned that she cut and burned herself at times. That caught my attention. What kept my attention was the discussion, by her family, that her SIV was a form of manipulation. Danielle talked about burning herself to cope with guilt and anger towards herself and others, but her family focused on manipulation as the reason. Her father even said that it was the “worst problem” she had. Really? Minor cigarette burns are more frightening than taking up to 50 Percocet and many other drugs a day? While the show followed her through the throes of addiction, an intervention to get her into treatment for substance abuse, and a bit of her recovery, SIV was never mentioned again. The viewer was left not knowing any more about her life with SIV. It saddened and intrigued me that SIV was portrayed in this way. While this program might have sensitized the viewer to the pain (and traumatic antecedents) of substance abuse, it promoted the idea of SIV as simplistic manipulation. This does not inspire sensitivity, it creates judgment and a false sense of understanding.

The whole idea that people cut, burn and beat themselves to simply get attention or to manipulate others is not going away very readily. It is a belief that has a long history and is entrenched in many people’s minds, whether they are mental health professionals or friends and family members. It is something that seems to be readily assumed to be true so that people can distance themselves from the person living with SIV and not have to hear any more.

If people were to understand SIV, rather than react to it, the beliefs about “manipulation” would change. SIV meets a need for someone who lives with it. If someone needs to have their pain be visible, to be known, the only way they might know how to do this is to cut themselves. Are they manipulating someone to understand them by cutting themselves? No, they are trying to meet a need in the way that they know. The method might be indirect; if it could be direct, if someone could say “please bear witness to my pain,” then that person might not need SIV. Yet who of us is highly skilled in meeting our own needs? How did we learn to do this? How do we learn to understand the things that we and others do in a way that supports understanding and promotes healing? Not through presumptions nor blame. Let me know what you think about this and, in the meantime, I’ll get started on writing a piece about a recent project, the Glass Book Project, that has me dancing with excitement.