Eliminate the Stigma of Mental Illness » self injury

Art: Mental Health in Plants

pakmum — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:43:06 +0000

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by Pakmum

(Some) True Confessions of a Self Harmer

Addy — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 07:17:18 +0000

Disclaimer:

I AM NOT PRO-SELF HARM!

I am not advocating the self-infliction of injury.

People who self harm have a problem and need help and support.

This post contains written examples of injuries I have inflicted.

Please do not read if you think you will find this disturbing or upsetting.

We’ll start with a bang to get everyone’s attention:

I ONCE PURPOSEFULLY IGNITED A FULL BOX OF MATCHES IN MY CLOSED FIST

So what’s your reaction?

OOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!      ?
HO-LY …!!      ?
OOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!      ?
[stunned silence]    ?
OOOWWWWWWWW!!! OWWWWWWWWWW!! OWWWWWWWWW!!   ?

My guess is all of the above, and then some.

Try these…

My top 5 most painful injuries, as inflicted on myself, in reverse order:
5) When I was 14, I stabbed a pencil into my finger whilst in the middle of a class at school.
4) When I was 21, I whipped myself so hard with a belt it I couldn’t sit, lean or lie on my back for just under a week.
3) A couple of days before being diagnosed as having a breakdown, I was sitting on a beach in Port Fairy. I started a small fire, took one of the burning sticks, and burned both my chest and shoulder. It was this event that made me realise I needed to see a doctor!
=2) That box of matches hurt like…well…a box of matches igniting in your closed fist!!!!! I had burns on the palm of my hand, thumb and two fingers for weeks.
=2) In July 2007, I knocked myself unconscious by throwing myself into a tree.
1) The cutting/hitting/burning incident in May 2007 prior to my suicide attempt.

I had to start like that! There was no other way to do it. Like every single form of mental health problem that exists, we need to talk about self harm in order for the stigma to be eliminated. The only way to do this is in a blunt, bloody and brutal way.

Hurting yourself is NOT about attention!
Hurting yourself is NOT about wanting to kill yourself!
Hurting yourself is NOT about bloody EMO!!
Hurting yourself is NOT about proving how cool you are!!
Hurting yourself is NOT about having a weakness of personality!
Hurting yourself is NOT about self-hate!!
Hurting yourself IS a symptom of a larger problem!
Hurting yourself IS a symptom of a larger problem which the person may not even be aware of!!
Hurting yourself IS AN ADDICTION!!
Pure and simple.

Even though burning myself with that stick hurt like nothing else, I’ve still burned myself since. Even though I couldn’t sit down for a week, I’ve still whipped myself again. Even though I bled all over my school books, I still stabbed myself with a pencil again.

Like any form of addiction – gambling, drugs, smoking, chocolate, porn – you simply have to do it again, only with every new time you do it, it has to be bigger in order for you to receive the same “hit”. Cutting yourself once will do the trick, but sooner or later you find you need to cut yourself dozens of times to receive the same fix. This is where the problem hits, because sooner or later you’re slicing a pound of flesh from your arm and not even feeling it.

This is where people who aren’t even suicidal are killing themselves by accident.

I’m not saying that everyone who self harms isn’t suicidal, nor am I saying that anything which I have written above about what self harm is/is not is set in stone. People self-inflict for all sorts of reasons, but from my experiences not only with my own self harm but also talking with people, who do the same thing, they aren’t suicidal or weak (in fact, some of the people who self-inflict that I know personally are the strongest most beautiful souls I’ve ever met)

I started self harming in 1993 whilst I was at school. I was able to get this under control by mid-1999 whilst working at the video shop. Throughout my time backpacking I was not having any urges to do so and thought I had it under control.
I did relapse however during the last four months of 2000; whilst trying to cope with Rachel’s death, restarting college and after my first suicide attempt [remember that word for later; after.]

From December 2000 to December 2006 I only self harmed on two occasions. It wasn’t until my breakdown in March 2007 that I relapsed and once more began doing so. I was able to get it under control again between May 2007 and July 2007, but suffered another major relapse, and have self-inflicted on/off since.
The last time I self-inflicted was two days after my last suicide attempt, October 2007 [and note the use of the after again].

My trick with self-harming was to attack parts of my body which I could cover – legs, arms, buttocks, back, chest – by throwing on some form of clothing, beit a jumper on the middle of a summer’s day or a long sleeve T-shirt on a cooler one. Always with injuries which wouldn’t leave any long-long term scars.

I would always use similar methods – cutting, burning, scolding, hitting – and every now and then, when the mood struck, would become creative and run into trees or ignite boxes of matches in my closed fist.

I was never doing it because of wanting to kill myself, or hating myself, or wanting to prove how tough and resilient I was. Nor was I doing it for attention – if attention was all I was after I would release a wombat into a crowded shopping precinct or streak Brunswick Street on a Sunday afternoon. It was always about this PAIN-PLEASURE balance I mentioned in an earlier post.

(And no, I’m not referring to this pain-pleasure as in a sadomasochistic way – ‘cause if that was the case whenever I felt like self-inflicting I would just go visit a dominatrix and have some sexy woman whip me rather than doing it myself.)
I’m referring to the coping mechanisms people have when their internal pain becomes too great.

Remember I said earlier to note the use of the word after in relation to my suicide attempts. The reason I self-inflicted after those attempts was as a way to control the inner conflict, pain and turmoil my mind was going through as a result of them. It was a way to stop me from trying again! It wasn’t because I still wanted to die; it was because I wanted to live!

The other times I self harmed was as a way to feel something. Life had become numb, frustrating, painful, empty and meaningless. The over-riding feeling of loneliness and emptiness is a powerful influence, because we live to feel, and if we are feeling nothing then what is the point of being alive? Again I wasn’t self-inflicting because I wanted to die, it was because I wanted to feel something: to feel like I was alive!

Having a tree knock myself unconscious, burning my chest and not sitting down made me feel something that I was missing.

Hence, why, before my third suicide attempt I did self harm – as a means to grab some physical feeling. something to convince myself not to go through with what my brain was telling me to do. However, on this instance, no matter what pain I caused myself, it didn’t work.

Overcoming the urge to self-inflict has been one of the hardest things I have had to deal with through this tumultuous time suffering from depression.
As I said above, IT IS AN ADDICTION. Pure and simple!

And anyone who has tried giving up smoking or gambling or Lindt or badgers will know that overcoming addiction is fucking hard! Not only because of the pure level of addiction, but also because it means having to face up to whatever problem is feeding that addiction in the first place. Whatever buried pain is making us smoke, drink or gamble needs to be faced up to. In essence, we need to become whip-wielding dominatrixies in order to tame and eventually command our problems.

To overcome self-harm we, like with every form of mental illness, we need to start talking about it in order to understand it, in order to help people overcome and control their addiction.

So how can you help? If you know someone who self-harms here are a few pointers:

- Whatever they’re doing DON”T take it personally. It isn’t about YOU!
- Be available and LISTEN to them if they need to talk.
- ACKNOWLEDGE their pain, it won’t make it go away, but it will make it more bearable.
- DON’T avoid the subject or pretend it’s not there.
- ASK THEM “I know you hurt yourself and I would like to understand it a little more, could you maybe explain why you do it? I’d be grateful if you could.”
- DON’T confiscate their “tools” (because I guarantee you this will lose their trust and they will just get more creative anyway)
- BELIEVE in them and BE HOPEFUL
- DON’T push them
- TAKE the initiative and distract them; take them to the cinema, rent a DVD, bake some chocolate brownies, go to a trivia night, go for a walk, have a playful pillow or water pistol fight, hell, if they’re your bf or gf, do a seductive strip tease and get them thinking about that cute butt of yours.
- DO spontaneous acts of kindness
- Be available, and willing, to LISTEN if they need to talk.
- EDUCATE yourself – slip on your Willow hat and hop on the net for some research.
- SUPPORT them physically; call them up and tell them you’re worried about them and invite them over for a game of scrabble or a blueberry muffin.
- SUPPORT them emotionally; go to the Doctor/Psychologist with them.

And please, please…whatever you do…

- DO NOT TRY TO MAKE/ORDER THEM TO STOP!!!!!!!!! If you make them feel guilty, or punish them in any way, this will just add fuel to their addiction.

And please, please, please, please…whatever you do…remember to…

- Take TIME OUT and recuperate, caring/loving someone who suffers from any form of mental illness is exhausting and you need to look after yourself.

Although it’s confronting, brutal and painful to think that people you care about are inflicting this pain on themselves remember that to them it is merely an addiction. A symptom of a larger, possibly unknown illness or condition, and they just need some help and support in order to get them through it.

As we’ve all experienced from time to time: the over-riding feeling of loneliness and emptiness is a powerful influence. It’s time to stop judging people who self harm, and start understanding what they are feeling; it’s the only way to understand their pain.

More self-harm pages on this blog you may be interested in:

by Addy
Originally posted on All that I am, all that I ever was

The main cause of the stigma of mental illness.

sociopathicregret — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 02:25:56 +0000

I’m going to point out something that many may find convenient to skip over. This is the reality that the ‘medical’ view of depression, suicide and mental illness promotes stigma. Of course, this medical view and the pharmaceutical establishment are ultimately derived from both misunderstanding and greed, the former which can be further derived much from a high paced lifestyle in which critical thinking is discouraged and so on and so fourth.

If a mental illness is an ‘illness’, it’s very easy for people to say ‘Oh, it couldn’t happen to me!’. Perhaps they might say ‘That guy is just messed up! Don’t bother trying to help!’. See, if it is an objective ‘disease’ or ‘illness’ it’s easy to pass off as not subject to influence by others, including themselves. That means that their actions supposedly will not have an impact, and they don’t need to intimately spend time trying to help. It isn’t a human problem, ‘you can’t talk to disease’!

The ‘genetic’ theories of mental illness have been around since before DNA was even discovered, merely on presumption based on no evidence whatsoever. Thus, the cart has become before the horse, and by this it can be shown that these theories have arisen due to social construct rather than genuine scientific evidence. Perhaps personal ignorance and lack of empathy has played into this, after all, it has never been convenient to have to deal with someone who is ‘mentally ill’, especially if you had something to do with it. A bigger picture is that society has a big role to play in why people are mentally ill. We have little left to offer in terms of quality; all that is left comes mostly in the form of mass quantity. Much of the time we are too busy scrambling through a rat race to attend to ourselves or others. In the meantime, we are showered by shallow rewards and distractions so that we don’t wake up from this stressful state. It’s far easier for society to blame the individual for a flaw rather than look at not only the immediate environment around such a person but their large scale environment. In the past, societies did indeed try to cover their tracks, but because interactions were commonly more honest and direct (executions instead of life sentences, etc), poor systems fell more quickly. Now, society covers its tracks very well by virtue of sheer massiveness and replaceable parts.

The stigma of mental illness mostly results from lack of empathy and caring, to tie this up. But that lack of empathy, if one looks closely, has many roots.

by sociopathicregret

My War against Mental Illness

Addy — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 07:01:05 +0000

There is a war raging most people do not know about.

It’s crippling people, ripping apart friends and family, destroying millions of lives across the planet. This war is killing people daily, and yet it’s passing so many people by.

I could reel off statistics to prove this: “by 2020, depression will be the second largest killer after heart disease”[1] or “about twenty in every hundred people will experience some form of mental health problem at some time in their lives.”[2] How about, “up to 12% of people affected by mental illness take their own lives (compared with an average of 1.7% for the whole population)”[3] I could go on and on, citing references, figures, percentages, but what’s the point? It’s boring and no-one’s listening.

In any war, the truth of the conflict doesn’t hit home until it affects you personally. It is the individuals on the front line who are often forgotten about, it’s their stories I’m interested in.

My name is Andrew Lake, I am 28 years old, and I exist in Melbourne. I have been fighting on the front line against chronic depression for fourteen years now, and have no military training.

The first time I nearly killed myself was in November 2000.
I’ll never forget what it was like to stand so close to my death. The tails of my trench coat dancing in the maelstrom that the Scottish wind orchestrated. The ice cold drizzle, that delightful West Coast drizzle, raining from the heaven above to mix with the tears already dribbling down my face. It was a gloomy Friday in early November, a few weeks from my 22nd Birthday, and it was on this day that I had chosen to die. I didn’t jump, I turned around, and I kept on fighting.

The second time I nearly killed myself was in March 2006.
It has to be said the weather was a darn sight better. A balmy march evening on the South Coast of Victoria, Australia. With the laughter, music, excitement and passions of the folk festival ringing in my ears I walked humbly to the beach where I had chosen, a few weeks previously, to be my final resting place. I sat there, on the soft white sand staring out over the black void of the ocean. The gentle sound of the waves egging me on. I remember my hand shaking as it held the cold steel blade against my wrist. I didn’t slice, I threw the blade into the ocean, and I kept on fighting.

The third time I nearly killed myself was in May 2007.
Twice before I had committed the error of pausing, to reflect, and it was something I decided wasn’t going to happen this time. I’ll never forget lying naked on my bed staring at the ever-growing crack on the ceiling. I emptied the remaining white escape pills from my pack of anti-depressants and downed them with the sweet nectar of Glenfiddich single malt. I placed the bottle clumsily onto the floor, and closed my eyes. When I woke up my head pounded, my body swum and through the haze of numbness and pain could only vaguely recall what had happened. It was the letter and the photo I found beside the bottle of whisky that slapped me back to reality. I didn’t die, but only through my own stupidity of not taking enough pills, but all the same I kept on fighting.

The fourth time I nearly killed myself was in October 2007…but we’ll get to that later.

The underlying reason why I had decided to kill myself on each of the above attempts was the same. It wasn’t because of a song, or a movie, or a person, or a place, or an action, or an event – on all four occasions the reason I had decided to end my life was simple: the pain I was feeling was so great that I just couldn’t cope with it anymore.

Reading this I’m sure you’re all thinking the same thing ‘sad little twat, if you hate life so much just stop bloody whinging and do yourself in already’. Well, you’re all wrong. I LOVE life! Absolutely adore it. Period!

I love walking in the rain. I love the smell of maple syrup. I love dancing to cheesy 80s songs. I love singing Chasing Cars at the top of my voice. I love laughing and smiling and talking. I love the looks people get in their eyes during moments of joy or excitement. I love the noises women make whilst making love. I love wombats and daffodils and rainforests and turtles and sunsets and snow and instrumental piano solos. I love prancing around the room pretending to be David Tennant with my sonic screwdriver. I love Pub Quizzes and whisky and dreaming and green skirts, spanakopita, goose bumps, pancakes, beaches, flowers, bellies and whipped cream. Bellies and whipped cream! I love Glenfinnan and Port Fairy and Melbourne and this list could just go on forever but hey – jam! – who doesn’t love jam?

I love life so much that the thought of not having it any more fills me with such a deep sorrow I just want to burst into tears. It makes me feel so utterly confused because all my mind keeps telling me is to die, because death seems the only way to make the pain stop.

Aye, there’s the rub.

What’s the point of all of these wonderful things about life that I just want to snuggle with, when I am in such a constant state of pain that I can’t actually enjoy any of them?

The first time I hurt myself was when I was fourteen. I was sitting in my bedroom feeling incredibly alone. Repeatedly bullied at school for being overweight, wearing glasses, the way I spoke, eating a sandwich, who knows why people decide to bully someone. I was feeling so cold and numb that I just wanted to feel something…anything. So I picked up the compass I was using for my maths homework and started scratching my arm until it bled.

The second…look, there are so many times throughout my teenage years that I would cut, hit, burn, whatever myself to inflict self harm that I can’t possibly go into all of them. Believe me you wouldn’t want me to! I did slowly start getting this under control, and by the time I was eighteen was no longer hurting myself.

Over the years I did occasionally regress and always for the same reason. The loneliness and numbness of feeling nothing overwhelmed me so much that I inflicted pain on myself in order to feel alive. It is something I hid for a long time, telling no-one, and always hiding the wounds from sight because it is something people just don’t understand.

One of the last times I hurt myself was in May 2007. It was the worst I had ever inflicted. Taking a pen knife I sliced dozens and dozens of cuts into the flesh of both arms, so much so, that the blood red colour outweighed that of the flesh. After doing this I burned myself several times with cigarettes. Then I hit myself repeatedly first with my hand and then with a belt – because I wasn’t getting the release I needed. I still wasn’t feeling anything. (After all of this, well, I reached for those pills and the Glenfiddich I mentioned earlier.)

Sounds frightening, right? Well it is. Feeling so empty that the only way you can feel something is by hurting yourself is one of the most frightening experiences. But hey, all wars incur some form of injury, yes? Sure I had some control over my actions, but, on those occasions although I knew what I was doing was wrong, I wasn’t able to stop myself from doing it. Almost as if I wasn’t in complete control of my choices.

No-one chooses to suffer from depression. I am NOT a depressing man; I have a positive, optimistic outlook, I have a sense of humor and a passion for humanity that knows no bounds. I am a man suffering from an ILLNESS – and this is what a lot of people do not understand. As soon as the word ‘depression’ is used, a label is placed on me that will never be removed. They cannot comprehend that depression is an illness and not a state of mind. This persecution is the root of the stigma that people with mental illnesses encounter on an almost daily basis. It is these people who make the war so hard. Those who assume that the solution is to just ‘cheer up and get over it’ or ‘just go for a jog, you’ll be fine’. Would you say this to someone suffering from cancer, or diabetes, or any of the myriad of physical illnesses affecting millions of people around the world? With these illnesses because the symptoms are believed, then anyone who is fighting against them are given all of the encouragement and help they need.

How many of us have visited a physically ill person with a bunch of flowers or grapes to wish them to get well? How many of us have talked to a physically ill person about their symptoms, how they’re feeling, tried to emphasize with what they’re going through or what can be done to help them get better?

Most of us have, at some point.

Now, how many of us have visited a mentally ill person with a bunch of flowers or grapes to wish them to get well? How many of us have talked to a mentally ill person about their symptoms, how they’re feeling, tried to emphasize with what they’re going through or what can be done to help them get better?…

…

A lot of people don’t want to even admit there is something called mental illness, let alone trying to understand it. If overcoming an illness was as simple as ‘cheer up and get over it’ or ‘just go for a jog, you’ll be fine’ then we have just discovered the cure for every single disease mankind has ever known. HIV, Cancer, Whooping Cough, Measles, Polio, the Black Death…yep, all you have to do is stop complaining and you’ll be fine. Why didn’t any of us realise this sooner?

The first time I started taking medication for my illness was in 2001. It started with pills that would help me cope with anxiety and panic attacks. This then moved onto anti depressants. I hated being on them because of how they made me feel, the way they messed with my head and played games with the chemicals and thought processes of my mind. I didn’t stay on them for long.

The second time I started taking medication for my illness was in March 2007, following an emotional breakdown. This breakdown was triggered by several events which all occurred within the same two week period and made it impossible for the defenses I had been using in my war to be effective. In essence I needed to call in ‘air support’. The side effects I experienced during the first five weeks of this medication were gruesome: nausea, vomiting, increased heart rate, tremors, a somnambulistic state, confusion, sleeplessness, mood swings – pretty drastic ones at that – and they’re just the effects I remember. The medication in essence changed who I was, and was another skirmish I needed to fight through. I’m still on them now.

My ongoing war against my own mind has destroyed my life. It has affected my ability to talk, to communicate, to laugh, to make decisions, to form whole relationships and friendships. I have lost everything; possessions, friends, family, any chance of the life I wanted. This seemingly never-ending conflict has left me feeling like the husk of a man with nothing to offer anyone – not even myself.

Don’t get me wrong for I am not making excuses. It certainly sounds like I am blaming everything that has gone wrong in my life on this “illness”, but that is not the case. I am more than aware of the mistakes I have made and the cost of those mistakes both financially, personally and on the people who tried to care about me. That’s one of the things that is so hard to fight against. My mind is constantly reminding me of everything I once had, the people in my life, the moments in the past where I reached a crossroads and took the wrong route. Over time the memories and words and laughter, all of those moments where you wished you had done this or said that won’t leave you alone. The continually perplexing question of ‘what if…’ that haunts every single one of us at some stage of our lives dominates my thoughts all of the time. What if I’d done this…would I be further along the road to recovery? What if maybe I’d said that…would that have stopped this war from even kicking off in the first place?

It’s a dangerous cycle, but the problem is that when you suffer from a mental illness you do have decreased control over your thought processes.

Depression can impact on every facet of everyday life; eating, sleeping, working, friendships, relationships, even how a person thinks about themselves. The most innocuous of playful personal criticism can do irreparable damage. You are also affected physically, depression can affect; “your central nervous system, your sleep-wake cycle, your hormonal system, your stress response system, your immune system and your gastrointestinal system”[4] so “when you are depressed you feel physically unwell”[5]

How to put this another way? Well, have you ever felt so sad and worthless that you just can’t get out of bed in the morning? That simply going about your normal day seems pointless and impossible.

Imagine what it would be like to feel that every single day. To feel so sad that not only does getting out of bed feel like climbing K2, but that constructing a workable TARDIS from the contents of your fruit bowel sounds far easier than walking to the shower. Let alone getting dressed, making breakfast, eating breakfast, going for a cycle, heading off to work, hanging out with friends over lunch, meeting your psychotherapist, grocery shopping, cooking dinner, eating dinner, cleaning up, cruising down the pub for a few bevies and flirtatious conversation.

Imagine feeling mental and physical pain every single day of your life with no end in sight. Forget smiles, forget laughter, forget cuddles, forget giggles, forget chortles, forget glints in the eye and warm fuzzy bunny feelings.

Imagine feeling so worthless that anything you do feels like a minor battle. That’s what living with depression is like – a daily grind to accomplish even something as simple as peeling an apple, let alone achieving any moment of happiness.

The fourth time I nearly killed myself was in October 2007.
For three days I was in what I can only describe as a trance. I knew where I was, what I was doing, but it was almost as if my brain had given up and I had no control over my actions. I left a suicide note and I walked and walked down all these streets I’d never been to or even knew existed. All I knew for sure was the rough direction I had to go and I just let my feet take me there. My eyes would glaze over as I passed families, mothers with their children, friends having fun – reminding me of the future I would never have. My feet just kept walking until I reached the Dandenongs, where my soul wished to be. I tied a scarf to the tree and the other end around my neck and all I needed to do was let myself fall into the peaceful quiet oblivion. At that moment death was all that I wanted. As I allowed myself to drop, the trance ended, I struggled for breath but managed to fight myself loose and drop to the ground. Once again, I had failed to achieve the peace I crave so much.

Why?

To be honest, I just don’t know. Maybe it was to do with the survival instinct that lays dormant in all of us. At the moment I was hanging from that tree I wanted to die. It’s hard to explain to people who have never been there – the overwhelming urge, the need, the desire for death. The contradiction of loving life yet craving to just let it all go. I wasn’t thinking about the people that care about me, because my mind has convinced me that no-one does. I cared only about ending the war. I’ve tried explaining to people over the years what I feel and what I suffer from in the hope that they will understand but, well, skip back a few paragraphs! Sure there are some people who get it – usually those who have suffered from or know someone who has suffered from a mental illness – but most don’t. They judge or mock or laugh or attack or, worst of all, just don’t listen to what is being said to them and pretend it’s not there. It’s a shame, because if more people took the time to listen then maybe things would be different. That’s really all I ever needed.

I honestly believe that this fight with mental illness will never be won. Not for me as an individual, nor for the millions and millions of people around the world who wage their own wars. The human cost of mental illness is staggering and this needs to be understood before change can occur. Lives are being torn apart; family, friends, hopes, dreams, passions and desires. Everything is combusting and turning to dust.

Victory will never be reached until one thing happens: acceptance.

People need to accept the fact that mental illness exists.
People need to accept the fact that mental illness is not a choice someone makes.
People need to accept the fact that mental illness can happen to anyone.
People need to accept the fact that mental illness is not who a person is or who they will always be.

Nor is it who they want to be. They are so much more.

I have the utmost respect for people who are suffering from mental illness because I know from personal experience how exhausting it can be. How hard it is to live and not just exist.

Until people stop judging and compartmentalizing people with mental illnesses, nothing will ever be achieved to overcome it. By endlessly sweeping this issue under the carpet we are losing the war.

It is a war being waged not with guns, missiles or bombs but with our minds: the most dangerous weapon available.

by Addy
Originally posted on All that I am, all that I ever was

———–
[1] WHO report on mental illness released October 4, 2001.
[2] SANE Australia (referenced 18/10/07)
[3] SANE Australia (referenced 18/10/07)
[4] BeyondBlue (referenced 18/10/07)
[5] BeyondBlue (referenced 18/10/07)