Since my comments on that earlier thread were approaching novel length, I’ve decided to move my responses to “what helps?” over to its very own thread, with the big caveat that this is my experience, so things that I found helpful are not universally helpful; in general, understanding and making well-meant mistakes is better than just ignoring it (when it is an active issue).
I agree: there is no culturally approved response to it (and I could not have articulated a response I was looking for). It’s like many other things, it seems, that are in part in your head and that seem to hit women harder. I don’t know if there’s a causal link between these two things. (Other things that We Do Not Talk About: depression, actual eating disorders and not the stupid Hollywoodized versions of them, sexual assault, anything that takes time to get better in general.) This has to do with the shame issue as well, and perhaps the perfectability of humans that we seem to think can happen, the individual response, a single person can make themselves better or worse, it’s all about the effort you’re making. And of course you do need to put effort into getting better, but effort alone isn’t enough, and people can’t do it all by themselves.
I don’t think that talking about it helps or doesn’t; perhaps the next time someone asks about my arms it will have helped and I will be honest but realistically I would doubt it. Perhaps it means that next time I feel the urge I will mention it when blogging — I haven’t generally felt that I’m holding back from mentioning it though, and this is a small enough blog that I’m not, say, helping thousands of people understand depression better. But it doesn’t hurt. And I think I’m glad it doesn’t help, because the place I was in where it did help — not a good place.
How do you support friends or family? I think the real issue is to be understanding. “How did that happen?” is not a good question to ask, nor is anything that focuses on the injuries. Understanding, yes, asking what made you want to do it (but this carefully), sure. The biggest issue is to be sure that this isn’t the only time someone gets care, just after they’ve self-injured. No, it’s not all about attention, but having someone take care of you is nice anyways, and if self-injury feels good and if people take care of you after but not before, there’s just a lot of setting up for more of it. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take care after, just that it shouldn’t be something more or special.
It’s hard to say exactly what’s right and what is wrong to say. There are the obvious wrong things to say (Are you crazy?), but then things slide into real life, and things are never quite so obvious. Acknowledge someone’s pain. Try to understand their specific reasons for doing it; I’ve explained some general ones, and some of my reasons, but they are not one-size-fits-all.
In general, it’s probably better to approach the person, but it depends on how well you know them; I would certainly have been quite annoyed to have random people ask me about it (this is perhaps unfair, since it’s pretty hard to ignore, but there you have it: this should be limited to friends or family. Perhaps asking an acquaintance if everything is okay, or how they are doing, but “I see you’re hurting yourself, you must be in a lot of pain” — a nice way to put things — is probably pushing the boundaries. Or maybe not, depending on the person — there’s so much context). It’s never good to push, and it’s not really good to avoid it — or your reactions to it. It is very bad to threaten (I will never talk to you again). It is fair to have limits.
What helps? Distractions, sometimes: let’s play a game, go for a walk, make dinner first, then see how you feel. I’m not entirely sure what level of “what helps?” are you asking for: what helps if someone comes to you wanting to self-injure, or what helps when you are talking about it in general, or — as I said, I’m not sure, which probably accounts a bit for the rambling nature of this post. I think it’s better to come down on the side of condoning it than being judgemental, because in the long run, condoning it as an imperfect way of taking care will be much more helpful than judging someone (in the short term, it may have the opposite effect, along the “I will prove how unloveable I am” lines). See how I said that academia didn’t make me crazier? This is because I was already this nuts.
Anyways, I am still open to further questions or clarifications. People don’t need to leave email addresses, and I’m not going to be annoyed at less inoffensive questions (though I will not show pictures of scars or talk about what methods I used, because I can’t think of any good use that information could have).
Being impressed that someone hasn’t self-injured for however long, even if they slip: that’s good. Asking about the feelings behind it — I keep focussing on this because it’s really the issue. Why did they want to do it? Think about how terrible they must be feeling if causing physical pain feels *better*.
