Self-Injury

Self injury

When most people face stress, they talk to a friend or squeeze a stress ball. However, when a small number of people feel that their life is getting them down, they revert to dangerous behaviors in order to alleviate the feelings they are experiencing. These people, when under stress, may revert to cutting themselves, burning their skin, or engaging in other behaviors that cause themselves physical harm. Because other people view such behaviors as being very extreme, they may feel that the people who do them are merely trying to attract attention to themselves. However, when a person purposefully injures themselves, they are not attracting attention but instead are suffering from a disorder known as self injury.
Self injury is defined as a variety of behaviors, “resulting in the destruction of one’s own tissue. These behaviors, including scratching, burning or cutting the skin, pulling out hair, breaking bones, amputation, and eye enucleation, can have a ...