SI

SI is the act of intentionally physically hurting yourself,without the intent of commiting suicide,it is a method of coping during an emotionally difficult time that helps some people temporarily feel better because they have a way to express and release the tension and the pain they hold inside,to make the pain physical means that it is easier to understand.

Forms of SI( just to mention a few)
cutting*
burning*
scatching
overeating*
hair pulling*
biting
head banging
carving*


Why do it?
RELIEF FROM OVERWHELMING EMOTIONS is one of the reasons given most often for self-injury. The immense internal psychic pressure felt from overwhelming emotions can seem uncontrollable, frightening, and dangerous. People who self-injure have often not learned to identify, express, or release their emotions. Most have never developed the ability to feel and express emotions as others do. They may not have been allowed to show or release their true emotions. Yet their feelings still exist, whether they show them or not. They may have adopted self-injury as a strategy for getting relief from these intense feelings (Alderman 1997). The relief gained from these emotions is rapid, but temporary. The effectiveness of self-injury, at the moment, to provide relief and release is one of the reasons why self-injurers find it so difficult to stop.

PHYSICAL EXPRESSION OF EMOTIONAL PAIN is one way for the self-injurer to provide evidence/confirmation of their psychological suffering. Self-injurers speak of their wounds and their scars as being a way to see the pain they feel inside. That by causing these injuries they are bringing their pain out to be seen and perhaps healed. Often, individuals who engage in self-injury tend to minimize or doubt their own internal experiences. Physically expressing the emotional pain allows them to have concrete evidence of intangible, amorphous, or indefinable emotions (Alderman 1997). Self-injury speaks loudly of the pain the individual feels long before they have the words to express it.

UNREALITY, NUMBNESS, AND DISSOCIATION are experienced by many self-injurers. Dissociation is something that most of us have experienced, through such breaks in consciousness as daydreaming or driving past your exit from the motorway. Even though everyone dissociates to some degree at times, for some it is a defense mechanism, protecting them in the face of intolerable emotional pain. After a time, this too becomes intolerable, and self-injury may become a means for reducing, preventing, or ending a disturbing dissociative state. At times, the emotionally numb state may extend to physical anesthesia, so that severe injuries may be inflicted with a minimum of pain (Moskovitz 1996). Although we all dissociate, most of us do not fear that we will physically and/or psychologically disintegrate. What makes it different for self- injurers is that they feel they are shattering - falling apart. One woman uses the analogy of a magician taking a dollar and tearing it into many pieces. He waves his wand, mumbles some words and 'presto' the dollar is whole again. She says she feels like that dollar, ripped up into may pieces, she cuts and 'presto' she feels whole again.

SELF-PUNISHMENT AND SELF-HATE may well be the simplest and most easily understood explanation of self-injury. Many self-injurers have been taught that many thoughts, feelings, and emotions that we take for granted, such as feeling angry and having needs are bad and deserve punishment. When these are aroused in them their self-hate is emphasized and they feel they have to pay.