A SUICIDE ATTEMPT OR NOT?

There is a lot of confusion on what self-injury is and why a person injures. Some people mistake self-injury for a suicide attempt. It's hard to understand why anyone would go to the extent of harming themselves unless the person wants to die, but harming himself has nothing to do with suicide. Self-injury is a coping technique for overwhelming emotions or a way to just feel when you become numb inside. It's not to say that the person hasn't struggled with thoughts of taking his or her life, but those thoughts having noting to do with why the person is harming him or herself.

At a former job, the manager found out I was deeply depressed and I was hurting myself on purpose. She became convinced I was attempting to take my life. She called crisis and they showed up to my department. Not only was I embarrassed that crisis came to my work place and all my fellow employees knew they were there for me, but I had to sit in a conference room and explain to them that I was not attempting to take my life.

The crisis worker questioned me for a half hour. She asked me why I wanted to die. She asked if I was to go home would I try to take my life again. She wanted to know if I needed to be hospitalized. I tried to explain to her I didn't want to die and I was working with a therapist to stop my injuring. I told her the injuring relieved my inner pain and I was not suicidal. After a while she let me go and gave me their number in case I became suicidal or needed to talk.

I can't say I never thought of taking my life while I was sick, but when I injured, my goal was to relieve the immense inner pain that burned within my body. When I thought about suicide, I was in a different frame of mind. I wanted to save my family from pain I was causing them and I wanted to end my own pain forever. When I hurt myself, I just wanted to relieve my inner agony for just a moment or longer, not forever.

I even left my former boss a pamphlet on self-injury, but she continued to think self-injury was an attempt at suicide. Because of people like her, I worked hard to hide my self-harming.

It's important for us who injure or who have recovered from self-injury to educate others about self-injury. The more we write about it and talk about it, the more educated our loved ones and others around us will become. I write this blog post to reach out to the world and tell them about mental illness and self-injury. It's important that teachers, managers, crisis workers, doctors, parents, friends and so on one are educated about how to handle self-injury and what self-injury is.

Step up with me and educate others about self-injury. I believe I struggled with mental illness and self-injury to share my story with all of you. Writing about it is also therapy and keeps me within the light.