Hell bent on anti SI, why?

[DrAM]

Why is everyone so hell bent on telling me what I am doing to my own body is wrong and I MUST stop, or what? I'm a grown ass adult, I bruise intentionally, it's my freaking body. Substance Abuse does not fall into this category, I think I identify with ED more than cutters though. ED is about control, my bruising is absolutely about controlling myself. When I was younger cutting was about releasing emotions with wild abandonment. I will never discourage anyone from whatever form of SI they chose, I'm fully pro-SI. I would like to know if I'm just a freak of nature or if other grown adults (25+ years old, I'm 36) that feel this way.

[Remnants]

it's really hard & frustrating when everyone is telling you to stop something that you find beneficial. I guess most people have some level of worry about more severe or permanent damage. Obviously I don't know how you go about bruising but for me to bruise myself I would need to do something that would potentially compromise my bones. Maybe it's something like that? It really varies from person to person. Have you tried explaining all this? Is it your treating team or friends/family?

I have adopted a more like 'I won't self harm unless I really need to, but I'm not trying to stop' approach. I did this as a late teenager but it's stayed with me. So I guess different to you but not taking that extreme approach people expect, like 'you have to stop right now'.

I hope you find some people here you can relate to & the people in your life saying this can let up or understand, it's not beneficial to have people adopting that position all the time.

[tryp]

You may have a hard time getting the response you are looking for here, as we are a pro-recovery board, though I wouldn't say we are "anti-SI" per se.

I don't think you are a freak of nature and I can see why it makes you angry to be told what you should and shouldn't do to your body.  Personally, I do not think that SI is wrong.  For me, I haven't done it in four years now, but I haven't taken it off the table forever.  I've evaluated things and decided that I don't like the messages that harming myself to regulate emotions sends me about myself - that I deserve to be hurt, and that I shouldn't have feelings.  I don't like that it widens the split between my mind and my body, where my body becomes an object to be injured and controlled.  For me, there are DEFINITE pros to coping through self-harm.  But there are also cons, and when I weigh it up, my personal evaluation is that my cons outweigh my pros.  If that changes one day, I may do it again.  But for now, I have committed to making a different choice.

It's a slightly different position from a moralistic "self harm is wrong, don't do it."

For me it's been more about identifying why I self harm and what needs I am meeting, and trying to find other ways to meet them that don't reinforce my ideas of myself as worthless and deserving to be hurt.

[Wooster]

You are correct. It is your body, and you can do with it what you will.

You've found something that helps you in some way. You wouldn't keep doing it if it did nothing for you.

And it also sounds like self harm is causing you more problems than it's solving, at least with regard to other people getting all in your business.

Self harm for me was ALWAYS about control and being able to get back in control from overwhelming internal experiences. It's never been about releasing emotions. Different purposes for different folks. 

I would argue that self harm, substance abuse, eating disorders, gambling, sex addiction, compulsive shopping, etc etc etc all have the same purpose of somehow changing our internal states to make them less unpleasant.

[Gearhead]

Hi, DrAM. Welcome to CB.

I see that you're new to CrazyBoards, so I'm going to assume you're unfamiliar with our mission and our rules. We're a pro-treatment and pro-recovery site. As such, we do discourage self-harm of any stripe. We understand that sometimes it happens, but it's a dysfunctional coping mechanism that doesn't address the core problem.