Self-Mutilation

I began hurting myself when I was five years old.  I worried a place on my hand, between thumb and forefinger, until it got crusty and bloody.  Why?  I suspect anxiety had bloomed in me and I unconsciously released endorphins while hurting my hand.  I was too young to put 2 and 2 together but the empirical evidence led me to stay with hurting myself. 

At some point I did stop; possibly when my world was less scary than it had been although I kept it up through first and second grades.  I don’t remember the worry place on my hand in later grade school or through high school.   I never did finish high school.  I mention this because of a recent survey I read that states that about 80% of high school dropouts are carrying a mental illness.  Interesting and correct in my case.  I began drinking when I was 15 and therefore fulfilled another statistic: alcoholics are mentally ill.

Over the years I finally got sober and began psychiatric medications for bipolar disorder.  I was on a mood stabilizer called Tegretol, among other medications.  After being on Tegretol for a number of years I developed a nasty, weepy, violently itchy rash.  The pustules were driving me crazy so I went to the Emergency Room where the doctor said, “I don’t know what those are  – you better go to a dermatologist.”  I did.  As soon as the dermatologist saw my arms she said, “That’s a Tegretol rash.” 

Needless to say, I stopped taking Tegretol.  My psychiatrist replaced it with lithium, another mood stabilizer.  But I continued to scratch the itchy blisters long after they would have healed.  Once they were healing I would scratch them open again and again until the wound had had enough and closed.  I was left with scars and then more scars and more scars.  I was reintroduced, sub-consciously, to that old worry place, the hurt where a young girl had learned how to stifle anxiety.

This wounding is called self-mutilation.  My psychiatrist has tried everything he can think of to help me stop.  I came up with writing about it, that possibly that will help.  I want to stop because my arms are so covered with scars I am embarrassed to be seen in warm weather.  I pull my sleeves down when I go into town or, if I’m feeling very brave, I just let my arms be seen, but rarely.  It took me years, literally, to put 2 and 2 together about why hurting myself actually make’s my anxiety go away, temporarily.  Discovering that I can release endorphins with the pain is not really a surprise.  How to stop this cause and effect is proving to be a bear.  I have three wounds right now and this is how it goes:  two were healing nicely until I went to a baby shower.   No one there was threatening, no one said anything negative to me, I just couldn’t handle it, and don’t handle, social situations well. 

How is it then that I can speak to a packed room when I’m out on the road?  My desire to reach as many people as possible overcomes the negative wounding behavior.  And, as I said, I’m working on it.  This subject is invisible, painful and secret.   Let’s work on it together and see what happens.