Young artist Bella Schilling has chosen a subject close to her heart – self-harm – to depict in powerful graphic images and words.
Show this to anyone you know who may be taking refuge in what 19-year old Bella calls 'a silent addiction'.
Self-harm is a silent addiction.
Personally, I feel it's like any other compulsion – the need to drink alcohol, the need to limit your food intake – you need to feel in control.
You feel like you can't talk to or trust anyone around you, and so digging a blade into your legs or pressing lit cigarettes to your arms feels like the only coping mechanisms you have.
Whatever you're trying to deal with, punishing yourself is not the answer.
You may feel like you deserve to hurt yourself, but in the long run you will cause even more damage.
From a personal experience, talking to somebody really does help, because then you're not bottling all the anguish up inside.
If you find it difficult expressing yourself through words, perhaps try some drawing or painting, or even write a poem.
Anything is better than self-destruction.
Personally, I feel it's like any other compulsion – the need to drink alcohol, the need to limit your food intake – you need to feel in control.
You feel like you can't talk to or trust anyone around you, and so digging a blade into your legs or pressing lit cigarettes to your arms feels like the only coping mechanisms you have.
Whatever you're trying to deal with, punishing yourself is not the answer.
You may feel like you deserve to hurt yourself, but in the long run you will cause even more damage.
From a personal experience, talking to somebody really does help, because then you're not bottling all the anguish up inside.
If you find it difficult expressing yourself through words, perhaps try some drawing or painting, or even write a poem.
Anything is better than self-destruction.
Some statistics:
- Rates of self-harm in the UK are among the highest in Europe, at 400 per 100,000 per year
- Approximately 1 in 10 teenagers self injure
- The group with the highest rates of self-harm are young women aged 15-19 years. In all age groups, females are more likely to self-harm than males
- Women are more likely than men to self-harm, however whereas women once showed two or three times the male rate, recent increases in self-harm by men have changed the female to male ratio to 1.6:1
- Several studies have shown that approximately one out of every 100 people who are seen at hospital for self-harm will die by suicide within a year of the self-harm. This is a suicide risk approximately 100 times that of the general population.
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1 comment:
A good friend is in her early fifties. On her left arm from wrist to elbow are neat spacings of cigarette burn scars, looking for all the world like sets of dominoes.
She does it to try to feel something and at those times is always unsuccessful.
She learned as a child to feel nothing both when her father was raping her and when her mother was beating her. She has never reported them.
She has been married for thirty years and has several university degrees...in nursing, teaching and special education.
Four of her six children are autistic. Her husband has periods of withdrawn behaviour. Most of the time she copes; she knows all too well that's she's not just wanted but needed.
But when the void hits her, none of that makes the slightest difference.
Now there's a growing awareness within her family and circle of friends that the possibility of losing her to suicide is becoming not an issue of "if", but "when".
When the void hits her she becomes nothing...no thing..., something worthless.
She has her faith. Although she cannot handle being in a crowd (as attending church involves) she has someone pray with her for an hour every week.
She may survive. She may not. So we've all learned to value her for as long as we've got her and take it day by day.
Your writing on abuse shows an almost perfect insight. Oh, and thanks for Eldred, I came to him, Lulubelle and Keith several years ago and the book they appear in still ranks as one of my favourites.
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