response to wolfangel
I started writing this as a comment on wolfangel's post, "scarring", but since it turned out to be all about me, I moved it over here.
In general, I don't know if it's more appropriate to respond as a comment or a post. I don't feel quite comfortable responding to a personal story with my own, as if assuming that our experiences are alike. My empathy is based on being able to imagine myself in someone else's position, but I don't want to override the other person's own feelings by projecting mine. I'm not sure if moving a response to my own blog is trying to take ownership of the topic/comment away from the original blogger, or just not wanting to shift the focus of someone else's blog to myself.
Anyway...
I have a friend who worked at McDonald's while training to be a nurse. One day she was working on drive-thru and a woman came through and showed my friend the scars and fresh cuts on her arms. I don't remember what she said, but it was a definite cry for help.
My friend told me about it later, as part of the explanation for why she didn't want to work in a psych ward, wanting me to agree with her that this woman was a freak. I didn't say anything (I never say anything), but I felt stung. My heart felt broken, not only for this woman, but for myself.
I haven't ever self-injured enough to cause lasting marks, but the impulse makes perfect sense to me. I've felt miserable and worthless enough that physical pain strong enough to make me focus on its source would have been a blessed relief from the fog of self-hatred and self-destructive thoughts churning in my head. Not to mention the comfort from having my outside match the inside for a change. Ultimately, though, I was always too scared of anyone being able to see what was hidden inside, so I stuck to carving reversible welts into my skin with my fingernails.
It was hard for me to believe that my friend could not understand at all why this woman would injure herself or why she would tell the drive-thru worker. I was a little jealous that she was able to ask for help, no matter how obliquely and silently hoped she had found someone who understood. I didn't try to explain to my friend, though. I just agreed with her that she would be happier on a medical ward. Of course, I'm still friends with her. Someone I feel comfortable talking with is rare enough to be worth reinforcing my silence about anything personal.
I don't mean to be disparaging about my friend (there are other reasons she is still my friend and it occurs to me now that maybe she was harsh in rejecting self-injurous behaviour for other reasons), or anyone else who doesn't understand the motivation to self-injure. I just think it's always good to look more carefully for reasons before assuming they don't exist. It adds weight to the taunts of my abusive inner voice and drives home my feeling of isolation to hear someone so casually dismiss another's pain as just a symptom of being a freak.
posted by Lucy @ 6:42 PM
9
comments
9 Comments:
It is perfectly fine to expand in your own blog on something another blogger started. You did give credit. Don't worry about it.
drives home my feeling of isolation to hear someone so casually dismiss another's pain as just a symptom of being a freak.
This, I relate to. I was having a horrible day, a day where I hated myself intensely and wanted to go home but I had an important teaching meeting. We started discussing proper conduct to use around the students as TAs. Someone mentioned that students will confide odd things sometimes. A prof I really respect laughed and said, "yeah, like suicidal thoughts." While she was laughing. I couldn't believe how callous she was; how much effort would it take to admit that to a professor? Ugh.
Needless to say she won't ever be my confidant.
I wish I would have said something, but thankfully the conversation moved on.
Your friend's attitude is unfortunate, but we certainly don't need people like that in our mental health facilities.
Yeah. I totally get this.
"the comfort from having my outside match the inside for a change."
I did a lot of self injury, when I was younger, when I didn't know there was even a term for it.
"It adds weight to the taunts of my abusive inner voice"
Yeah. I get this. And that's all I have to say, for now; but thanks for addressing this here.
I'm so sorry that you feel that pain, Lucy, and I'm so sorry for Wolfa, too. I can certainly understand the impulse to give one's pain a focus -- I think my binge-eating can often function similarly.
My mother used to self-injure in front of us when we were little, and continued to do so "accidentally" at family parties and such until quite recently. She'd also try to encourage us to view ourselves as people who self-injure, trying to have us see our teenage zit-popping (or even our habit of cutting the split ends off our hair!) as equivalent.
Needless to say, I grew up to have quite violent feelings on the subject of self-injury. (Oh, and also a neurotic inability to cope with the sight of blood. My siblings have it, too. And our clueless extended family wonders why none of us became medical professionals like our parents.) It's good for me to remember that not everyone who self-injures does so as a weapon to hurt those around them. Perhaps my mother is the only one who ever thought to use it in such a fashion.
Oh jeez phantom - that is horrible. I'm so sorry. It reminds me of one of Spalding Gray's books in which his mom asks him all the time (even when he was a kid), "Spalding, how should I do it (commit suicide)?" I can't even imagine how that would affect a kid (well, sadly, we know well how it ultimately affected Spalding).
lucy - that kind of thing happens all the time in my field. One of my clients will do or say something that well mirrors my own experiences, and a supervisor will completely denigrate the client. Or in a class we will talk about client issues and the students and professors will make derogatory remarks - and I feel stung and isolated and crazy because I so identify.
I think a lot of times people's reactions (that is, those who are in helping professions) are more about not *wanting* to understand as understanding leads to way too much pain. It's like when I was a kid and told my mom about feeling suicidal - her reaction was to tell me that suicide was selfish. the end. Were she to really listen and try to understand and help, it would have cost her far too much emotionally.
honeybee, I've heard comments like that too. I'm still feeling guilty about giving a flip answer to a classmate, who took it to mean I was scoffing at the idea of social anxiety. I wanted to explain that I'm the last person to think that's something to laugh at and I'd just misunderstood the original comment, but I was too scared to admit to my own anxiety...
Luckybuzz, thanks for your understanding and recognition. It's amazing how comforting it is to have someone else get what I've tried to express.
Phantom, I meant to also mention that my binge-eating definitely serves the same purpose as a form of easily hidden self-injury. I'm so sorry you had to suffer from your mother's self-injury. It's also good for me to remember that looking for ways to understand and absolve someone who is being hurtful is less important than stopping them from hurting others.
Shrinky, I'm sorry you have to face comments like that so often. I know what you mean about helping professionals not wanting to get overwhelmed by other people's problems, but it seems hard to help someone without being able to understand why they might behave the way they do. Even being coldly logical about it would be preferable to rejecting the behaviour as irrational or freakish. I'm so sorry your mother wasn't willing to understand, too.
I posted this comment at wolfangel's, but I thought I'd copy it here since there's some discussion in both places.
I didn't mention it in my post, but Phantom reminded me in comments, that my binge-eating is related to self-injury. It's definitely a form of punishment, but inextricably linked to comfort as well. But I think the more obvious self-injury still links pleasure and punishment. The relief of being able to focus on something outside my thoughts is only possible because I'm punishing myself for seeking that relief.
I think part of my fear of anyone noticing my impulse to self-injure, and what prevented me from going ahead with it, is related to it being manipulative. I felt guilty at even the thought of someone noticing, because I knew it would hurt them, but I wanted so much for someone to be forced to notice, so I had to punish myself for that want by just remaining in silence instead.
Lucy, is that part of what's going on at your therapy appointments? The guilt at wanting your pain to be noticed (and the hurt you're afraid it will cause), and the silence as punishment for wanting your pain to be noticed? Because I've always thought that the advantage of telling your troubles to a therapist (as opposed to someone with whom you have any kind of personal relationship) is that it WON'T hurt them to hear how you've been failed by those close to you in your life.
Shrinkykitten, your story about your mom's denial of your suicidal feelings resonates for me. I reached the same conclusion about my dad -- really listening would cost too much for him emotionally. But how awful it must have been for you as a kid to go to your mom with something as huge as that and be shut down.
Why is it that we're not all heroin addicts on the street, anyway?
Hinting in any form that I could possibly have been failed by anyone is still hurting them... Someone might think less of my family or something and any benefit to me is certainly not worth the harm to their reputation...
I don't know, really. I don't think it's necessarily about hurting someone in that case, but wanting someone to notice still feels like a punishable offence. And I do spend the whole time digging my fingernails into my hands.
One of the techniques mentioned in the book about working with elective mute kids was to just keep repeating the same question, without allowing any silence to linger long enough to become awkward. I kind of wish my therapist would do that, because it's so hard to answer right away, but then after a few seconds it's even harder to break the silence and it seems like she thinks the silence becomes about something else and she's forgotten the question, so I can't just say what I was originally mentally rehearsing because it won't make sense anymore and it seems like she doesn't even care about the answer, so what's the point? I don't think that's so much about punishment, but I definitely need a lot more reassurance that it's even okay to answer a question.
That's interesting about working with elective mutes. Many of the shrinks I have tried out do what your shrink-person does - change the subject or react to something that happened earlier (or talk about themselves).
I notice that what I do as a shrink is that I will repeat the question - or I check in and ask if the client is trying to figure out how to answer the question, or if they have gone elsewhere. I also sometimes just ask what they are thinking or feeling. But, I think the fact that I am a super quiet client allows me to really understand that a lot more goes on in the silence than most shrinks seem to know - and that there are often many different reasons for silence - many different kinds of silence.
And Phantom, indeed, why aren't we all strung out all the time.
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