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A new type of self-injurious behavior
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Time Magazine
As a therapist I often see clients (primarily teenage girls) who engage in self-injurious behavior. Most of them are known as “cutters.” They make cuts or scratches on their bodies with a sharp object, often razor blades or scissors. These cuts can be made anywhere but the thighs are a common place on the body because the marks don’t show.
Forearms are also a common location because the person can access that location at any time, in class, while in a car, watching TV, etc.
Friction burn is another type of self-injurious behavior that we see fairly frequently, where someone will rub a pencil eraser on their body until red burns appear.
Many people find it difficult to understand why others would want to harm themselves in this manner. You can find a lot of research on the subject. But most of the adolescents I counsel who self-injure say they do it because their feelings are too intense, too painful. By causing themselves pain, it tends to relieve the psychic pain they live with.
And surprising to many, self-injurious behavior is not suicidal most of the time. Unfortunately accidental death has resulted when self-injurious behavior has gone too far.
Recently Time Magazine reported on a new type of self-injurious behavior. This behavior involves inserting objects under the skin. They call this “self-embedding.” This phenomenon may still be small, but seems to be growing, and not just with adolescent females. Read the article and decide for yourself if this is something we need to be concerned about or not.
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