In school a while back we had a day where various different people came in and spoke to us, one was on our finances, another on the army and what it was doing in a specific country, and another to give us faith in the police force.
The one about the police is the one I'm going to focus on. There is a story (not real) of a man who is unemployed and on heroin, who breaks into an ambulance, steals a bag of drugs, and hurts some people in the process
Turns out they actually got their papers wrong, and he was employed, and they were considering letting him out. After a whole long list of considerations, self harm came up.
The teacher or woman taking it asked us what we think he might do to selfharm, and the response from most of the class was "he might get depressed and hurt himself, like with a blade or something".
Actually, the answer she was expecting was: "He might go back to doing heroin and drugs".
She seemed quite concerned that we had all automatically thought he might hurt himself deliberately with no other reason.
Comments
@ 11:28 AM EST on Monday, September 10, 2007, meandmyimaginaryfriend said:
Your points are exactly WHY I wrote this post. Ie : You wouldn't class them as self harm. Well they are. You didn't think of it as self harm for ages. Well, it is and you should have thought of that. Herion may do good, but it also does you harm and so - it's self harm. I'm trying to get people to think about things.@ 10:00 AM EST on Saturday, September 8, 2007, saveroftheworld said:
I would hardly call drugs and eating disorders simple self-sabotage ... The term self harm immediately gives connatations of cutting. If you think about it a little longer, you remember the other things that come under that title. This guy I'm friends with used to burn himself. When he told me it took me a moment to realise that it was self harm. I thought maybe it was just a weird thing he did. He once put out a cigarette on his chest, although that was because he was drunk and being silly. They let that guy off because he was employed? Dear me. You know, I wouldn't call heroin and drugs a means of self-harming. People don't take heroin to harm themselves, it's the exact opposite. Heroin is the most amazing feeling in the world. (I'm not condoning it btw, it's a terrible, terrible drug.) But the feeling a user gets is amazing. The drug may be harming them, but the purpose for taking them and the consequence are mutually exclusive. They take it because they want to feel the rush of it all over. That's why coming off heroin is one of the hardest things to do in the world.@ 9:57 PM EST on Wednesday, September 5, 2007, noctemaeternus713 said:
Most people consider self-injury to be any direct harm to your body, which includes a lot more than cutting. People burn themselves, hit themselves, pick skin, break bones, etc. And, then there's self-harm which is anything. Drugs, eating disorders, simple self-sabotage. Of course, there are still debates on the exact wording, but then people have a tendency to bicker about the most inconsequential things. Thanks for clearing it up. Not all self-harmers cut themselves, and some do more than one thing. I'm currently a mess of self-harm, cutting included...but there's a lot of other things I do that aren't quite as recognizable.@ 12:32 PM EST on Wednesday, September 5, 2007, Honeykissed said:
i couldnt be bothered to read the whole of this post but i totally agree self harm isnt just cutting, its hurting your self in anyways whether thats physically, emotionall or spiritually.