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| Self-harming behaviors/eating disorders | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 8 2014, 01:15 PM (649 Views) | |
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Apr 8 2014, 01:15 PM Post #1 |
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I figured it was time for another deep discussion topic, and we've been talking about these things a lot in some of my classes lately. I guess these two problems have really been on the rise in recent years. Why do people engage in self-harming behaviors or eating disorders? What motivates them to do these things, and can they get help? If so, how? I understand that these are two completely different issues, so please do divide up your opinions of them.  Also, keep in mind that more people are involved in these things than you would like to think. Self-harming doesn't just include the obvious cutting. It can also include drinking in excessive amounts, taking drugs and medications in excess, burning, hitting, starving, etc. Eating disorders can be anything from anorexia to bulimia and even just skipping a few meals every week. There are different severity levels for both issues as well. I'm interested in seeing different opinions about these topics since they're rather recent issues, unlike the whole abortion and gay marriage thing. Only recently have we really been seeing such a swarm of "cutters" and such. |
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| + Steve | Apr 8 2014, 02:47 PM Post #2 |
Greetings. I will be your waifu this season.
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From what I understand it's mostly depression that makes people do it, it is kind of a fad with some sects of people but they wouldn't do it if it didn't do something for them. Everyone gets depressed sometimes and has their own coping mechanism, it's just obviously a lot more dangerous than having a few beers you could be cutting anything. I see a lot of people calling it cowardly as in they're too chicken to kill themselves so just cut a little bit, which probably is the case with a small minority but it's not about that, it makes people feel better, replacing emotional pain with physical. Depression is something that can never really be cured but getting to the root of why someone got that way in the first place is the only way to help, usually people that do it were abused in some way as kids, took a loss really hard or were bullied(by abuse I meant family based) So the answer is to get them to talk about it and get them to confide in you, not throw pills at them or call them crazy. Away from depression I'm not sure why people would do it I used to do it on my hands, still got scars. My reasoning was that I like my blood...but there's probably something deep down that I've never realized was why I'd want to do it. Can't recommend it though, I get chills just holding a butter knife near my hand now it feels horrible. As for anorexia/bulimia etc they're basically just a different route of what the above can take, maybe a sexually abusive father called them fat and that just stuck in there that key element of difference is where the type of self harm branches out, the problem is still the same type of thing that happened at the beginning. |
 Definitely not a succubus, fear not | |
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Apr 8 2014, 04:43 PM Post #3 |
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Yeah, I agree. I know these issues have a really bad rep. People get made fun of, called crazy, and humiliated. I've even heard people claim that cutters need to be sent straight to a mental asylum, which obviously isn't true at all. Therapy and possibly medication, definitely. Being called crazy? No. That only makes things worse. I'm torn, though. I wonder if self-harm is tied only to depression, or if it can be some type of a mental illness to an extent. I know that they've classified eating disorders as a mental illness, which is why I wonder. Eating disorders can be very dangerous and even deadly, but is self-harm just as bad? What should a person do if they self-harm? Try to fix themselves, get therapy, medication, what? I really don't know what causes these things. I can only go by my own personal experiences and people I know, but I can't speak for everyone. There are obviously going to be people who fake these things or use them for attention. As far as eating disorders go, I watched a documentary in my feminism class focused on women who were sent to an institution to get help, and even then they were relapsing and having trouble with it. It's a serious issue and should be treated like one. Lol maybe I should have been a Psych major. |
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Apr 8 2014, 10:30 PM Post #4 |
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Can't wrap my head around any of it, really. I suffer from depression, yet, I don't harm myself. I think those people crave attention tbh. I don't get eating disorders. Don't they get hungry? Don't make sense to me. |
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| * Yu Narukami | Apr 9 2014, 12:20 AM Post #5 |
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Izanagi!
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It's probably important to note that Depression is quite a broad term. You get extreme examples, where individuals can be completely emotionally and physically unstable, but there are also less extreme cases. 'Depression' could be described as a complete lack of motivation, the inability to get up in the morning because one doesn't see the reason why. While dismissed in favor of more extreme examples, these 'moderate' examples are still just as big a problem. In regards to depression itself, people process things differently. Perhaps cutting/drinking provides a distraction from the crushing depression that a person feels every day, a temporary release from the realm of anguish and melancholy. I'm not glorifying self-harm at all here, merely recognizing that cutting *may* be some sort of poor 'fix' to it. There are other, better methods, such as seeking professional help by means of therapy. It could also be a cry for attention or help, perhaps the person is unable to voice their predicament, so turns to self-harm in order to try and get the message across. Perhaps they legitimately hate themselves and feel as though harming themselves is an appropriate punishment for them. Low self-esteem is also a possible reason The reasoning behind any kind of self-harm doesn't need to be logical. In fact, it rarely is logical. Many people simply don't see the avenues of help available to them, and decide to take the route of harming themselves. In a point that ties in with eating disorders, the person might not have control over it. If a person associates pleasure or happiness with eating a certain food and ends up falling on hard times, they'll turn to the food in order to try and counteract the sadness that their hardships produce. Further down the line, they have to eat more in order to achieve the same level of happiness that they initially felt. This addiction leads to an eating disorder in which the person eats too much, or focuses their diet dangerously on a sole consumable item, or a few. On the other end of the spectrum, low self-esteem can lead to a person preventing themselves from eating an appropriate, healthy amount of food. A person can also simply have an issue with viewing themselves correctly, independent of any self-esteem related issues. The roots of all these problems lay in the individual themselves, and can be the result of many things. Be it hereditary (perhaps the person's more prone to depression), or by other people lowering their self-esteem, the catalyst launches the person into what can be described as a path of self-destruction. The way to solve these issues? Well, that really depends on the details in every individual case. With both issues, the problems are two-fold. Firstly, you can find the catalyst behind their actions. Once you find that and resolve it (resolution is case-dependent), then you have to deal with the issue itself. Even if you resolve the reason behind a person's actions, the actions themselves may not just disappear. With an eating disorder, for example. If you help the person come to terms with why they're acting in the way that they are, the issue of the eating disorder itself still remains. Recovery from the actions themselves can be a difficult, arduous process, but can be achieved through things such as one-on-one therapy with a professional and group therapy, something similar to AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). The sense of friendship and determination that such a group meeting can create would be a great step in helping the individual overcome their issues. |
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| + Steve | Apr 9 2014, 01:57 PM Post #6 |
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Greetings. I will be your waifu this season.
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Well you can get all sorts of infections in the wounds or from whatever you use to cut yourself with, or you could even nick an artery so it is just as dangerous if not more so. Blood loss could get dangerous too if there was frequent deep cutting. Anorexic's and the like can be put on an IV and given liquid food but if someone cuts their artery by accident or gets a blood infection they have a lot less of a chance. It's also a lot easier to hide so people might not get medical help until it's too late to save them. A few brain scans of people who are mentally ill for people who consider it "just a phase" when people self harm in whatever way.  I believe it is mostly in the area of depression that makes people do it but the others too, OCD for example can make people scrub their arms until they bleed because they feel they can't get clean, it's not a matter of attention seeking and pretending. (extreme cases of OCD of course) |
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Definitely not a succubus, fear not | |
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| Drummerchick247 | Apr 9 2014, 03:30 PM Post #7 |
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As someone who suffers from extreme depression and self harming tendencies myself, I have a few opinions on this matter. First off, like many others have said, there are many different levels of severity and even types of both depression and eating disorders. For myself, I know that I struggle with extreme depression (to the point of not wanting to get up in the morning and go through the motions of life because there seems to be no point at times) and I struggle with very serious anxiety/panic attacks almost every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I have been dealing with these things since I was around 8-9 years old, which is nearly 10 years for me, and at one point I was very self-harming to try and deal with it. I wanted to self harm because I thought so little of myself that I really did find it to be an 'acceptable' punishment for being such a 'disgrace' to my family, friends, and anyone I knew. I hated myself. I was convinced that everyone around me would be better off if I wasn't around any more, but I was still young and too scared/weak to kill myself. I wanted to kill myself and just get it over with, but I couldn't and I hated myself even more for that, so I would cut myself. I was a little different though, I would only cut myself on my legs where others couldn't really see the cuts. I didn't want attention, I didn't want anyone to know what was going on, I was ashamed of it and I thought that it was something I should be able to control so I hated myself even more for not being able to control it. The older I've gotten, the more I've realized that all of these things I'm struggling with are 1) much more common than I thought, and 2) the result of chemical imbalances in my brain, and even passed on to me by my dad's side of the family (his family has a history of depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder) and there was nothing I really could have done to 'fix' it or to make it go away. I know this is just my own story, and I know other people have been in similar situations as myself, and there are also people who have completely different stories and feelings and backgrounds who also suffer from the same things I do. I just wanted to put my story out there as one possible example. As for eating disorders, I've never had one myself, but from my understanding of them, they can be real mental disorders (again, going back to different levels of severity, not every person who has an eating disorder has it to that extreme). We live in a society that tells girls that we have to be skinny to be beautiful and tells guys that they have to be ripped and muscular to get attention. Those things shouldn't be true, but they are, and as a result we have corrupted so many people into literally starving themselves to try to fit that 'perfect' image because in their minds, that's the only way they will ever be truly 'liked'. Still others see these 'perfect' images and think to themselves that there is no way they'll ever look like that, and they then turn to comfort foods and that can lead to binge eating, which is another form of eating disorders. I personally hate that aspect of our society, but until we all realize that those 'perfect' images we see on tv, in movies, and in magazines is really just the result of photoshop and a corrupted society that is run by businesses who just want you to spend money on their workout and beauty products and pay no attention to the fact that their marketing campaigns push people to such extremes, we're never going to make a change. That may just be a lot of rambling to everyone else, but it's my opinion on the matter, and it's nice to get it out there. |
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