Self-injury is a source of shame for anyone who does it and wants to stop. You
walk down the street, bravely bearing cut up limbs or a head with an irregular pattern of baldness or covered in large bruises,
and people gawk. The biggest problem is when you get home and have to run to your room to self injure because of the discomfort
caused by previous instances of self injury. Its 80 degrees Fahrenheit outside and so humid that even the appliances are sweating,
and you have trousers on and a long sleeved shirt. Why? Because if your parents see evidence of your secret
self-injury, you are sure their reaction is going to be completely negative.
This isn't an irrational fear. Think about how you would feel if the child
you bore and raised (however poorly or well) was intentionally hurting themselves. Think about the common perception that
self-injurers are suicidal. With this in mind, you can't believe anything good would come out of the inevitable confrontation
when you slip up and reveal your secret shame to your parents.
That confrontation scares you to death. You know that your emotions will
be running high--perhaps to the point that when the confrontation is over, you know you have to self injure to feel better.
There is a way to avoid that confrontation. However, it's one of those solutions that is easier said than done and involves
a certain amount of personal risk. By deciding to tell your parents rather than be confronted gives you certain advantages.
The biggest one is, you can decide when, where, and how they find out. Rather than having them called into school by a counselor,
you can tell them in the safety of your living room, and be able to avoid the public embarrassment that might make your parents
angry and perhaps cause them to call you an attention seeker.
I hid my self-injury from my parents for years. It was difficult, because
Id "come out" at school, but in my own house, I was sentenced to limb concealing clothing. My biggest fear and stressor was
that my parents were going to find out what I was doing and send me back to the mental hospital. My father thought I was attention
seeking when I tried to kill myself; how was he going to understand? My mother denies that anything could possibly be wrong
with her children; how could she handle this?
One day, I was too exhausted to realize what I was doing, and wandered into
the kitchen with my sleeves pushed up. I wanted coffee to stir my brain back into action, and instead, my older sister, in
front of my three younger siblings and mother, asked me what Id done to my arms. I fled.
A
few weeks later, a series of events brought my self-injury into the spot light, and my parents were called into the school.
I was suspended indefinitely. The next week that I spent home involved my mother shuttling me to different doctors and counselors,
all who didn't think I belonged back in school. The conversations that involved my mother at the different medical facilities
shed a lot of light on why I did what I did, and she heard the same thing at each appointment. I realized my mother didn't
know anything about self-injury; she was stuck in the frame of mind where one cannot understand how someone hurts himself
or herself.
Ignorance breeds hatred, and for possibly the first time in my life, it mattered
to me that my mother needed to be on my side. To educate is to solve ignorance, so I went online and found information that
was parent-friendly and wouldn't just educate my mother, but give her an outline of things I was comfortable with her asking/doing
and things I wasn't. I printed out a packet, handed it to her silently and walked away. This packet hasn't been mentioned
since, but I know that she read it because her behavior reflects the knowledge I provided her.
Life around the house has gotten easier, because I am not forced to hide
my self-injury. There are days where I still do, but it is because Im feeling particularly self-conscious, but never because
Im scared of my parents' reactions. I can tell my mom Im having a bad day, and the little kids won't be allowed near me. The
best part about them knowing? I am not only allowed, but also encouraged to come on this site. It has prevented me from doing
a large amount of damage to myself and has provided me with people that I have gotten very close to...some of whom I owe my
life to. My conclusion? Telling your parents may be one of the hardest things you will ever do, but once you clear that hurdle,
you will have hope and people behind you to help you fight your battle.
