BPD: Self-Harm (Self Mutilation) You can Heal It!

If you hurt yourself you are hurting the wrong person. You are hurting a person, a being, an inner-child that has already hurt, and been hurt, ENOUGH.

You do not have to continue to cycle the patterns of your past. While hurting yourself may feel like a relief, or release for your feelings or a way to avoid your feelings, it is abusive. It is you, abusing you. If you were abused, sexually, physically and/or emotionally as you were growing up -- your hurting yourself is you taking on the role of your abuser and is you turning on yourself. This is abandonment at its most profound. When you abandon and re-abandon your self you will be projecting this out on to anyone else with whom you come into contact or are in relationship with or to. You will then perceive that you are being abandoned by everyone else. This projection is the mirror in which borderlines live their lives, reflections of others and of a self sought after and longed for as they are.

My review of Dr. Moskovitz's 2nd Edition of Lost In The Mirror: An Inside Look at Borderline Personality Disorder

In his book, Lost In The Mirror: An Inside Look At Borderline Personality (2nd Edition), Richard Moskovitz, M.D. writes:"Self-mutilation may be as simple as superficial scratches on the skin with fingernails or a blunt instrument, or as tragic and complicated as the surgical excision of a body part. Some injuries are visible to all while others are well hidden. Some are inflicted with elaborate ritual, while others convey special meaning that can be deciphered by the knowledgeable observer like the hieroglyphics in an ancient tomb. These injuries are often mistaken for suicide attempts."

"Whether burns or cuts or penetrating wounds, these self-inflicted injuries are the products of compulsion. Like other compulsions, a buildup of tension leads to an irresistible urge, and the tension is discharged by the act."

"Self-injury brings horror to the hearts of family members. They may also view it with anger as a form of defiance. Because it presents serious risk to health and life, it may become the occasion for an involuntary hospitalization. Extreme measures, such as constant observation or physical restraint, may be brought to bear to prevent the more serious forms of self-injury. The power struggle that follows may become one of the forces that keeps the compulsion alive."

To the borderline person, self-mutilation may be rich in meaning."

Dr. Moskovitz then outlines 6 interpretations of self- mutilation. They include:

1) "Self-Mutilation as Punishment:"

Here he summarizes that guilt over real or imagined wrong-doings or inappropriate behaviour is punished through