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Sympathy The Never Ending Cycle - Page 3

© Victoria Tallman Freudiger

Another important point about self-mutilation is that not all people with hypochondria use self-harm methods. Sometimes the worst self-harm caused is the choice of not wanting to get well. The second point is that self harm is done by someone who is in a lot of emotional pain. The pain felt emotionally can sometimes be greater than that felt physically. Yet, if I was feeling sad about my uncle forcing me to touch my dead uncle's body, then in order to get my mind off that horrific event, I would take razor blades and scratch my thighs until they bled. The sting of the cut and the blood would for a time, cause a distraction from the past and the sadness.

Other self-abusers and I have found ways to deal with horror in our lives. Poor Patsy did the slow cutting until the wrong vein was slit. Sad little Sammy found her along side the stereo dead in a pool of blood. Sammy looked at her older sister's dead body shaking her head crying out, "Mommy, poor Patsy will not wake up, Mommy come quick...." Only to realize her mother was an invalid and could not wake up. Then Earl came in from school and found his sisters and he said, "Sad little Sammy, let me help you."

This shocking story is not as unusual a story as you might believe. The truth is that the secrets in this Hill family were running in so many directions one might have seen an expert's crossword puzzle easier to solve. Patsy's death could have been prevented.

The mother could have played her appropriate role and been the real mom. The father could have reached out for therapy and admitted he had incest tendencies. The brother could have actually sat down functionally with his sister and tried to comfort her without sympathy. Most of all, Patsy's learned sympathy got her attention and she began to feed off of and live for that sympathy. Different would have been to standup for herself by saying to the life situations she found herself in, "I am not really needing you to feel sorry for me, I need you to help me. My life is a mess and I want to be happy."

Patsy could have confided to her school counselor instead of lying to them. Lying actually sets the system of hypochondria up with its very own gasoline. Truth would have caused this whole dysfunctional world to run out of gas and crash. Truth crashing would have been Patsy saying to her mother, "Dad is your husband, you rub his back! I know it is wrong for me as his daughter to do this while he sits there in his underwear! You know it too, mom."

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