Self-Injury: Confusing Identity with a Coping Tool

Many people who struggle with self-injury make the mistake of confusing their identity with the action. For example, a person who cuts her skin in order to manage her emotions might refer to herself as a "cutter" rather than as a person who cuts. While some people might see the difference as semantics, the difference can greatly affect a person's ability to stop leaning on self-injury as a coping tool.

What is Self-injury?

Self-injury (also called self-harm or self-mutilation) is a coping tool that people use to manage painful emotions. Most people think of self-injury as synonymous with cutting, but there are actually many forms of self-injury, including burning yourself, plucking out your hair, or banging your head. Self-injury is nothing more, and nothing less, than a coping tool. It is functionally no different from drinking a beer or taking a pill to manage a very rough day.

Unfortunately, society fails to recognize self-injury as a coping tool, so people who self-injure to manage their pain often feel like "freaks" and are afraid to tell anyone about what they are doing to their bodies. The cloud of secrecy surrounding their actions results in many people identifying too strongly with their actions and seeing themselves as "cutters" or "head bangers" rather than as people who are in deep pain and using an effective, albeit destructive and potentially dangerous, coping tool.

Why Confusing Self-injury with Identity is Damaging

When a person views herself as a "cutter" or "burner," she is confusing her identity with the coping tool. She stops seeing the action as a tool she is using to manage her emotions and, instead, sees the action of self-injuring as defining who she is. So, instead of the coping tool serving her purposes, she becomes enslaved to the coping tool.

When a person identifies too strongly with his particular form of self-injury, it becomes much harder for the person to stop using that coping tool. This is because the person now defines himself as a self-injurer (such as a "cutter" or a "head-banger"). So, if he ceases the behavior, then who is he? There is a level of comfort in saying, "This is who I am." If the person then stops the behavior, he is thrown into an identity crisis.

How to Stop Confusing Self-Injury with Identity

If you have fallen into the trap of calling yourself a "cutter," "head-banger," or other identity defined by a form of self-injury, make a conscious choice to change the way you word your connection with self-injury. For example, you are a person who cuts yourself, not a "cutter." You are a person who bangs his head, not a "head banger."

Stop defining yourself by what you do. What you do is not who you are. Self-injury is a coping tool that you have found to help you manage your pain, but that tool does not define who you are. Do not limit your potential by boxing yourself into any predefined identity.

Victory over Self-injury

Once you separate your identity from the action of self-injuring, it becomes much easier to stop. When you realize that self-injury is simply a way that you are managing your pain and repressed emotions, you free yourself to explore alternative ways to manage your pain and emotions.