Quote:
Originally Posted by Stephen Hoover
Right. That's what I meant. They are victims of abuse. They likely either are, or were in abusive homes where physical and sexual abuse occured, and was compounded by the drug and alcohol abuse of their perpetrators.
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Bro. Hoover,
As hard as it is to suffer physical and sexual abuse, something that is a great cause of 'cutting' self-mutiliation is about EMOTIONAL ABUSE. Emotional abuse takes many forms: someone continually using emotional blackmail to get you to do what they want you to do. Spiritual abuse also falls in this category. When you feel so worthless to others and they constantly tell you that no matter what you do you do not measure up...it causes a person to self-deprecate and become a 'perfectionist'. The anxiety this causes sets a person up to fail which causes the cycle to re-occur and they find no safe place to get out of the cycle.
The very first place I go to when I have a client who presents as a self-mutilator is:
Where is the abuse? I don't ask this outright but the open-ended questions I present give them time to open up and tell their story. A relationship must be built, one of trust, before someone can really share what is 'hurting' them inside.
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