The Definitive Guide To Self Harm -- LiveWire Teen Forums

Quote: from TKDgoneveggie at 2:54 am on Oct. 19, 2005

so is annorexia a SI??? when you do it to punish yourself and then get addicted to it???

Eating Disorders
Self-inflicted violence is often seen in women and girls with anorexia (a disease in which a person has an obsession with losing weight, dieting, or fasting, and as a distorted body image -- seeing his/her skeletal body as "fat") or bulimia (an eating disorder marked by binges where large amounts of food are eaten followed by purges, during which the person attempts to remove the food from her/his body by forced vomiting, abuse of laxatives, excessive exercise, etc).
There are many theories as to why SI and eating disorders co-occur so frequently. Cross is quoted in Favazza (1996) as saying that the two sorts of behavior are
attempts to own the body, to perceive it as self (not other), known (not uncharted and unpredictable), and impenetrable (not invaded or controlled from the outside. . . . [T]he metaphorical destruction between body and self collapses [ie, is no longer metaphorical]: thinness is self-sufficiency, bleeding emotional catharsis, bingeing is the assuaging of loneliness, and purging is the moral purification of self. (p.51)
Favazza himself favors the theory that young children identify with food, and thus during the early stages of life, eating could be seen as a consuming of something that is self and thus make the idea of self-mutilation easier to accept. He also notes that children can anger their parents by refusing to eat; this could be a prototype of self-mutilation done to retaliate against abusive adults. In addition, children can please their parents by eating what they are given, and in this Favazza sees the prototype for SI as manipulation.
He does note, though, that self-injury brings about a rapid release from tension, anxiety, racing thoughts, etc. This could be a motivation for an eating-disordered person to hurt him/herself -- shame or frustration at the eating behavior leads to increased tension and arousal and the person cuts or burns or hits to obtain quick relief from these uncomfortable feelings. Also, from having spoken to several people who both have an eating disorder and self-injure, I think it's quite possible that self-injury offers some an alternative to the disordered eating. Instead of fasting or purging, they cut.
There haven't been many laboratory studies probing the link between SI and eating disorders, so all of the above is speculation and conjecture.
Two eating-disorders web pages -- the ED section of Something Fishy and its associated site, Mirror, Mirror -- are probably the best sources for detailed information on eating disorders.

Not as such, anorexia is a condition where as the person sees themselves as overweight and therefore wishes to lose more weight and no matter how thin they become it is not good enough, this is not done to delibratly harm the body, though harm is a side effect of the condition.
If a person was to stop eating in order to stop there body functioning normally and cause themselves pain through stomach cramps etc. this would be a form of self harm, they are doing it TO CAUSE HARM to themselves.
What is being said in the quote above is that many people who suffer from anorexia also self harm. The two commonly coinside with each other but are not the same condition

I hope this helps you understand, if you need anymore help them feel free to PM me.

ManicD

THIS REPLY HAS ALSO BEEN PM'ED TO THE USER

-------
This is the internet,Where men are men,Women are men and 15 Yr old girls are the FBI
The Friends Guide to Understanding and Helping Self Harmers

438 users online 221633 members 1746 active today Advertise Here