Why Do Hurt People Hurt Themselves?

     Have you ever heard the statement, “Hurt people hurt people”? I’ve heard it in the support groups I belong to but I’d like to change it to, “Hurt people hurt themselves”.

     I’ll never forget the day I was walking through a store with my youngest children and three young men passed us in the isle. They all had extreme piercings, lots of tattoos and some really interesting hair styles. One boy wore twelve-inch purple spikes on top of his head and his sides were buzzed completely bald. They also wore leather in the hot summer with chains drooping down their sides. This experience was about twenty years ago when the styles were a little strange to me for that period of time; in this time period it’s just accepted as individuality, but back then it was a major statement! My little ones were filled with wonder as they watched them looking through the merchandise. They seemed to identify with those young men in some way. As I watched the boys I wondered why they wanted to wear their pain so noticeably. The piercings had to hurt, the tattoos were apparently another sign of bravery, the chains…what did they represent for these boys? Chained to pain? As I watched those boys all I could think of was their pain! I also saw a young man in the newspaper who had killed people and he had tattoos all over his face. He looked pretty scary. It seemed to me as if he had tattooed his face to scare people away. Young people today have even taken the next step to the pain of branding themselves.

     Our world is getting a bit crazier all the time. One night I was watching a talent show on television and there were three people on stage doing extremely painful things to their bodies in front of the judges and the judges were grimacing as they watched. The audience was screaming as they watched. Why would we do this as a civilization? Why would these people come to a talent show to do that? In my opinion I believe it has something to do with Reactive Attachment Disorder and Adverse Childhood Experiences. Some brain injuries can dull the nervous system within the body. 

     Most Reactive Attachment Disordered children are often drawn to gory situations. They like to pick at their scabs and watch the blood run down their legs, they cut themselves with razors, tattoo, burn or brand themselves and take foreign substances into their bodies without thinking about the consequences of how it will affect their lifespan. Why? I’m still trying to figure it out! It seems like they are almost experimenting to see what other people are feeling. There were times I thought they were just trying to gross me out so I would stop trying to attach to them, but I keep coming back to the thought that they are trying to find out why other people can be happy or feel things they do not know how to feel. This life is full of experiences to learn from one another. If you are one of those people trying to understand your pain, I hope you will consider thinking about why you want to feel pain? It could be a step in the right direction to ask yourself why? There are many people who want to help.

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