Myth 2: People self-harm to manipulate others.
As mentioned before, the number one reason people engage in self-harm is to manage overwhelming negative emotions (70-96% of the time; Briere & Gil, 1998; Brown et al., 2002). Often, self-harm is triggered by emotions such as anger, sadness, or shame. Occasionally, however, people do report using self-harm to communicate their distress to other people, or to elicit support from the environment. This is usually a more common reason for self-harm among incarcerated populations (Holmqvist, Carlberg, & Hellgren, 2008) than the reason for self-harm among people in the community. As noted previously, sometimes friends and family do behave differently after someone self-harms. But just because people who self-harm may get more support because of their self-harm, it does not mean they did it on purpose in order to obtain support. If people receive consistent support and attention only after they self-harm, it may actually make it more likely that they self-harm in the future. Often, we’re unaware of why we do what we do, and if we get positive consequences, we just keep doing it- not to be mean or manipulative, but because it works. This is particularly the case if an individual does not have many other “tools” available for reaching out for support. Friends and family of people who self-harm may “feel” manipulated, but that doesn’t mean that the person who self-harms is manipulative.
