Pessimism May Lead to Self-Injury in Emotional Abuse Survivors
May 24th, 2012
Nonsuicidal self-injurious behaviors (NSSI) are quite common among adolescents. Estimates suggest that nearly half of teens have injured themselves intentionally through biting, cutting, burning, or scratching, at one time or another. These behaviors are not intended to cause death but rather seen as a form of stress relief. Mental health experts and researchers have examined NSSI behaviors and the psychological ramifications of such behaviors, but few studies have looked at the risk factors for NSSI. Understanding the emotional conditions that make a child more vulnerable to these behaviors could help clinicians treat these children.
Dr. Trevor Buser of the Department of Graduate Education, Leadership & Counseling at Rider University in New Jersey sought to explore two conditions that have been linked to NSSI in adolescents. He led a study involving 390 college students, ranging in age from 18 to 25 years. He focused on pessimistic explanatory style and childhood emotional abuse. Pessimistic explanatory style describes a person’s negative and self-degrading explanation of their actions. Rather than attribute their outcome to external conditions, they tend to blame themselves for negative situations, regardless of how they occurred. Buser wanted to know if this pessimism was a consequence of emotional abuse, which is often verbal and derogatory. He also evaluated how much this pessimism influenced NSSI.
Buser discovered over half of the students in his study had engaged in NSSI during the prior 12 months. He did not find any trend of NSSI relative to age, race, sexual orientation, gender, or economic status. However, the results did show that those with the highest levels of pessimism had the highest levels of NSSI. Buser believes that children who have survived emotional abuse may see NSSI as a way of exhibiting control and that directing pessimism inward may be an extension of that act to control. He added, “The findings lay the groundwork for research into whether childhood emotional abuse does indeed contribute to pessimistic explanatory style over time, which would increase the likelihood of later NSSI.”
Reference:
Buser, T. J., Hackney, H. (2012). Explanatory style as a mediator between childhood emotional abuse and nonsuicidal self-injury. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 34.2, 154-169.
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Comments
I have to admit that when I first heard about this grwoing trend I wondered why on earth kids and adults alike would do this sort of thing to themselves! Why intentionally harm yourself like this?
But after reading this it kind of struck me that this must be somewhat like the kind of control that those with eating disorders must be exhibiting and feeling. It is a way to control their lives when everything else sort of feels out of control to them.
While I don’t necessarily understand how they could do it, this article ceryainly opened to my eyes to why they may do it and also some thigs that perhaps I could be on the lookout for in my children and their friends to ensure that they are not doing the same sort of things to themselves.
In general if someone is found to be a pessimistic person, then they are going to go though the motions of life with actions that are probably less than healthy. Cutting is just one of many ways that this could manifest.
Wow, I never thought about self harm that way before, but it makes a lot of sense. I’ve grown up with a dad who has a lot of anger issues and often screams at us. I started cutting about 2 and a half years ago. Although I’ve stopped for awhile now, I still struggle with it and I think about it the most often when life’s gettin me down. I am a self-proclaimed pessimist and this really fascinates me. Quite interesting research here.
I can’t really imagine being a parent and doing this kind of harm to my kids. Think about all of the damage that you are inflicting, and then how are you going to feel to know that as a result of that hurt they have now resorted to hurting themselves in this way? I know that most of the time that they may not mean for it to be permanent, but sometimes the inevitable happens and they end up taking their own lives. What starts out as a way to regain some control in their lives could turn into something that is far more dangerous than that. It sickens me there are lives ruuined every day in just this way, and all because it starts with a parent who probably doesn’t deserve to be one in the first place.
These are all problems that need to be investigated and fixed to help these adolescents. Cutting and hurting yourself is not a cool thing to do to fit into a group as some of our adolescent tend to think!!
How could you not notice if your kid is doing this? Cutting? How would they hide it?
If this is something that you have witnessed, you know that this is a child who needs to be taught some better skills for coping, something else that they can turn to to help relieve much of the anxiety and pressure that they are trying to let go of through self injuring. It is not always only about not liking who they are, but alot of it has to do with how they are feeling.
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