Weak closing. There are a ton of threads which could potentially harm someone. We’ve had threads on the deliciousness of Guinness and Jameson, which could tempt our alchoholic dopers. We’ve had threads on Gambling strategies, and on junk food and candy. Closing a thread because someone might be harmed by looking at it is lame. We’re adults here.
You read it wrong. I was reading anecdotes of what goes through these people minds when they cut themselves and relating it to my father and the things I know he was feeling, because he told me, and thinking, “gee, maybe my dad was in a similar frame of mind, maybe he did it to stop his emotional pain.” How is that scary? I seriously don’t understand what the fuck you’re getting at with that little comment.
Aw, thanks, but it’s cool, though; my clarification was partly intended to acknowledge that I wasn’t posting from a particularly efficient state regardless. 
And I don’t blame you for reading it as you did.
I agree that talking about it can help. There are many places to talk about it – but you know, I agree with this point so much that I think I want to propose that in the future, any such closings include links by the mods to more appropriate sites for such discussions. That way, both the poster and the readers will have a resource to continue onward with, and the closing won’t impose a sense of isolation on the poster.
I use the old “Ask The Tax Accountant” as a barometer. Not gonna search for it, but trust me, it was closed within hours.
There are alot of things that shouldn’t be discussed on a message board - even if they do spread knowledge. A Q&A discussion that revolves around the topic of destructive mental health issues should definitely remain taboo. Even if an OP is sincere, truthful and not trolling; it’s quite possible one question deemed insensitive by the OP could have a disasterous effect.
Potato / Poh-tah-to I suppose
Another self-injurer, chiming in…
Why should destructive mental issues remain taboo? So self-injurers (and others) can always be seen as freaks that need to be locked up or angst-filled teens just seeking attention?
What else should we not discuss? Anorexia? Alcoholism? There are many, many destructive methods of coping with overwhelming emotions (or for some, lack of emotion). How are those any different than cutting/burning?
I thought about starting the “Ask the SI?” thread a while back but decided against it. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I could handle all of the questions. So many people are clueless or horrified when they learn that yes, people intentionally hurt their own bodies.
The thread wasn’t about method-sharing or “Help me! I self injure.” It was a mature discussion about a growing problem. I bet most of us will run into SI at some point in our lives - whether it’s you, your child, an other family member, friend or an acquaintance.
So much for fighting ignorance… instead we’re closing the box and shoving it back under the bed.
That pretty much sums it up. I’ve noticed that as a group we are pretty good at figuring out when someone is either trolling or unstable. The OP in the original thread didn’t show any signs of being either of those things. The thread shouldn’t have been closed.
Yes, that was pretty much what I was saying. And yes, that would be the fault of the reader for misunderstanding, but I find it irresponsible to put misleading information out there in the first place. I realize how difficult it is to reach out for help in the first place. I just believe that when you do, the person you reach out to should be in some way qualified to help you, and not someone who is themselves hindered by the same affliction. As I said; their opinions are valid, they know what they’re suffering. But it doesn’t automatically follow that they’re they are able to separate their own feelings and view anyone else’s similar problem objectively. Put it this way: if I told you all about my hysterectomy, told you I’m a nurse, and told you that I know how it’s done, as I’ve witnessed it several times, would you let me perform one on your sister?
It’s scary because you’re taking partial histories from complete strangers that may or may not be complete and accepting them as similar to your father’s problem. You have no idea if that’s the case or not. What if you based future discussions with your father about the subject on what you read in that thread and it turned out to be completely wrong? What if it did more to hinder your relationship than help it? I was not insulting you. I was looking at the problem in a way that you didn’t. This is what I meant when I said that people who are too close to the problem will see any inoccuous comment as an insult where none is intended.
No, I wouldn’t. What’s more, I can tell that despite the advice you may give me, it’s better to seek out someone who’s qualified to give advice on this sort of thing (you may be qualified, I don’t know). What’s stopping people from thinking the same thing, and merely accepting the knowledge but referring to a specialist should an actual need for it occur?
This isn’t a case of “reaching out for help”, though. No one asked for help. This was just a sharing of personal experiences, just as any “ask the…” thread is. These threads aren’t supposed to be a be-all and end-all repository of knowledge about a subject, but merely to give a chance for people to ask questions on someone’s (or several someone’s) experiences of something. People talk about the subject, and learn how people have reacted to it in their daily lives. It’s not a case of a “What is the mental condition causing SI?” question asked in GQ, which would certainly need knowledgable people to answer it (and probably a link to the DSM), and it’s not a “I cut myself, anyone else cut themselves too?” question looking for support/advice. It’s just a sharing of experiences. I wouldn’t act as though they were psychiatric diagnoses, and I doubt anyone else would.
OK. I understand your point of view. We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one. Ordinarily, I’d be willing to argue with you all night (just ask John Mace ) but I’m taking off early tomorrow, and I need to get to bed at a somewhat decent hour. I didn’t want you to think I’d abandoned the thread, though.
My thought exactly. I knew precisely zero about the subject before I started following that thread. Now I do know a little, and it’s knowledge that may prove useful someday.
The closing was everybody’s loss, and served no positive purpose.
(Yes, I’ve read this whole thread. I simply disagree with those who think closing the other thread was a good move.)
I mean, we had an “Ask the guy who uses prostitutes” thread that ran on and on. It was filled with “how to” questions and answers. If TPTB are trying to save us from ourselves, why wasn’t that one closed?
Another vote in the “re-open” column, though Maureen makes some good arguements. I’ve just seen a lot of ignorance and fear regarding the topic, and an open, honest, sincere “Ask The (blank)” thread seemed like a good way to help get some questions answered. No one was advocating SI, no one was asking for advice on how to SI, and posters before me are right in saying that many other “Ask The” threads about alcoholism and depression have had as much or more self-diagnosis.
I’m against the closing of the thread, but maybe for a different reason.
Lots has been made of the redeeming value of fighting ignorance, and that’s a good thing. But discussions do not always fight ignorance: sometimes they promote, spread and reinforce it. “Ask the Self-Injurer,” I think, was rapidly shaping up to be the latter, and I was sorry to see it closed before a few dissenting voices could have made their way into it. As it stands, we have a completed thread about SI in which there is barely a hint that a psychology that has successfully short-circuited the evolutionary impulse to resist and avoid pain and injury to the body just might have something wrong with it that calls for intervention and correction.
Of course we can consider the source and realize we’re getting the perspective of persons who are speaking from inside the pathology they’re discussing, but that still leaves a couple of problems:
(1) On a pseudonymous message board, there’s no way to separate what someone says into what is likely true and what may not be. We have no history, no other sources to check, no facts to confirm or contradict anything said. That’s important when the topic is entirely driven by people talking about (a) themselves and (b) their experience with a behavior that is saddled with both stigma and drama. This is not a situation that lends itself to objective, unbiased reporting.
(2) Exactly how valuable are these insights, anyway? Listening to an alcoholic talk about booze might be interesting and fun, but it’s far from the best source of information about either alcohol or alcoholism. Similarly, the self-reported experiences and feelings of those who injure themselves, compulsively or thoughtfully, might be useful to their doctors, or to a clinician studying the pathology, but (I suggest) not to a general group unequipped either to evaluate their statements or put them in context.
(3) What, exactly, are we learning, here? Since we can’t (shouldn’t, anyhow) generalize from the few stories presented to the world of self-injury at large, we are left with a few personal stories of people with a problem. That’s not education, it’s voyeurism.
And all this would be fine – even the SDMB doesn’t have to spend all its time fighting ignorance – if it came with a big enough disclaimer. But it didn’t, and even if it did, the posts therein are all presented as fact.
My daughter, about to turn thirteen, is awfully smart. But she’s unversed in the scientific method, and she’s prone (like many her age) to credit authenticity without discounting for possible bias. She’s also (in a general way) the right demographic to be prone to intentional self-injury. If she ran across the AtSI thread, what would she learn?
She’d find out that It’s Great!!! LunaV says: “I do it because it works. It relieves whatever is hurting me. The feelings that seem so oppressive and daunting are gone.” (post #11). Jahdra confirms: " As soon as I started, the internal pain would go away, a physical sense of relief. Think about how good it feels when, say, the Tylenol kicks in and you don’t feel pain anymore. That’s what SI feels like." (post #16) Mind you, SI isn’t just for relieving pain, it makes you feel good. LunaV (post #18): “After, I am damn near thrilled…my body feels elated.” And we get support from ratatoskK(post #27): “I don’t self-injure or know anyone who does, but I have one tatoo that took a couple of hours to do, and it was really interesting to find that after it was done, I felt really great for about two days, physically and sexually. And I was really surprised at that. I’ve read that pain can release endorphins in your brain that make you feel good…”
But are there any drawbacks? Nyctea Scandiaca (post #10) says well, the scars can be embarrassing. Fortunately, LunaV (post 18) has the answer: “I cut mainly on my feet, my ankles. It’s easy access and easy to hide… or I make up some wild story. The bigger scars I have set stories for, but I’ve never had to tell them more than once.” Jahdra also has a couple of helpful hints (post #16): "As I tended to bite when I was younger, rather than cut, I don’t have very many visible scars. When I did cut, it would be dozens of very shallow cuts that healed without scarring. "
Okay then. But, hey, surely you realize that for all its wonderfulness, SI isn’t the way to solve your problems, right? Maybe medicine or therapy would be a good idea? Jahda(post #16): “I was a self-injurer off and on from junior high through my 20s. My last self-injuring event was last year, at 31 but since that was about 3 hours before I was committed, I’m not sure if I would count that, because I think it was more of a prelude to a suicide attempt…I’m much, much better now, graduated from therapy today, in fact. Thank Og for SNRIs.” So there’s a qualified word of caution, but it’s quickly countered by LunaV(post #22): “I don’t like to take drugs for fear I’ll become dependent on them. I was in therapy for self-mutilation when I was 16, but it only helped by relieving the situation at home that was causing the majority of my stress. It didn’t help me to cognitively work my way out of problems, nor with coping skills… I know that being a teenager is a rough time, and you have to find ways to cope that work for you…As for dealing…I’m on no meds. I’m not in therapy. I have to rely on myself to get through the bad times…” Anyway, if anyone suggests you need help, they’re overreacting, as iampunha points out (post #30): "One big reason I don’t tell many people is that the overreaction would not be fun to deal with. “OMG you do WHAT? That’s sick! How weird are you? What the hell is wrong with you?” … or “Dude, you seriously need help…” In fact, he says, SI is a way to help impose rationality on your mind if you have troublesome thoughts (post #26): “Mostly, I do it to distract my mind from random thoughts that enter it. And by random, believe me do I mean random These are thoughts that have no rational basis for being considered in that tangle of gray cells. Those thoughts are essentially why I started. Think about it being a way to get your mind to think about something else–to get rid of that random thought you don’t want–and you’ll have a lot of why I do it.”
So SI works, therapy doesn’t, medication will just get you addicted, best to keep the cutting a secret from your family and friends, here’s how to hide the scars. That’s not advocacy? That isn’t enabling a harmful behavior? Maybe not: after all, it’s not like they’re describing a full SI tool kit…oh, wait, here’s LunaV (post #22): “I use an exacto knife that I bought specifically for cutting, or a knife if I feel I want to use it. I used to use razor blades, but they were too hard to buy and store.” And (post #18): " I occupy myself with cleaning up the blood, bandaging the wounds, hiding the evidence. I have all my supplies: tape, gauze, band-aids, neosporin, etc. I put all that away."
I have no problem with the posters referenced speaking their minds in that thread or anywhere else. But closing it at that point, before was heard any discouraging word, turned the thread into a commercial for a controversial, dangerous and frankly aberrant behavior. Other posters paid for the peep show with attention and tacit validation, so it was an honest transaction, but that’s all it has to recommend it.
That’s a rather interesting reading of that portion of my post. While there are a number of people who would overreact and also say I needed help, I can think of a few ways of doing it that would not qualify under the various umbrellas I provided in my post.
Beyond that, I humbly submit to you that taking the words of the people in question as all we have to say on the matter is perhaps not the best policy. Unfortunately, unless and until there’s clear wording from TPTB allowing those of us who were participating in the thread (let alone anyone who hadn’t said anything yet, for whatever reason) to go into more detail, there’s not a lot of opportunity to explain some of the things you might have misunderstood or that might have been stated incompletely (or, even, not stated at all. Quick quiz: what form of self-injury do I practice? Is it ritualized? Have I ever been caught? Do my parents know?), which possibly contributes to what I see as at least slightly advantageous or convenient use of the text you referenced.
Also, you might want to consider that this:
“…best to keep the cutting a secret from your family and friends…”
is not entirely unjustified, when taken in light of the fact that a number of people here, on a messageboard where the average person knows more than the average citizen of the world, did not know much, if anything, about SI. I work with a number of people I am fairly sure would treat me worse if they knew some things about the inner workings of my mind, and I’ll thank you not to treat the subject as you did there.
And this:
“That’s not advocacy? That isn’t enabling a harmful behavior?”
should be considered in light of the number of people who post about getting carpet-clutching drunk. Yet how many threads detailing posters’ drunken episodes (NOT “posting while under the influence”) have been shut down?
Finally, this:
“Maybe not: after all, it’s not like they’re describing a full SI tool kit…oh, wait, here’s LunaV (post #22): “I use an exacto knife that I bought specifically for cutting, or a knife if I feel I want to use it. I used to use razor blades, but they were too hard to buy and store.” And (post #18): " I occupy myself with cleaning up the blood, bandaging the wounds, hiding the evidence. I have all my supplies: tape, gauze, band-aids, neosporin, etc. I put all that away.”"
It is incorrect to imply, as you seem to be doing here, that all of SI is cutting. In fact, as far as I am aware, the material listed in posts 22 and 18 would not be in the “SI tool kit,” as you put it, of at least one person who posted in that thread. Perhaps that lack of knowledge could have been addressed in the thread if it had been allowed to go further.
Now, at least, perhaps a few of the people broadly referring to all SIers as cutters will be made aware of the inaccuracy of that term.
I agree with the closure. An “Ask the gay guy” thread like Esprix did is different. He is clearly comfortable. And his thread is not about a clinical psychological condition.
A thread like “Ask the cutter, or Ask the anorexic,etc” kinda seems like the person is asking for validation, which I don’t agree with. And reading the closed thread, it’s nothing but “morbid fascination” questions, or “Why do you do that?” or “I do/did that too, been there, don’t worry about it”
The latter I disagree with mostly, because thats the “validation” part. Look, you all, anybody that injures themselves willingly has a fucking problem, and needs professional help, not anecdotes from a fucking message board.
Yep, the Dope is a wide-ranging, “We can answer anything” type board, but your psychological problems/disorders mental illness related issues are IMHO not really what this board is about.
I have no doubt that these kind of threads have caused some members more psychological problems than if they hadn’t ever been here, because some people take EVERYTHING THEY READ HERE TOO FUCKING SERIOUSLY , AND FOLLOW ADVICE OF ANONYMOUS STRANGERS ON THE INTRAWEBS!
This board isn’t your mother, father, preacher, shrink, substitute for real life, doctor, lawyer, plumber, electrician, Dr Phil, Oprah, Dr Laura, Judge Wapner, GW, Big Bird, Art Bell, Ted Kennedy, substitute for real life, Howard Dean, Nietzsche, Proust, KC and the Sunshine Band, your personal physician, or your best friend.
It’s simply an electronic medium for people to exchange ideas. Why is it that people bare their darkest secrets to strangers, who for the most part they will never meet? (Excluding Dopefest types and such, which are a very small number)
Simply because they are strangers, and you never actually have to “own up.”
I love this board, been here like 7 years, but it is entertainment, a diversion, just like prowling through Fark, or hell, even old Usenet shit, whatever, but I don’t take it as the end all be all.
It’s just a fucking message board…
??? Why would “Ask the tax accountant” be closed? What could anyone have against that?
Why?
As has been said in this thread, this could happen in any number of threads. Why close this one and not the others?
iampunha, you seem to be confusing me with someone who wanted the thread closed. Not so: I’d want a much fuller and freer discussion of the topic, with more points of view represented.
You said you’re reluctant to tell people about your activities because they will overreact by expressing disgust or telling you you’re sick and need help. If you feel I’m mischaracterizing what you said, why not take the opportunity to clarify?
I think you’re overstating TPTB restrictions in order to imply that I’m misunderstanding the issue without having to demonstrate it. There were over thirty posts in that thread – the perspective of those who practice SI was hardly undeveloped. What’s been said is what we have to think about, and complaining that I’m not taking into account what you could say (but haven’t and won’t) doesn’t advance the discussion.
Sorry, what am I supposed not to treat how?
Okay, again you’re confusing me with someone who wants the thread closed. But I’ll answer this anyway, to get rid of it, because it’s obstructing the path to clarity on the matter. Ready? Here we go:
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Consistency isn’t the issue: if a thread should be closed, it should be, regardless of whether some other thread that should have been closed slipped by.
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This man isn’t made of straw, he’s made of vapor: show me a thread titled “ask the Dipsomaniac” that extols the benefits of alcoholism, decries AA and other programs, and discusses how best to self-inflict alcohol poisoning, how to hide one’s drinking and what and how to imbibe to achieve the greatest and fastest effects from alcohol. Then read #1 again. Then read #3.
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Unlike alcohol and alcoholism, SI (at least at its onset) is primarily restricted to minors, whose welfare is not solely their own responsibility (or even that of their family – the state and the community at large have roles to play).
Here, you are furiously focused on the least important part of what’s being said. Of course there are myriad ways of hurting oneself. Most of the discussion of how to perform and conceal this practice, however, involved edged implements, so that’s the terminology I used. No disrespect to those who fancy puncturing tools, or open flames, or acid, or pliers, or bricks or anything else in the Sears catalog, but – so what? Does it rankle that specific preferences get all the glory? Or is it that those who pinch or twist or bash or burn are offended at being lumped in with those who stab and slice, because those guys are just sick, y’know?
I think any thread along the lines of , “Let’s talk about my psychological disorder” should be closed because 1: If the poster is “for real” they don’t need unsolicited bullshit from a message board, they need to be talking to mental health professionals.
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if they think they “might” have a psychological/mental health problem, they don’t need unsolicited bullshit from a message board, they need to be talking to mental health professionals.
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see above
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The SDMB is about asking and answering and debating the greater or lesser questions of our time, NOT talking about how fucked up (or not) in the head you personally might be.
Because that is a relative question only the poster (or their doc) can answer.
I just don’t understand these "I am a wacko (for whatever reason) threads.
They never end well, and I can’t see how they are even helpful to the person who posted it in the first place, except for the “me too” posts. :rolleyes:
Charming. Utterly charming. I am a “wacko” who is “fucked up in the head”, and I really do hope you never get to experience what it’s like. Is a modicum of human empathy too much to ask for? All I can say in response is that if that is the attitude you have towards those who do suffer from mental illness, to whatever degree, then your ignorance is precisely why that thread should have stayed open: to attempt to counter, however slightly, such cruel prejudices as you seem to glory in.
I have a question.
Tattoos, piercings and brandings are a form of self-injury (although typically you pay someone to do it to you) that are done for totally decorative purposes. Although the results (the image on the skin or the jewelry through it) are the reason for the injury, it’s still a deliberately inflicted injury that has to heal and can become infected or scarred. Play piercing is even closer to the concept of self-injury, since there the intention is not to leave the jewelry in the body, but to have it temporarily, take it out, and let the piercing heal closed.
I can’t imagine someone shutting down a thread like ‘Ask the tattooed girl’ or ‘Ask the pierced guy’ even if the people in those threads express that they often go and have these body modifications done, so really, what’s the difference?
It seems to me that certain forms of self-injury are acceptable (paid someone else to do it, leaves a lasting reminder) and some are not (did it myself, no decorative purpose), and I can’t figure out why.
Fair enough. Hope you slept well. 