Myth: People who self-harm are suicidal
Many people believe that all acts of self-harm have suicidal intent behind then. This belief is particularly strong in cases where a student uses cutting as a coping mechanism or takes a non-lethal overdose. This belief can lead to hysterical reactions to disclosures of self-harm. Whilst students who self-harm are more at risk of going on to contemplate suicide than their peers, especially if their underlying issues are not dealt with, about 90 per cent of students who self-harm never contemplate suicide. In fact, many students talk about self-harm as a protective factor against suicide. When self-harm is used as a coping strategy to keep emotions and feelings in check, it can prevent difficulties from escalating to the point where they feel the need to take their own life.
‘I felt like a balloon. All my emotions made the balloon blow up bigger and bigger. When I self-harmed it was like letting a little bit of air out of the balloon. If I didn’t cut, I’m pretty sure that before too long the balloon would have popped.’
Myth: You can tell if someone has an eating disorder by looking at them
People with eating disorders can be any size or shape. They may be underweight, average weight or overweight. Somebody’s weight and appearance is a symptom of their eating disorder and it takes time to lose or gain a lot of weight. Somebody who has recently developed anorexia or binge eating disorder may be completely gripped by the terrifying thoughts and feelings that accompany these disorders without, yet, having experienced significant weight loss or gain. Many people who suffer with bulimia maintain a roughly normal weight so the disorder can be impossible to detect simply by appearance alone at any stage in their illness.
Myth: Eating disorders are a lifestyle choice; sufferers can choose to stop
Eating disorders are not a lifestyle choice, they are serious mental health conditions which can completely take over an individual’s ability to make reasoned decisions. There are many online websites, blogs and forums which promote anorexia and bulimia as lifestyle choices, where sufferers provide each other with support and share tips for weight loss and purging. These sites can significantly contribute to sufferers’ decline, normalizing their illness and causing it to become more and more severe.
Myth: It’s easy to stop self-harming
Many sufferers describe self-harm as an addiction and find the cycle very difficult to break as they have no other means of coping with their overwhelming thoughts and feelings other than hurting themselves. However, people who have not self-harmed do not understand the complex emotions and psychology underpinning each act of self-harm and assume it would be easy to stop. This is not the case, and expecting somebody to suddenly stop self-harming can be very dangerous. If we remove this means of coping then they may find themselves in a more desperate situation; it is at these moments that a sufferer’s thoughts are more likely to turn to suicide. Generally speaking, students who are suffering from either self-harm or an eating disorder find it difficult to stop unless there is a significant change in their underlying circumstances, or unless they receive support to develop healthier coping mechanisms and come to terms with their difficulties.
Myth: Eating disorders are a teenage phase
Eating disorders are not a phase. Sufferers rarely recover without significant support to develop healthier coping mechanisms and to address any underlying issues which may have triggered their eating disorder. Additionally, whilst the peak age of onset of eating disorders is between the ages of about 13 and 20, they can affect people of any age, including very young children and the elderly.
Myth: People who self-harm are crazy
People who have never self-harmed find it very difficult to understand why somebody would purposefully hurt themselves and think that there must be something very wrong with someone who would choose to do so. However, we find it far easier to understand somebody coping with their emotions by eating junk food or drinking alcohol. Self-harm is simply an alternative coping mechanism and does not mean that someone is psychotic or crazy, as people often think.
‘I think everyone thought I was insane and should be locked up. They couldn’t understand my need to burn myself. I couldn’t understand why they felt a need to smoke marijuana. Their form of self-medication and self-harm was far more accepted than mine though.’
Myth: Purging is an effective way to lose weight
People with bulimia have a cycle of bingeing on large amounts of food and then ridding themselves of that food through different purging mechanisms – generally self-induced vomiting or laxative abuse. This tends to result in weight maintenance rather than weight loss as most purging mechanisms will rid the body of only about 50 per cent of the calories that have been consumed. Laxative abuse tends to result in dehydration which can give the illusion of weight loss, but this is temporary.
Myth: People who self-harm don’t feel pain
People often mistakenly assume that people who injure themselves intentionally are unable to feel pain or that they seek pleasure in pain, otherwise they surely would not choose to do it. However, there is no evidence that people who injure themselves feel pain any differently to anybody else. Many people who self-harm do so specifically so that they can feel pain, because underlying issues such as depression may have left them feeling entirely numb and so they are left wanting to feel something to remind them they’re alive, even if that means suffering pain as a consequence.
‘Of course it hurt! It really hurt. That was good – I didn’t like the pain exactly, but I did like the fact that just for a few moments I could feel. Those moments of physical pain helped me to feel a part of the world for a few minutes. The rest of the time I felt so numb and disjointed it was like I was floating around in a big black bubble.’
Myth: Eating disorders aren’t life threatening
Eating disorders can be fatal; approximately 10 per cent of people with anorexia die either as a complication of the disease (e.g. organ failure) or as a result of suicide. In addition to the risk of suicide and fatal complications of the illness, all three of the major eating disorders can result in long-term physical damage being caused to the body which can affect sufferers for the rest of their lives. However, many people go on to make a full physical recovery.
Myth: You can’t recover from an eating disorder
There are two schools of thought on this. Many people believe that eating disorders are like the common perception of alcoholism and that, once you have suffered, you have to make a positive decision to eat healthily every day for the rest of your life. Others believe that it is possible to make a complete recovery. Either way, it is perfectly possible for someone with an eating disorder to go on to live a completely normal and happy life, especially if their illness is picked up in the early stages.
‘I wouldn’t say it’s gone. But it’s been a decade now since I had any symptoms. I make a decision to eat healthily every day – that’s an easy decision these days. That said, if something really terrible happened to me today, I can’t 100 per cent promise I’d eat dinner…’
It is common for people with eating disorders to relapse repeatedly during their initial recovery period whilst they learn to employ healthier coping mechanisms. Learning to spot the early warning signs of relapse and to respond appropriately is often considered a key aspect of recovery.
Some people suffer with eating disorders for years, decades or their whole life, whilst others recover for a very long period and then relapse after many years as a result of trauma, for example. There are examples of people who have suffered from disordered eating for several decades but have gone on to make a full recovery. The author June Alexander, for instance, who tells her story of four decades of eating disorders in her memoir A Boy Called Tim and has gone on to recover fully and become an advocate for eating disorder recovery.
Myth: Self-harm and eating disorders only affect girls
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