This is PamLyn again. I understand that several people in this community have the problem of self-injury and I've had related problems, the need to self-punish (though not compulsively, thank God, and not physically)--when it happened it was because I was angry at having suffered some kind of emotional abuse, or having been misunderstood.

When I was growing up I was very misunderstood and abused. Not by parents--by peers. Kids used to "tease" (that's what the adults said, used the word "tease"--to me, more like, "torture") me with words that really hurt, like reinforcing over and over how ugly they thought I was, how worthless, how much they wished I'd just go ahead and kill myself, etc. It really messed me up in my adult life. I don't think they knew how much it hurt.

Now that I'm 49 I realize, I should consider the source. Those kids were messed up in their own minds--and they were making me their scapegoat--only I wasn't their target. Their enemy was probably some relative or bully or someone who'd abused them and they were unloading their feelings on me. I realize now that's the source of all kinds of stupid things people all over the world do to each other--things people have done to them, because they in turn were abused by someone else and so on and so forth. As far back as history. Sometimes people unload on entire groups of people or countries, like Hitler.

Difference between the neurotics who cut you off on the freeway, or the people who abuse their kids, or Columbine murderers or Hitlers of the world and you and I is, we tend to punish ourselves for things people did to us, and they take it out on others. Maybe it's not just the self-abusers and the other "mentally ill" of planet Earth who are crazy--maybe everyone suffers from the same sickness; it just comes out in different ways.