Jan Sutton, the UK counsellor and author who launched SIARI: Self-Injury and Related Issues, and Deb Martinson, creator of secret shame: self-injury information and support and the BUS self-harm support community, would like to announce that they are collaborating on a new book to be published in Autumn 2003 by UK publisher How To Books.
Because I Hurt will look at the functions of self-harm, which for many is a gift of survival. It will challenge a multitude of assumptions about this baffling behaviour and explain how it can serve as a powerful coping mechanism for staying alive in the face of overwhelming emotional pain, acts as a "voice on the skin"; for feelings that cannot be communicated verbally, and work as an effective tool for ending frightening episodes of dissociation, depersonalization and derealization (feeling numb, dead inside, unreal, disconnected from oneself and one’s surroundings). Directed at those who care for people who self-injure as well as self-injuring people themselves, it will address underlying causes of self-harm, effective therapeutic interventions, and issues for therapists in addition to practical concerns: learning to control or limit your self-harming behavior, taking care of wounds, and developing alternative coping strategies. Most importantly-it carries a message of hope to self-injurers that with acceptance and understanding, they can heal the hurt from the weeping wounds that drive the physical injuries.
Jan and Deb are excited to be working together and are confident
that this
project will result in a work that is essential reading for people
who self-injure,
their loved ones, and their therapists.