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Self-mutilation, for many who have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), is a
learned language of profound pain. It is a primordial scream for help. It is
the apex of needing to be heard, validated, and soothed. It is one of the most
prolific and anguished expressions of borderline pain. It is self-defeating and
holds you hostage to the pain of the false self - to the pain that you can't heal

by further wounding your body and your precious soul.

It has been said by many, borderlines and professionals alike that those with
BPD lack emotional skin and are for a myriad of reasons far more sensitive than
the general population.

Many with BPD struggle with the intense and unrelenting agony of self-hatred. This
self-hatred (false self which has emerged to protect true self) and accompanying pain is more repressed more often than not.

This pain of self-hatred on top of a stockpile of pain generally is way too much
pain and is often felt with little to no conscious understanding or awareness of
the origin of it. Reasons for the pain may widely vary but clearly most with BPD
(until they get sufficient therapy)do not have the skills to apply to the soothing
of that pain other than to self-mutilate, act out, or make a whole host of unhealthy choices that while protective are primitive and self-defeating. Choices that keep you stuck and cause people with BPD (and those who love them) more and more pain.

While not all who have BPD cut or burn themselves or harm themselves in other direct ways, most with BPD do engage in harmful behaviour that doesn't always mean the immediate physical consequence of pain. For example, compulsive overeating, shopping, drinking, drugs and so forth. All of which can be about self-harm but is not self-mutilation though the impetus to engage in these behaviours is largely driven by the same impulses to be soothed and relieved of what hurts, to distract from what hurts, to avoid one's feelings and are often the result of distorted black-and-white - all-or-nothing thinking.

Those Borderlines who do self-mutilate, however, in more cases than not, find that the need to hurt themselves is not only very impulsive but that it also continues to grow in frequency and severity. Self-mutilating is the way that your body cries in what are unhealthy and unproductive ways to relieve pain, anger and/or rage.

Self-mutilation is all about externalizing your pain. This externalization of pain likely goes back to a time in childhood when a source of great pain to you (from outside

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