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Coping Wisely Through Self-Injury

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Post-Traumatic Growth to Psychological Well-Being

Part of the book series: Lifelong Learning Book Series ((LLLB,volume 30))

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Abstract

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) represents a prevalent and serious public health concern. Unfortunately, despite its widespread nature, NSSI remains misunderstood and stigmatized. In part, this may contribute to particular framings of NSSI as well as aspects of the NSSI experience. To this end, there are numerous elements of people’s NSSI experience in which individuals imbue strength, resilience, and ultimately deeper knowledge about themselves. Thus, with the aim of offering a more humanistic conception of NSSI and NSSI recovery, the current chapter discusses key issues pertinent to historical framings of NSSI and how NSSI recovery can be viewed through a coping wisely lens.

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Summary

For many individuals, NSSI represents a primary means by which to assuage deep-seeded emotional pain. Although the behavior serves this temporary (and, from the view of those who enact it, necessary) function in the face of such adversity, NSSI engagement constitutes its own form of adversity and many individuals perceive the recovery process as daunting. Hence, when people initiate their own recovery journeys, they also forge a new path in which resilience and new ways of relating to themselves can emerge. As discussed earlier, the study of NSSI recovery is in its infancy. Yet, it should be apparent from the current chapter that several aspects of the NSSI recovery process can be understood from the vantage of coping wisely. Indeed, people cope wisely in the face of numerous adversities in the sense that they persevere through the factors underpinning NSSI while also confronting NSSI and, at times, the permanent scarring repeated NSSI engagement may leave. In doing so, individuals can garner much wisdom about their own personal resilience. By virtue of challenging historical conceptions of NSSI as maladaptive and instead framing NSSI recovery in the context of coping wisely, researchers and clinicians will be in a better position to not only better understand the NSSI experience but to do so in more holistic, compassionate, and person-centred manner.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada

    Stephen P. Lewis

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  1. Stephen P. Lewis
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Correspondence to Stephen P. Lewis .

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  1. Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Melanie Munroe

  2. Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Michel Ferrari

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Lewis, S.P. (2022). Coping Wisely Through Self-Injury. In: Munroe, M., Ferrari, M. (eds) Post-Traumatic Growth to Psychological Well-Being . Lifelong Learning Book Series, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15290-0_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15290-0_18

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