by Self-Injury Institute | Jul 14, 2014 | Uncategorized
Three facts to consider: Fact 1. Obesity rates are rising at an astronomical pace. Fact 2. Heart Disease is the number one killer of both men and women in the US. Fact 3. Most of us are actively avoiding fat because we are told that it is the enemy. Hold on…Doesn’t...
by Self-Injury Institute | May 19, 2014 | Uncategorized
Around the country, there are many therapists and counselors who work with self-injury, including a significant number who claim it as a specialization. If you aren’t in the Los Angeles area (where we work), how can you find the a therapist who is right for you? Here...
by Self-Injury Institute | Apr 8, 2014 | Uncategorized
I started working with cutters more than a decade ago, so that means I was doing therapy with teens and adults who had little to no exposure to social media. I know, I know—dinosaurs. Back then, if you wanted people to know your current dating status or what you had...
by Self-Injury Institute | Mar 12, 2014 | Uncategorized
For me, this has become a relatively new topic. With social media, cutting “parties,” graphic Tumblr pages, and Demi Lovato, I find more cases of attention-seeking cutting every day. But is there a difference between cutting for attention and the more clinically...
by Self-Injury Institute | Feb 11, 2014 | Uncategorized
Generally speaking, non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is conceptualized as a private behavior. Many cutters would even describe it as isolating and secretive and go to great lengths to hide the cuts and scars. These statements are true until you put several cutters...
by Self-Injury Institute | Jan 13, 2014 | Uncategorized
Here at KISI, one of the things we value most is education. Not the kind of education that sometimes means confusing concepts, excessive homework, or the inherent frustration that can come along with it; but the kind of education that teaches us about ourselves and...
by Self-Injury Institute | Oct 23, 2013 | Uncategorized
If you know (or are) a cutter who has been in treatment for self-injury, there is a pretty good chance that the treatment offered was some version of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT for short). There is also a pretty good chance this treatment didn’t work. DBT was...
by Self-Injury Institute | Sep 19, 2013 | Uncategorized
Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) scares most of us. In the deepest, darkest corners of our primal beings, whether we are consciously aware of it or not, we associate blood with death and dying. This isn’t wimpy or weak; it’s not the mark of a fragile soul nor is it the...
by Self-Injury Institute | Jun 5, 2013 | Uncategorized
The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders (DSM-5) is out this month. The National Institute of Mental Health hates it. (Sort of.) We at KISI were disappointed to find Non-Suicidal Self-Injury, a diagnosis we fully expected...
by Self-Injury Institute | May 26, 2013 | Uncategorized
Psychological assessment tools have been developed to evaluate nearly every disorder and symptom in existence. A number of scales have been developed to assess self-injury; we’ll look at several of them here in the months ahead, but for this post, I’ll focus on one of...
