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*Beth* · Mar 08, 2023 at 12:49 AM

This is from a good article (I don't recall the name of it) about "mental pain" (someone on this forum posted the link to the entire article, but I lost it). So the concept of the article stated, in essence, that mental pain is as real and valid as physical pain is and that really, there is no difference between the two. (Trigger for self harm.)

Possible trigger:

Patients with borderline personality disorder have a range of intense dysphoric affects, sometimes experienced as aversive tension, including rage, sorrow, shame, panic, terror, and chronic feelings of emptiness and loneliness. These individuals can be distinguished from other groups by the overall degree of their multifaceted emotional pain. This emotional pain has been interpreted as a response attempting to adapt to repetitive traumatic experiences in childhood such as the loss of a parent, parental mental illness, witnessed violence, emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Emotional pain is described as intense by people who suffer from borderline personality disorder, and has been associated with a high prevalence of reported childhood abuse.

Leibenluft et al. conceptualized self-mutilation as a need to feel a real physical pain as opposed to just an emotional pain. However this conceptualization is not congruent with the consistent reports of no pain upon self-mutilation. It has also been suggested that deliberate self-harm provides physical stimulation (i.e., pain) sufficiently compelling to divert the individual’s attention from painful emotional arousal; deliberate self-harm may serve to shift attentional focus away from emotional pain and toward physical pain.