Venting I hate the term “self injury”

[tapetum_lucidum]

It seems recently in the mental health world there's been a push to start calling self-harm "self injury" because "self harm can be mental! Doom scrolling is self harm! UwU" I've been cutting for about a decade since I was like 11 or 12. I'm not going to change the language I've used all this time to be "more inclusive" Is something like doom scrolling self destructive? Sure. Is it self harm? No. This is just a huge pet peeve of mine and I wanted to rant. Feel free to share your two cents on this

 

[lamy's sacred sleep]

i never knew about this new term until now but i'd call doom scrolling self destructive behaviour.
so yeah, i don't like the term self injury

 

[Wolf Girl]

Non-Suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI) is a term that's been in use in the behavioral health field for, idk, forever. I do understand that you're coming at this from the perspective of the self-help world rather than the actual behavioral health field.

I agree with you that the self-appointed mental health influencers who are pushing for this are attention whores. It's just like how they continue to expand the definition of autism, bipolar, etc. Because people (young white women) who want to be sick and different will cry about being "excluded" and "gatekeeping a diagnosis that I really feel inside my heart that I have."

 

[FadingShadows]

Heh! Weirdly enough, I feel kind of the same way about "self-harm". An injury has (more-or-less) a set defintion - something is very clearly a wound, a break, etc, regardless of how it was made, but "self-harm", to me, just comes across as more attempts to push someone else's agenda on it - "Oh, you're not just injuring yourself; you're harming yourself! That's even worse!"

Eh. I'm just self-destructive, in any way.

 

[mintyxxie]

I feel the same, it's also a giant pet peeve of mine when EVERYTHING is labelled as such. I don't understand people's obsession with wanting to label their behaviors as "self-harm" while shitting on actual self-harm and calling it extreme/weird.

 

[Cauliflour]

I agree with you that the self-appointed mental health influencers who are pushing for this are attention whores. It's just like how they continue to expand the definition of autism, bipolar, etc. Because people (young white women) who want to be sick and different will cry about being "excluded" and "gatekeeping a diagnosis that I really feel inside my heart that I have."

Oh my god I was wondering why there seems to be so many people who are "autistic" nowadays. Although I'm not really like strong in it (probably just an idiot) so I probably fall into that category oops.