Harming oneself and harming others: Young people’s experiences coping with difficult emotions

Abstract

It is well established that a key function of self-injury is managing difficult or uncomfortable emotions. Interestingly, emotion regulation is also a key function of aggression. Despite this and other apparent similarities in risk and protective factors, these behaviours have never been compared at length. The current research aimed to fill this gap by exploring to what extent self-injury and outward-directed-injury were ways of dealing with the same issues, especially managing negative emotions. Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants aged between 18 and 35 years old. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the data and develop seven themes. Although this research initially set out to explore injury specifically, many of the experiences described by participants did not involve physical injury but were still harmful to themself or others. Accordingly, the findings of this study focus more broadly on harm. The themes outline the self-harm and outward-directedharm engaged in by the participants, as well as shared risk and protective factors. Factors that influenced participants’ engagement in self-harm and outward-directed-harm included adverse life challenges such as mental illness, trauma, low self-worth or nonconformity to social norms; their friends and family; a difficulty in differentiating emotions; an indifference for personal safety; and a lack of support services and mental health education in New Zealand. This exploratory study gives insight into twelve young people’s experiences using self-harm and outward-directed-harm to cope with their difficult emotions. These insights contribute to an area of research that is lacking whilst also highlighting the need for further research comparing these distinct but related behaviours.