SELF-DESTRUCTION - Varieties, Development, self-destructive public figures and how to handle Self-Destruction
As we all know, Self-Destruction is the voluntary destruction of something by itself.
When it comes to human personality terms, we're talking about counter-productive and self-defeating habits which deny oneself happiness but can instead cause pain, either deliberatly or inadvertenly.
Self-destruction is one of seven basic character flaws or dark personality traits. We all have the potential for self-destructive tendencies, but in people with a strong fear of loosing self-control, self-destruction can become a dominant pattern.
Some of us have once suffered unbearable abuse or damage, maybe way back in childhood. And to revisit this part of the self is just too scary and painful.
I was rereading Anna Todd's novel 'AFTER' , i don't know if you've read it but the book is pretty famous and it prompted my writing about Self-Destruction. Harry Styles had a pretty frustrating childhood. growing up with an alcoholic dad who later abandoned them and a mom who's hardly at home because she spends hours working to pay the bills. He witnessed his mom being raped by some men who came looking for his dad but didn't find him and decided to prey on his mom just at the age of 7.
Harry started having nightmares after the incident and they didn't go away till he became an adult. He started drinking, smoking pot, misusing girls, and he became emotionally numb. To cut the long story short Harry somehow fell in love with a girl named Tessa. a gentle, innocent, charming and responsible girl. Their relationship had a lot of ups and down due to harry's tainted past. Harry loved Tessa but felt she was too good for him, blamed himself for making her go through the things she went through and said he doesn't deserve her. Harry felt he was no good due to his mischievous past. He felt he could never be good, no matter how hard Tessa tries to change him.
Another good name for self-destruction could be self-denial. An anxious young person may think to themselves: "There must be something about me that provoked or attracted or deserved such treatment, for why else would it happen?" To give expression to this part of oneself once more could simply cause the same traumatic experiences to happen again. for example, Being nice is what caused this, so i must never be nice again.
VARIETIES OF SELF-DESTRUCTION
The urge to "self-destruct" need not be literal or even physical. Infact, there is a spectrum of self-destructive behaviours, from mild to risky to fatal.
The most wide spread forms of self-destructive behaviours are eating disorders, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and compulsive gambling. Self-destruction can also take the form of self-sabotage or self-defeating behaviours - continually doing things which are bound to lead to one's own failure or downfall.
Deliberate self-injury is common to young people worldwide.
They believe self-injury is a way of coping with the emotional numbness. It is as if replacing one's emotional pain with a physical one.
Now a real life example: Fiona Apple (b. 1977) a Grammy-winning American singer-songwriter was raped at the age of twelve on her way home from school.
For years she continued to have nightmares. She would check her closets to make sure no one was hiding in the house, and would be nervous around older men.
During her teens and the months she spent making her album Tidal she suffered with an eating disorder. In a 1998 Rolling stone interview, she reflected on what this was like;
For me, it wasnt about getting thin, it was about getting rid of the bait attached to my body. A lot of it came from the self-loathing that came from being raped at the point of developing my voluptuousness. I just thought that if you had a body and if you had anything on you that would be grabbed, it would be grabbed. So i did purposely get rid of it
OTHER SELF-DESTRUCTIVE FIGURES INCLUDE:
. Diana, Princess Of Wales
. Lindsay Lohan
. Michael Jackson
. Vincent Van Gogh
. Marilyn Manson
. Christina Ricci
. Kurt Cobain
(Tho some celebrities indulge in self-harm and take unhealthy risks with their lives just for the attention and publicity they generate)
DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-DESTRUCTION
Like all negative personality traits, self-destruction typically develops through the following sequence:
. Early negative experiences,
. Misconceptions about the nature of self, life or others
. A constant fear and sense of insecurity
. A maladaptive strategy to protect the self
. A persona to hide all of the above in adulthood
Now how to handle self-destruction
the key to handling self-destruction is becoming conscious of how it operates in oneself. Begin with the mask or persona:
. Do I try to get others to perceive me as carefree, wild, crazy?
. Do I tend to take risks and act recklessly more than others?
dig deeper:
. Underneath that outer facade, am I really trying to keep everything under control?
. It’s like I constantly need to prove that I am in total control. Why do I do this? What am I afraid of?
. Why do I sometimes feel like I’d be better off dead? Is there some part of me that is unbeable or unacceptable?
. What do I fear would happen if I opened up to this “other” me?
. Do I just wish others could see, understand and accept the pain I am in?
Approaching the deepest level you may need outside help in the form of a counsellor, therapist or at least a close friend, perhaps even a psychiatrist, especially if you are tackling memories of abuse:
. Where does this fear come from?
. How was I hurt?
Just as you can become more aware of self-destructiveness through personal observation and self-enquiry, so too you can gain more control over it through that awareness and by exercising choice in the moment.
. Whenever I am tempted to harm myself, I can ask myself what message I am trying to send to others. Then I can look for ways to convey that message more explicitly and skilfully.
Another way to handle a dominant negative trait (chief feature) is to “slide” to the positive pole of its opposite. When caught in the grip of immolation or suicide, the negative pole of self-destruction, balance can be found in the positive pole of greed, namely egoism, desire or appetite. In other words, you give attention to what you actually need or want, and communicate that to others.
I did a few backup research but i hope this post is helpful to you in a way. Fighting our demons isn't easy and thousands of people give up fighting daily, stop contemplating suicide, there's more to life than you can see now, the future is brighter, let's learn to let go of whatever bad past occurrences we're holding on to, the self-loathing woun't do us any good