Women Who Hurt Themselves : A Book of Hope and Understanding

Filled with moving stories, this powerful and compassionate book was the first to focus on women who harm themselves through self-mutilation, compulsive cosmetic surgeries, eating disorders, and other forms of chronic injury to the body. In the decade since Women Who Hurt Themselves was first published, new studies and clinical accounts have supported Miller's perspective. In an insightful introduction to this tenth anniversary edition, Miller updates the research and discusses what self-harming women and abuse survivors have known all along: that self-injury activates endorphins that actually calm the psychic pain of old wounds. It is a coping mechanism that unfortunately works all too well to ease the distress of early trauma. Miller describes the latest treatments geared to this perspective-and offers, once again, hope and understanding to the women themselves and to those who care for them. Book jacket.