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Self-Harm: Lisa Ervin-Baudo on Self-Harm
Figure Skating — novice ladies national champion, junior ladies national champion
It was purely by accident, in a dressing room at a skating competition. She didn’t know anyone else was there, and I remember her coming out of the stall. I saw that she was bleeding, and that she was holding something in her hand. I had no idea something was up; my first reaction was just to get her a band-aid. She replied with a flustered “Oh I’m fine, I’m fine. Not a big deal.”
I would see the same skater, and the same type of things, over the next two to three years at competitions. She’d push her sleeve up to tie her skates, and I’d see cuts on her arms. I did not know what was going on. From what I could tell, her personality seemed to change, too. She became very withdrawn, very secretive. She wasn’t even that close a friend of mine, but there were just little behaviors that were noticeably different.
The thing was, I was withdrawing and changing in a lot of the same ways. I was feeling a lot of pressure to stay so thin and perfect for skating, and was struggling with a bad eating disorder. The things I used to be interested in changed, and I stayed to myself a lot. I was so afraid that if I maintained the friendships I had that they would find out. My anorexia had now led into bulimia, and I was making myself very sick.
I knew that I was doing something bad to my body, but I didn’t make the connection at first. And then I started to get an idea after seeing some segment on TV about people who hurt themselves on purpose – including “cutting.” I thought, “Oh my gosh, this is what this girl is doing! Why would she do that to her body?” I should have asked myself the same question. I had the same answers.
Being young, I was told what to wear, what to eat, how to skate, how to act and how to live. I was so out of control in my own life. There was so much pressure – trying to please everyone, wanting to be the best, the expectations of coaches and parents — but I still wanted some control over my own life. I eventually got help for my disorder and learned that for some people, hurting themselves is a way of controlling something in their lives that no one else can. I think for some girls, self-harm like cutting, starving themselves, denying an injury or over-exercising is the only way they see of dealing with the pressure and stress they feel. Some girls were compulsively doing cardio for six hours straight! That’s hurting your body while it’s struggling to repair itself.
All these behaviors — whether someone’s anorexic or over-exercising or cutting themselves — they’re all related. Once someone does something like this to get a feeling of satisfaction, it’s easy to move on to other destructive behaviors. It’s all self-harm and self-abuse. And it all does serious damage.
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