When Coping Hurts: Understanding Self-Harming & Self-Destructive Behaviours with Compassion
When Coping Hurts: Understanding Self-Harming and Self-Destructive Behaviours with Compassion
Self-harm. Drinking. Disordered eating. Substance use. These behaviours are often misunderstood, feared, or met with judgment—both from others and from within ourselves. But beneath the surface of what we call “self-destructive” lies something far more human: the body’s remarkable, instinctual attempt to survive pain that feels unbearable.
It might sound paradoxical, but these behaviours aren’t about weakness, attention, or moral failing. They are what happens when our pain becomes too much to carry—and we haven’t yet learned safer ways to cope. In those moments, our nervous system reaches for whatever it knows will bring relief, however temporary. These coping strategies may not be sustainable or healthy, but they are strategies, and they’re there for a reason.
As Dr. Gabor Maté wisely teaches, all behaviours—no matter how harmful they may seem—make sense when we understand the pain that created them. From this lens, self-harm or drinking isn't about wanting to die; it's often about wanting to stop feeling overwhelmed, numb, or out of control. It's not about destruction for destruction's sake—it's a form of protection. It’s the body saying, “This is the only way I know to survive right now.”
So what if we stopped seeing these parts of ourselves as enemies to fight or shame away—and instead, began to approach them with compassion?
What if we could look at the part of us that reaches for the drink, or engages in disordered eating, or harms the body, and say:
"I see you. I know you're trying to help me. What is it you're trying to protect me from?"
This is the beginning of healing: turning toward our pain, instead of away from it. Not indulging it, but listening to it. Honouring that even the most destructive-seeming parts of us were created for a purpose—to help us endure what we couldn't process at the time.
From that place of curiosity and care, we can begin to ask new questions:
What am I feeling right before I reach for that behaviour?
What is the need beneath the action—numbing, control, relief, belonging?
What would it look like to meet that need in a new way?
This doesn’t happen all at once. It’s slow, gentle work. Sometimes it starts with something as small as a pause, a breath, a moment of recognition. And from there, we can begin building new strategies—ones that honour our story, our body, and our healing.
We are not broken. We are surviving in the best ways we’ve known how. And with time, support, and compassion, we can learn to replace survival with something even deeper: wholeness.
