If you or a loved one has ever hurt the body on purpose by cutting, burning, scratching, skin-picking, scab-picking, hitting, slapping, hair-pulling, banging, bone-breaking, strangling, or bruising... this might be an experience of self-injury. At Self Injury Institute, we are dedicated to helping "cutters" and self-injurers alleviate and eventually extinguish the need to self-injure by looking at the bigger picture--the family. Many of the models available for self-injury treatment focus only on the self-injurer and generalize that individual as suicidal or having a personality disorder. Although that may be the case for some, self-injurers who do not suffer from either do not experience treatment success using these methods. Self Injury Institute advocates a family systems approach to psychotherapy and applies it to self-injury. Instead of viewing self-injury as the problem, we see the harming of body as a way to exert control and release emotions in response to something that is going on with the family.