People suffering from anxiety disorders often have a physical overreaction to stress.  This overreaction occurs because your body perceives everyday events and situations as threats to survival. In an effort to protect you, your body triggers the fight or flight response even though no real danger exists. There is some indication that an overreaction to stress is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. However, we don't know what initially causes this chemical imbalance.

Can I change it?: Yes. What's important to realize is that if you overreact to stress, you can learn to change it, no matter how it began.  You can learn deep breathing techniques, relaxation techniques, and techniques such as the Anxiety Pyramid (all included in our course) to train your body to react more calmly. > from article What Causes an Anxiety Disorder? - by Deanne Repich, Founder of the National Institute of Anxiety and Stress - see her site : ConquerAnxiety

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...more sites : 

Famous Self-Injurers

The Healing House
"therapeutic services to self-injurers, their families and all interested parties by guiding them on a healing journey."

SAFE Alternatives® (Self-Abuse Finally Ends)
"is a nationally recognized treatment approach, professional network and educational resource base, which is committed to helping you and others achieve an end to self-injurious behavior."

SIARI - Self-Injury and Related Issues
Self-injury is an expression of acute psychological distress. It is in act done to oneself, by oneself, with the intention of helping oneself rather than killing oneself. Paradoxically, damage is done to the body in an attempt to preserve the integrity of the mind. (Jan Sutton and Deb Martinson, January 2003)

When the Cut Goes in Deep - Celebrities Who Have Self-Injured

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----Books

Tracy Alderman The Scarred Soul : Understanding & Ending Self-Inflicted Violence
[reader:] "This book has presented my awful problem in a helpful and non-judgmental way. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to cut out the psychobabble and fiction about this practice, which is more common than we think."

Robin Connors. Self Injury: Psychotherapy With People Who Engage in Self-Inflicted Violence

Karen Conterio, et al. Bodily Harm: The Breakthrough Healing Program for Self-Injurers

Armando R. Favazza. Bodies Under Siege: Self Mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry

Kim Hewitt. Mutilating the Body: Identity in Blood and Ink

Louise Kaplan. Female Perversions

Caroline Kettlewell Skin Game

[reader:] "Caroline Kettlewell made her first attempt at age 12 with a Swiss Army knife, too dull to perform satisfactorily, but she quickly graduated to razor blades. Describing her tense but not unusually difficult youth, the author doesn't spend a lot of time trying to figure out why she was so unhappy, concentrating instead on making palpable her sense of dread and terror of being out of control, emotions relieved by the act of cutting. Some readers may wish for more self-analysis, but others will find Kettlewell's austere prose and sensibility refreshing.

Jordan Lee. Coping With Self-Mutilation - a helping book for teens who hurt themselves

Steven Levenkron. Cutting : Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation

Steven Levenkron The Luckiest Girl in the World  [novel]

[Kirkus Reviews:] "Katie Roskova, a 15-year-old figure-skating hopeful, has a grueling schedule of early morning and after-school practice, plusthe pressure of maintaining high grades to retain her scholarship at a private school. Despite all the strain, though, Katie's an angel, pleasing all; in reality, of course, it's a ruse. To deal with the confusion and insecurity of teenage life, Katie maintains her calm facade at a grisly cost: She ritualistically cuts herself when she feels out of control."

Patricia McCormick. Cut  [novel]

Alice Miller, PhD. The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD & Sharon Begley.  The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force

[Publishers Weekly:]  Schwartz, a UCLA psychiatrist and expert on treating patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), teams up with Begley, a Wall Street Journal science columnist, to explore the mind/brain dichotomy and to discuss the science behind new treatments being developed for a host of brain dysfunctions. Building on the work presented in Schwartz's first book, Brain Lock, the authors begin by demonstrating that OCD patients are capable of rechanneling compulsive urges into more socially acceptable activities and that, by doing so, they actually alter their brains' neuronal circuitry.

Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD.  Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior - 

 [reader:] The most memorable, constantly reinforced phrase I recall from the book is that whenever you find yourself obsessing about an undesired thought, simply say to yourself "its not me its my OCD". Once that realization hits home, you shift ALL your focus to something else such as work, a good book, playing with your child, or any activity that removes you from the obsessive "stuck in gear" pattern. It sounds simple but it DOES work.

Gerrilyn Smith, et al. Women and Self Harm: Understanding, Coping and Healing from Self-Mutilation

Marilee Strong. A Bright Red Scream : Self-Mutilation and the Language of Pain

  [Reviewer: from New York] The "dedication", if you will, for A Bright Red Scream, says, "For the walking wounded, may they no longer suffer in silence." I think that says it all. I am a cutter. Ms. Strong's book was real, open, raw, and refreshingly honest. The topic is covered thoroughly and the book was extremely well-written. I can only hope that maybe more people will read this and realize that we are not 'freaks' or 'psychos'. I am not anything like that. I am simply a little girl."
  [Reviewer: Talia W. from Lost Angeles] OK, it's a subject most of my friends don't want to know anything about. That's why I don't tell them I am a cutter. I discovered I am not alone about four years ago. Although I read another "ok" book on cutting, I just got Marilee Strong's book in paperback because some people in my support group really raved over it. I cried a couple of times reading it, but I couldn't put it down. I feel like someone understands us besides just the "shrink talk" that just tries to put things in neat little unreal boxes. Marilee goes way inside what cutting is about."

Jan Sutton. Healing the Hurt Within : Understand and Relieve the Suffering Behind Self-Destructive Behaviour

Jan Sutton, Deb Martinson. Because I Hurt

Kristy Trautmann, Robin Connors. Understanding Self-Injury

Kathleen Winkler. Cutting and Self-Mutilation: When Teens Injure Themselves

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Books which feature young women who engage in cutting:

Joanne Greenberg. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Susanna Kaysen. Girl, Interrupted

Elizabeth Wurtzel Prozac Nation : Young and Depressed in America : A Memoir