Why cut ?? ..Self-harm despair of DOUBLE Olympic gold medallist Holmes

[Guest guest]

?? ............. are they looking for a physiological

response, perhaps for low adrenal reserve or adrenal exhaustion

after a previous " natural " high??

The Sunday Times - Scotland

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-1632669,00.html

May 29, 2005

Self-harm despair of Holmes

By n Bourne

DOUBLE Olympic gold medallist Dame Holmes has revealed she cut

her arms and chest with scissors during bouts of depression a year

before her Athens triumphs.

Her self-harm was triggered by training injuries that she thought

had ended her chances of a medal, in what would be her last

competitive Games.

" I'd locked myself in the bathroom and turned on the taps so

no one

could hear my crying, " , 35, reveals in her autobiography

Black, White & Gold, to be published next month.

" I saw a pair of scissors. I picked them up, opened them and

started

to cut my left arm with one of the blades.

" I made one cut for every day I had been injured. With each one I

felt I was punishing myself, but at the same time I felt a sense of

release that drove me to do it again.

" I must have cut myself five times over the same area on my left

forearm. The whole episode was nothing more than a cry of

despair. "

At the time had damaged her right calf and suffered a painful

tissue strain in her left leg while undergoing high-altitude

training in the French Pyrenees during June 2003. Fourteen months

later she won gold in both the 800 and 1500 metres in races that

captivated the nation.

" I felt such a hatred for everything that was going wrong. I had

never felt so desperate. Nobody knew and nobody noticed because I

said I had grazed myself. I covered them with plasters and then with

long sleeves or make-up.

" I realised how serious it was when a cut on my chest started to

really hurt, " she tells today's News of the World.

She continued hurting herself for two months until secretly seeking

medical help from a Swiss doctor who diagnosed depression and

treated her with herbal serotonin boosters.

" I only took a couple of the herbal capsules because I thought

the

only way out of it was for me to do it myself, not to rely on

pills, " she said. .................etc etc