In all the silencing and stigma and taboos about self-injury, it can get really lonely. I know, I often feel that too.

Judgements about self-injury are everywhere. From friends, family, mental health services, social media and even strangers.

Those judgements can lead us to feel isolated and ashamed… and if we started self-injuring because we already had those feelings, it can feel like we’re stuck in really painful loop.

Here is my message of solidarity to you.

If you use self-injury, I want to offer you solidarity and compassion. I use self-injury too. I have come back to it, off and on, over many years in my life.

I know that you are doing your best to survive.

I want you to know that you are not alone. This might just be a little website, but I’m here as a real human writing these words to you.

I believe that the people who judge us don’t understand much at all about what’s happened to us, what we’re experiencing or what we need.

Self-injury has existed as long as humans have. And the judgements we face about self-injury are biased and ignorant.

Why is it that people who do extreme sports are celebrated, while those of us who cut are judged? In many ways, extreme sports are a much greater risk to life.

I suspect much of the judgement is because of the other experiences we bring, the painful things that cause us to self-injure. Like racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, bullying, marginalisation, family violence, child abuse, sexual violence, incarceration. I don’t think society really wants to recognise how much injustice and violence actually exists out there. 

I want you to know, as you read this, that this site is a place where you belong and are welcomed.

Has anyone ever sat with you to reflect on how self-injury helps you to meet your needs?

I remember in the early years of self-injury I didn’t really understand why I was doing it, just that I felt like I had to. Over time I have learned that self-injury can help me meet many complex needs. It can come with a terrible cost sometimes, but I think we all just do the best we can to survive.

The most common reason for my self-injury is to transform my emotional pain into physical pain (sometimes that feels easier to bear). I often think of this as a kind of alchemy. 

Sometimes I’ve used it when I feel deep shame, as a kind of punishment.

Sometimes I self-injure to have a sense of control over my body, when nothing else feels within my power.

Sometimes I use it when I feel really suicidal, and it helps me stay alive.

Sometimes I use it when I am dissociating (or, as I call it, ‘turtling’) and it’s a way to shock myself back into my body.

And I also self-injure as a way of expressing huge, complicated experiences of trauma that I can’t verbalise because the words don’t even exist, but I know these things must be told and be seen.

So, for me, self-injury is a way to cope, a survival strategy, an expression, a protest. There are other ways I can meet these needs most of the time, but not always.

Some of these needs might resonate with you, but you might have other, even completely different, reasons. Whatever they are, they matter. 

Do you have experiences of trauma and injustice that are connected to your self-injury? 

Let’s bust the myths about self-injury that stereotype us as bad, attention-seeking, broken, diseased. We’re not. Most of us who self-injure are victims and survivors doing our best to survive.

I have a big history of trauma in my life, and I absolutely know this is connected to my emotional distress and self-injury.

My trauma includes child physical and sexual abuse, antisemitic bullying, rapes, psychiatric violence and intergenerational trauma from both my parents. I know that in my early years of distress and self-injury I didn’t recognise my experiences as trauma, instead I just accepted that I must be ill or ‘disordered’.

Psychiatry told me that my self-injury was a ‘symptom’ of ‘borderline personality disorder’. This became just one more ugly, judgmental label on top of my ‘depression’ and ‘schizophrenia’ labels. 

As a child I was told to be silent about the sexual abuse by my abuser, and by my mother. Then psychiatry didn’t want to listen either, because they thought my distress was all about my brain, not the unjust things that have happened to me in the world.

I think it’s vital for us to speak out about the trauma and injustice that has impacted us. It’s a strategy to tackle the shame that abusers dump on us, it’s also a way to make sense of why we do things like self-injury. For me, it feels powerful to remember that it’s the world that’s broken, not me. 

I also find it powerful to hear other survivors speak. To realise I’m not as alone as I often feel. have