Self-Harm: The externalisation of internal pain
This blog post discusses self-inflicted injury and mental illness. If you, or someone you know, needs advice and help with any of the issues discussed, you can reach our to Rape Crisis Centre via this site, our chat icon, via e-mail (help@crisiscentre.org.za or our ER number.
I reached over to touch her and she swiftly crossed her arms, elbow over elbow and wrists intertwined as if in some desperate prayer. All to hide the stories scarred deep in her skin, the deep lines of white and grey which were once open to reveal the deep layers of skin, a rainbow of red, pink and yellow. The red which would flow like ink, ink for her to write her story. Except, what was she going to write?
Her head bowed, I lifted her chin and begged her to look up. "Don't be ashamed". Her scars matched mine and as I offered to show her my arms, as though I were offering a symbol of peace and understanding, she relaxed and we both sat with our hands outstretched, as though in supplication, the tips of our fingers almost touching. I told her that I understood. I told her that if she didn't know why she did it, that I could at least tell her why I did.
You see those lines, like arrows without points or direction, swirled around or coupled in neat queues, were like the lines of a page, one on which we could express pain, and that those screams we hold so tightly inside our chests that our throats burn and our eyes sting, as though wasps were swimming in them, we took to the hard push of blades on skin, like the hissing of a snake to release a dam too full, it can no longer contain the storm water within.
You see, those cuts are what we needed to show us that we were real. That the darkness and pain we pushed so far down numbed us to the point of feeling like puppets on a string. It was just another way of crying, because crying so much just doesn't do the trick after a while and the rage that begs to be freed like a circus lion caged all its life, needed to growl and roar and let something out. It was a release. A sign that the pain which others could not see, couldn't now deny the rivers of life which ran so fast and freely.
But don't get us wrong, it's not for you to see, it's for me. When it's just too much, all the time, every hour, every minute of every second, of each day, a continuous countdown from the rising to the setting of the sun, until the shutting of lids, as we lie praying that maybe tonight we can sleep. But as we toss and turn, the stings from the licks of some sharp thing keep us awake, and then we think and wonder why? Never again, it's too sore or next time, it'll need to get stitched and then someone will know the secret we hide under our long sleeves in Summer and pants instead of girly dresses, sporting a bandage around wrists or thighs or up higher or down low, where the tips of white socks are tainted red and people will look and stare and....are they're thinking I'm a freak?
For you see, I know a girl who likes sharp things. The tips of leaves and the crooked edges of teeth. The shards of broken glass left on road sides, and the pointed ears of wild things. The needles which thread all sorts of tears she wishes some tailor could fix.
You see, this girl is fond of holes, the kind that cigarettes burn in clothes and those between closed lips where secrets are kept and those in jerseys which make her cold.
You see, i know a girl who likes sharp things because they remind her that she does bleed and that she can cut holes into which she can flee.
(Image Source: Carla Francesca Castagno/Shutterstock)
Like the iconic moment when Richey Edwards of the band, Manic Street Preachers, took to carving '4REAL' into his forearm, many may wonder why people self-harm. What this act by Edwards reflected - apart from his struggles with mental health - was that for some people there is a feeling that somehow words have lost their ability to produce any power, and that the only authenticity to their true inner turmoil is through blood. Edwards later explained that:
[It’s] really connected to the fact that you almost feel silent, you have no voice, you’re mute … you’ve got no option. Even if you could express yourself, nobody would listen anyway. Things that go on inside you – there’s no other way to get rid of them.
These acts of self-injury are often mistaken as attention-seeking behaviours, but most who self-harm often do so in secret and are careful to keep the injuries hidden. Self-harm can include cutting, blunt force trauma and/or burns. Many of those who self-harm and advocates for what is also known as non-suicidal self-injury, wholly deny that these are acts of attention-seeking and that it is not associated with a social or communicative significance. Rather it is a: "Claustrophobically personal crisis, something so completely "inner" that nothing outside themselves and no-one else has anything to do with it. As described in the a recent article for the Sociological Review, while sufferers display forms of self-injury which are visceral, it turns the body into a kind of witness. Kim Hewitt, stated that "far from being attention seeking, Self-injury seems to be a great self-destructive attempt to become human. To gain recognition, to prove to someone that I matter, and that I bleed too" (Steggels, 2024).
It is a field of research in which a wide array of academics have delved into, in attempts to understand the act of self-harm and have uncovered revealing details which further explain this type of self-destructive behaviour. It is undeniable, however, that it has its deep roots in something which is causing someone pain. A pain unseen, and often one misunderstood.
If you or someone you are close to suffers from this act of self-harm, our counsellors at Rape Crisis Helderberg are here to help. Reach out to us via Instagram, the chat icon on the site, the Emergency number and we will make time to help you. To hear you, to see you and to allow you to bleed and heal.
For a more thorough read on the topic and the research undertaken and its interesting insight, visit: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/00380261231221661
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