“I’d Just Cut Myself to Kill the Pain”: Seeing Sense in Young Women’s Self-Injury

Abstract

Self-injury is a complex and stigmatized phenomenon, most commonly associated with young women and generally assumed to be damaging to wellbeing. This chapter challenges the assumption that self-injury is a threat to wellbeing by arguing that it is a defence mechanism some young women draw on to cope with immense emotional pain. When understandings of self-injury begin from the assumption that the behaviour is “harmful” (“self-harm”) and counter to one’s wellbeing, they are unable to capture its nuanced function. To presume self-injury compromises wellbeing is to presuppose that the effects of cutting are worse than the effects of not cutting. Drawing on narratives of young women accessing drug treatment services who also had a history of self-injury, the complex correlations between self-injury and childhood trauma – specifically, sexual abuse and experiences of abandonment – are highlighted. These traumas appear to lead to a ruptured sense of embodiment and emotional dissociation. The accounts of these young women suggest that rather than an indicator of psychopathology, self-injury may be better understood as a logical response to trauma. The young woman is not seeking to compromise her wellbeing; rather, she is trying to ensure it.