cutting

Representation Matters.

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Today is the International Day of Trans Visibility and this morning I saw this piece of art in my social media feed.

56201130_10157428215713598_5544235667359268864_nIt was created by an artist Hannah Daisy @makedaisychains (photo credit to her.  https://www.patreon.com/hannahdaisy)

I felt deeply moved by the image and spent most of the day thinking about it.   Why did this image impact me so intensely?  As a non-binary person who has scars from self harm, I felt represented and valid in a way that I didn’t even realize I needed.  In this image, the arm with scars is just one in a series of different and unique arms raised in an empowered fist.   It is SO rare to see art that includes self harm scars that neither stigmatizes, sensationalizes nor glorifies self injury (and cutting specifically).  In this art piece, the self harm scars are matter of fact but are not the focus of the image.  The scars are shown as healed/healing and thus represent a hopeful message of recovery and life after self harm.  The image implies that recovery is possible, but also depicts the reality that mental illness is not always an invisible illness.  It shows that scars do not have to be hidden and can be accepted as part (but not the defining aspect) of a person.  This image does not show the person who self harmed as an object of pity or of revulsion.  It doesn’t make me feel sorry for the person, it makes me feel that they are a SURVIVOR.

As a person who has a multitude of scars from decades of self harm, I needed to see this. I needed the representation SO much. I needed the message that I’m not shameful, disgusting, broken, crazy, insane or violent.  I needed the message that my scars do not define me.  I needed the message that SOMEBODY out there, an artist, sees my scars as a sign of strength, resilience and SURVIVAL.  I don’t want to feel ashamed of my scars.  I don’t want to feel judged by society.  I don’t want to receive stares of pity or confusion on a summer day.  I want to choose my clothes based on what feels comfortable, not based on what will hide the scars and keep me safe from stigma.   Because there is an intense amount of societal stigma associated with self harming behaviour (and cutting in particular).  It is misunderstood, even by mental health providers.  It is often treated as a contagion, something that will spread like a virus to others.  It often leads to exclusion and intense self hatred/shame/guilt and isolation.  It is almost always portrayed as entirely undesirable and destructive, never acknowledged as a complex, coping mechanism that has often helped a person survive extremely difficult times when they had few other options to survive.   Self harm is almost always conflated with suicide, when often  people who self injure are doing so as a way to stay alive and to cope with hopeless, intense or overwhelming emotions.  (Self harm and suicide can go hand in hand, but not always).

I felt seen and I felt valid.  I can’t remember the last time a piece of art made me feel so  affirmed and understood.

Later in the day, I was scrolling through social media and saw the same image on another website.  But this time the image was altered:

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In the second image, the scars are censored.  They are replaced with what looks like the reflection of white lights or stars.   This second image made me feel erased, ashamed and frustrated.   I can understand that the website might not want to trigger folks and it might not want to be seen as “promoting” self harm behaviours.  I can understand why someone might think censoring the image was in the best interests of the public, but as a person who self harms, I completely disagree with the censoring.

I didn’t feel triggered by the first image, I felt REPRESENTED.  As I mentioned, I don’t believe the image in any way glorified or promoted self harm.  I saw the image as respectfully acknowledging the fact that many trans and gender diverse struggle, in a large part because of transphobia and lack of acceptance, with various types of self harming behaviours.   That doesn’t mean that we are weird, odd, crazy or broken. It means we are surviving.

What this censoring means to me?

It means that the people running the second website think I should hide my scars, that they are a bad influence on others or that they might make people uncomfortable.  It makes me feel that I should be invisible or deserve to be invisible. It makes me feel that self harm is SO terrible that it needs to be blotted out and erased, replaced with stars and light that won’t make anyone uncomfortable.

Does that mean that my existence makes you uncomfortable?

Should I be ashamed and hide myself away?

Is my mental health disability SO unpalatable to others that it needs to be censored?

If today is International Trans Day of Visibility, I think that means ALL trans and gender diverse folks deserve to be visible (if they want to be) and that includes trans folks with mental, physical and invisible disabilities.  We have to work from an intersectional perspective that does not erase the various lived experiences of people.  Representation DOES matter.  People with disabilities so often lack positive, affirming and realistic representations of ourselves in media, art and society.   Representations that neither treat us like inspirational stories nor tragedies.

Because we are SO much more than that.

Body distortions.

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I’ve struggle with distorted perceptions of my body since I was 9 years old. I vividly remember the first time I felt hatred towards my body.  I was 9 and I was sitting on the floor in the upstairs hall of my parents’ house.  I must have been getting ready to get into the shower.  I was sitting with my legs out in front of me and all I could think about was how fat and ugly my stomach was.  I thought it looked disgusting.

I remember during my years as a dancer how much I envied the other girls who were thinner and had more delicate frames.  I was always cast in the role of the boy in the group choreography and I assumed this was because I was the largest, tallest and least delicate.  Intellectually I knew some of the girls were younger and hadn’t gone through puberty yet, but emotionally it hurt.  I didn’t want to be in the boys costume, pants, vest and button up shirt. I wanted the flowing dress.  The main reason was because I assumed my body shape was to blame.

I remember feeling slightly more confident in my body for a few years, at the beginning of high school.  My style changed fairly dramatically over the years, from dresses, to jeans and baggy sweatshirts, to grunge plaid shirts and doc marten boots, to short kilts and boots, to hippy long skirts…in high school I wore skirts and dresses the majority of the time and I never felt comfortable in shorts.

When I was sexually abused, I started linking my female body with being assaulted.  I wanted to take up less space.  I wanted to disappear so I couldn’t be abused.  I changed my style again, and stopped wearing skirts and dresses and more feminine items, expect for special occasions.

It took many years for me to make the link between being abused and hating my body.  I believed all the negative thoughts Ana was screaming at me.  I believed I was fat, even when I was deathly thin.  I saw things that weren’t there.  I struggled with body dysmorphia and distorted body image, never seeing myself as others saw me.  I became so used to this that I stopped questioning why it happened.  I became increasingly invested in hating my body and blaming my body for being abused.  I forged an even stronger link by engaging in severe self harm for many years and abusing my body by overdosing and attempting suicide.  All my destructive behaviours distracted away from the root causes of my eating disorder and self harm.

I remember the moment the link became crystal clear to me.  Up until that moment it was a complete mystery to me how my view of my body could change so drastically from day-to-day.  One day I might see myself as thin, or even worry about my weight and health and the next day I’d wake up feeling obese, disgusting and unwilling to eat.  I had a hard time intellectually believing that it was impossible for my body to change that much over night.  I tried to control the dysphoria by altering my eating habits and/or exercise.

Around 2011-2012, during the years leading up to me leaving my ex-husband, I had a sudden realization.  My weight was low towards the end of 2011, partly due to the ECT treatments and lack of appetite and partly due to Ana and depression.   I remember feeling like I’d lost too much weight.  I remember feeling concerned about how low my weight was (this was during the brief time period I owned a scale).  I went to sleep one night and my ex-husband touched me sexually when I was asleep and drugged.  Quite likely after I’d said no while awake.  I remember us fighting about it in the morning.  I went into the en suite bathroom and got ready to shower.  I remember and overwhelming feeling of being fat. I hated my stomach. I felt massive and ugly.  I wanted to harm myself and restrict food.  I felt disgusting and shameful.

Then a light bulb went off in my mind.

“Wait a minute, just yesterday you felt you were too thin.  Just yesterday you were worried about your weight being low. It’s impossible that you have gained that much weight over night.  These self-destructive thoughts are linked to being assaulted and to the argument.  You feel fat and dirty and shameful BECAUSE of what happened.  It has nothing to do with your weight.  Your weight hasn’t changed.”

Things started to shift for me after that realization.  I suddenly had a clear intellectual understanding that I needed to try living alone before giving up and completing suicide.  I realized that I hadn’t truly “tried everything” to recover because I hadn’t tried removing myself from my marriage.  I think this realization saved my life.  I began to slowly get stronger, to seek different types of help (from a rape crisis centre) and to talk to a few trusted folks about what was happening in my marriage.

It took me a full year to get strong enough to leave.  But the leaving started with that realization.  For a moment, I stopped blaming my body and myself and started blaming my abuser for my ill-health.

In the last two days I’ve had some incredibly frustrating text interchanges with my ex-husband.  Trying to co-ordinate co-parenting with a narcissist is impossible.  It is like pushing a spiky boulder up an icy hill, where you are blamed for the ice, the spikes and for not succeeding in getting the boulder up the hill.

Yesterday, Ana was screaming at me.  Ana did NOT want me to eat.  Ana was telling me I was fat and I’d gained too much weight.  Ana was telling me to hurt myself.  Ana was making me paranoid that my ex could see things on my computer, or hear things we were talking about at my house.  Ana was activated and was not letting me rest.  Noises startled me, I had a hard time relaxing to sleep.

All of this happened because of a 5 minute text exchange with him.

Co-parenting with an abuser is enough to make anyone miserable.  But I need to remember that my body is not to blame.  In fact, the healthier I am, the stronger I can be at resisting his abuse.  I need to be healthy to take care of my kids and protect them as much as possible from his lies.  Ana tells me to hurt myself, to shrink myself, that it’s my fault.  But Ana lies.

I’m willing to bet that if you have an abusive voice in your head, it is lying to you too.  Ana never makes us stronger.  We are not to blame for the abusive patterns of another person.

I read a quote once…

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This was certainly true in my case.  I realized that hurting myself was not the way out.  There was another way, a sometimes more difficult way, but a more productive one!

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Trusting my younger self.

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I’ve been reading through my journal from the first year of the relationship with my abusive ex-husband.  I’ve been reflecting on how I was gaslighted and how, in a way, I gaslighted myself.  I used the same coping techniques I did when I was abused at age 15. I found myself in another abusive relationship and I immediately began self harming, restricting food, and thinking about suicide.  As a distraction it worked, just as it had when I was a child.  I did what I needed to do to survive. I turned to creative (if self destructive) coping techniques that got me through very difficult situations.  But my inner self, my younger self did know something was wrong.  There was a part of me, healthy me, which was separate from “the voice” or “Ana.”  That part of me knew that my new relationship was deeply and integrally connected to my relapse and worsening psychiatric symptoms.  My wise younger inner self knew that I was in trouble, but she asked for help in ways that distracted and confused other people, even her own healthy self.

This is a concept that is often very difficult for those who have not survived abuse to understand.  It can be challenging to understand that the survivor will do whatever it takes to survive, even if those coping techniques may look like self destructive behaviours from the outside.  The survivor may feel she has limited or no options.  For various reasons she has been conditioned not to scream, tell, ask for help, run away, fight back etc…or maybe she tried those things and they didn’t work. So instead she turned to disassociation, self harm and eating disorders as a way to modulate and live with the abuse and all the symptoms of PTSD.

I was conditioned, maybe almost from birth, not to make a fuss.  I was conditioned, maybe almost from birth, to be a “good girl.”  I internalized this in a way that led me to blame myself for the abusive behaviours of others.  If I was being hurt it was because I wasn’t a “good girl” and if I wasn’t a “good girl,” then I must be a bad girl, maybe a very bad, shameful, dirty and disgusting girl.  Thus, Ana/”the voice” was born.  There was a part of me that split off and became self abusive and self critical.  A younger self, a part that never ages or matures.  A 15 year old frozen in time.

This is how I described “the voice” when I was 20 years old (ironically the description came right after mentioning intimacy with my ex):

February 21, 2001

“My body feels too big and uncomfortable right now.  I know it’s because I’ve been eating more normally and feeling hungry.  The sensation of hunger is not an easy one for me.  It is frightening. Like I feel afraid of losing control of myself. And yet I know that the E.D is out of control. It is a part of me that often deceives and betrays me. I know that in the end, though it feels comfortable, it cannot be trusted.  The voice which tells me not to eat, tells me to cut my skin, to smash my head against a wall, to step out in front of traffic all sorts of dangerous hurtful things.  It speaks to me in persuasive ways.  It is a part of me and yet foreign.  My ally and my enemy, my strength and my destruction. But after so many years it is the way I know.  A method of ridding myself of unwanted feelings”

When I was 20 I was able to recognize some of the signs of abusive behaviour in my ex. I was able to identify that I felt afraid.  But I didn’t draw the right conclusions from there. I blamed myself, I thought I needed to work on my depression, my recovery, get better at coping with anger etc.  My younger self tried to problem solve by changing herself, just as she had at age 15.  Just as she had for her entire life.

March 12, 2001  [written after being asked to swing dance with and dancing with a friend, a man I’d briefly dated]

“So the evening was going well until one crucial moment…asked me to dance.  I figured one dance wouldn’t hurt and I didn’t think [he] would mind…but [he] did get upset and left the room.  I followed after the song was over. [He] got angry at me saying that I couldn’t stand up for myself and say NO.  He totally misunderstood and overreacted.  I got terribly upset and started crying totally uncontrollably…I was so disappointed that my night was ruined.  I felt so much like hurting I became filled with intense suicidal thoughts. I hate feeling my independence threatened by a relationship. I want the freedom to choose who is in my life.  When [he] gets angry it just terrifies me and makes me want to hurt, with him is when I feel the strongest feelings”

My younger self clearly articulated that she felt uncomfortable with being controlled and with the jealous behaviour.  She clearly made a link between the angry jealous behaviour of her boyfriend and the suicidal and self harm impulses.  My younger self was wise on a deeper level, and yet she stayed with that man for 13 years.  It’s difficult to make sense of.  My adult self wants to travel back in time to that night, to go back to the dance with my friends, to tell him in no uncertain terms to F*#K OFF and leave me alone.  My adult self wants to protect that younger me, give her the strength to listen to her instincts and fight back rather than turning to a downward spiral of self destruction that would lead to 4 years in and out of psychiatric hospitals.

The next day, March 12, 2001 I was admitted to the hospital.  I wrote in my journal again, but made no link between the previous evening and my suicidal obsessive thoughts.  The self destruction worked as a distraction from his controlling behaviour.  The hospital was a place to get away from him.  The routine and the process of hospitalization was an escape.  I would feel safer in the hospital for a few hours or a few days, then I’d realize that the hospital wasn’t a solution and I’d want to be home.

I think what I really wanted was to be safe.  What I needed to be safe was to exit the abusive relationship in those early stages, when I still had the chance.

Because within a few short weeks I was already beginning to convince myself it was my depression and PTSD causing the issues in our relationship:

March 26, 2001

“The things that I thought were stable and unchanging have become uncomfortable. I can’t tell if it’s my depression pushing [him] away or actually me. It’s so hard to face that possibility. I want things between us to be simple again. I miss how easy we used to be together.  Now I feel distant from our relationship”

April 4, 2001

“I don’t feel as easy around [him] lately. Mind you I haven’t felt easy around anyone lately. I feel withdrawn, like I have built up the walls around me for protection from the storm.  But this is so ineffective because my storm is coming mainly from within. I don’t know how to protect myself from myself. I really am my own worst enemy”

Maybe I was never my own worst enemy.

Maybe the storm was never “mainly” from within.  Maybe I was confused and living with emotional abuse and gaslighting.  Maybe I bought into blaming myself as a coping technique, as a way to survive, and as a way to feel more in control of a scary situation.  I blamed myself and my mental illness rather than facing the reality that I was in an abusive relationship.  It was “easier” to seek help through psychiatry than it was to leave the relationship.

Looking back it all seems clear.  But my 20 year old self had less wisdom, less experience, less resources and less knowledge.  My 20 year old self did the best she could.  She did try to express herself, she just didn’t have the skills to listen to herself or to ask for the type of help she truly needed.  And those around her weren’t able to interpret her self destructive behaviours as, not a cry for attention or a manipulation, but a message.  A red flag waving, signalling that all was not well.  Help was needed, but psychiatry wasn’t the correct tool for the task.

Unfortunately, my younger self wouldn’t cross the threshold of a rape crisis centre for another 12 years.

The roots of an abusive relationship.

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Through some parts of my youth I kept diaries.  Never entirely consistently, but consistently for periods of time, especially when I was in treatment or in hospital.  I’ve been thinking back to this time of year in 2001.  My first year with my abusive ex husband.  My first year in psychiatric care.  My first year engaging in severe self harm.  My first psychiatric admissions (aside from eating disorder treatment).  My first suicide attempts. It’s interesting how all these “firsts” coincided so neatly in time with my new relationship.  At the time I thought it was because memories of the abuse I survived as a teenager were triggered and surfaced when I became sexually active.   That was part of it.  But there was more to it than that.  There was subtle abuse in my relationship with my ex husband that started very early on.  The seeds of gaslighting and emotional abuse were being planted.

It started with showering me with affection and attention.  It started with making me feel special and loved, almost to the point of making me uncomfortable.  It started with planning for the life we’d have together, the kids we’d have, the marriage…within months of meeting me (I was 19!).  It started with gifts, cards, flowers, spending all our time together.  It started with gradually isolating me from my other friends and social outlets.

Then some lies started.  And the lies were repeated so often I believed them to be true.

These lies were focused around my mental health problems and their link to my feelings about his abusive  behaviours.   He would tell me that it was because of my PTSD that I was uncomfortable with something.  He would tell me that a “normal woman” would be okay with it.  He would make me feel guilty, tell me that he felt like there were three people in the relationship: me, him and X.  He made me feel like I was CHOOSING to have flashbacks, like I was CHOOSING to think about X rather than him.  Almost like X was someone I never quite got over, a lost lover, rather than an abuser who had traumatized me to the point I often had flashbacks during any type of intimacy.  Over time, the lies were repeated to the point that I felt crazy.  I felt like I was to blame for the problems with intimacy in our relationship.  We even sought out support from a sex therapist to talk about this.  I had blood tests and was checked to ensure my hormone levels were normal.  I was completely manipulated into believing that the issues in the relationship were entirely my fault.

Today, in 2017, I realize I like some types of sex just fine.  I just prefer consent to be a factor in that sex!  In other words, I like sex, but I don’t like sexual abuse!  It turns out, I’m not physically broken.  I have PTSD.  I have flashbacks, but with a safe, trusted and patient partner I can be okay.  But because of the lasting impacts of gaslighting, I struggle with saying no. I struggle with blaming myself for anything that might go wrong. I struggle with identifying and communicating what I want or enjoy.  And I still fall back into patterns of believing that I’m crazy.

When I left my ex husband, I mainly remembered and talked about the sexual abuse that happened in the last 5-6 years of our marriage.  These were the incidents I felt most comfortable labeling “sexual assault” and “rape.”  When asked, I couldn’t really describe when the sexual abuse started.  I couldn’t really remember the first time.  I couldn’t really say when things started to go wrong.

But reading back in my diary from 2001, the first year we were together, there are so many red flags.  I can hear my 20 year old self trying to convince herself that things were okay.  I can hear my 20 year old self trying to believe that she loved this man she barely knew. I can hear my 20 year old self trying to rationalize that things would be better with him when SHE was better, when SHE stopped cutting, when SHE stopping being so depressed.  I can hear her trying to convince herself it was the right choice, and I feel deeply sad for her.

June 8, 2001

“The evening went well until the car ride home.  Before getting in the car I was feeling panic starting. [He] tried to kiss me but I pulled away.  He got offended.  I tried to explain but he got angry and said he felt stifled like he couldn’t be spontaneous.  He said I only make love to him out of duty.  I got really upset and started crying and I couldn’t breathe. It was like a panic attack and I couldn’t stop hyperventilating. I just was so very scared.  I’m terrified of being with [him], but I do love him too.  It’s such a dilemma all the time. I feel like it would be easier for me to get better without the strong feelings of a relationship.  But on the other hand [he] is my support.  I don’t know.  It’s so tough right now.  I’m so scared of my life and everything in it”

Looking back on the things I wrote, I realize that I was barely more than a child myself. Just turned 20 years old.  I had just disclosed the abuse from my childhood, just started counseling.   I was talking about abuse I’d kept inside for 5 years.  I was in full PTSD crisis mode, complete with flashbacks, hyper vigilance, anxiety and nightmares.  I was on psychiatric medication cocktails for the first time.  I was self harming almost daily and had recently attempted suicide.

It was perfectly normal that I didn’t always want to be intimate with someone.

Perfectly normal.

Today, I choose to forgive my 20 year old self for not knowing this.  I choose to forgive her for not knowing that she was having normal coping reactions to trauma and that she was not crazy.  I choose to forgive her for being tricked into a situation where, instead of healing and support, she found gaslighting, confusion, entrapment and more sexual abuse.

I know I’ll wake up tomorrow, or the next day and feel confused again.  I’ll wonder if the abuse was my fault.  I’ll think that I’m exaggerating or that I’m making things up.  I’ll start to feel the thoughts creep in that I’m not normal.  I’ll start to wish that I had died all those years ago when I attempted suicide.  I’ll start to believe his lies again, because a long term emotionally abusive relationship includes an element of near brainwashing which can take years of healing, therapy, patience, self love and self forgiveness to recover from.

But just for today, I want 20 year old me to know that her reactions were normal.  That she was allowed to say no to that kiss for any reason.  She was especially allowed to say no to that kiss when she was triggered.  She had the right to say no without consequence, without anger, without bullying and blaming.  She had the right to have needs and preferences and anxieties.

It wasn’t her fault that he didn’t understand consent.

Firsts.

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<trigger warning for graphic descriptions of self harm and eating disorder>

I’ve been thinking a lot about the “firsts” of my mental illnesses.  We all have memories of the first time we did certain things or had certain experiences, but for people who have chronic mental health struggles over a number of years, not all “firsts” are positive memories to celebrate.

When I was experiencing my “firsts” of mental illness I was a teenager.  I was 15-17 years old and I didn’t have any idea that my experiences were those of specific mental illness, let alone what those mental illnesses might be.  I thought that I was going crazy.  I thought I was the only one.  I was afraid to tell others what I was experiencing internally.  Until I was diagnosed with PTSD when I was 20 years old, most of my “firsts” made little sense to me.

The first time I experienced what would become anorexia I was about 16 years old.  I’ve written about it in another blog post.  I was physically sick and hadn’t eaten for a few days.  I felt mostly better and wanted to go to school.  I remember my mother telling me I had to eat something if I was going to school.  I took a granola bar and started walking down the street to meet my boyfriend at the time and to catch the bus.  I remember feeling light, empty and powerful.  I remember feeling the sense of white, blank emptiness that I now associate with disassociation.  I felt like I could take on the world.  I felt like I could survive without food and that I’d actually be more powerful.  I loved that feeling and I chased after it in various forms for the next 20 years.  I believe this moment is the one I chose anorexia as a coping technique for the sexual and emotional abuse I was living with.  At that time I wouldn’t have identified it as an eating disorder, nor would I have identified my relationship as sexually and emotionally abusive.  It was just a feeling I had, of realizing that disassociation was more comfortable than pain.

I remember the first and one of the few times I tried (unsuccessfully) to purge after panicking about eating.  This I described in another blog post.  I remember crying and sitting shaking on the floor of the downtown public library.  My crime?  Eating a whole cookie rather than half of one.  I remember I had been reading books about eating disorders, secretly, trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

I remember my first panic attack.  I was in Grade 12, 17 years old and extremely ill from anorexia.  I was attending school despite the fact that my weight was well under 100 pounds at close to 5’9″.  I remember feeling driven.  I remember feeling an intensity of moving forward that wouldn’t allow me to slow down or calm down.  I had to keep “doing” and trying to be perfect at everything.  I had to follow all my rules or something terrible would happen.  I remember there was one day I had a math test.  I believe it was Grade 12 Calculus or some other horrible subject.  I had been doing well in school despite my illness.  But that day somehow my brain just wouldn’t work.  I remember sitting in the classroom, the desks were arranged in rows, one in front of the other with the blackboard at the front.  I remember all the numbers and letters swimming around on the paper.  I couldn’t breathe.  I couldn’t think of how to solve the problems because everything was spinning and I felt like I was being crushed.  I felt nauseous and I realized that I was about to cry.  I remember bolting out of the room and into a stall in the girls bathroom.  I remember sitting there crying, shaking and feeling terribly upset that I couldn’t do the test.  My thoughts were racing around and I just wanted to go home.  I remember another student from the class coming in to check on me (it was a male teacher).  I remember being somehow glad she was there even though I was embarrassed.  I made up some excuse about being sick and not being able to write the test.  I think I went home.  I wouldn’t have known at the time that it was a panic attack, but it was and it was probably related to extreme lack of nutrition and just pushing myself too hard on no fuel.

I remember the first time I cut myself as a coping technique for stress.  I was about 18 years old.  I had just started taking SSRI medication for depression and anxiety after about 2 years of fighting with my parents and my doctors.  I never wanted to take medication.  I think deeply and instinctively I must have known that my mental health problems were situational, but that knowledge was too terrifying to face, so I blocked it out.  The first time I engaged in cutting I  used a pair of scissors that I kept in my bedroom.  I used to make just one small cut.  I would do it once a week in the exact same place, just under where the band of my watch lay.  So I could hide it carefully.  It was ritualistic, very controlled.  I don’t remember exactly why I started doing this.  It became part of my routine as I gained weight and somewhat normalized my eating behaviour. I needed something else to help block out the memories of the abuse.

I remember the first time I considered suicide.  I was probably about 17 years old, but I might have been 18.  I remember being at a party at a friend’s house.  Radiohead OKComputer was playing in the background.  Music I always associate with the “saddest of the sad” times.  It was raining outside.  I remember sitting on the couch looking out the back sliding door.  It was dark outside, evening.  The rain was falling really hard and there was thunder and lighting. I felt like I was in a trance.  Looking back I realize this was also an example of disassociation.  I remember feeling incredibly alone and disconnected. I was AT the party but not part of it.  I remember being at home that evening.  My bathroom had green tiles.  Small square tiles with white grout.  I remember just sitting there staring at my razor.  Thinking about cutting myself, thinking about dying and ending my life by opening up my veins.  I just sat there for a long time thinking about it.  The images of the green tiles and the emptiness of that moment are burned into my memory.

I remember my first flashback.  I was 18.5 and with my first love, my first real connection after the abuse and the severe anorexia.  I remember we were in my bedroom and we were kissing.  It was consensual and I wanted to do it.  He was lying on top of me. I think he might have been about to unbutton a piece of my clothing or something like that.  Suddenly I was crying and shaking and it wasn’t him there.  It was my ex boyfriend, who had so many times taken off or unbuttoned my clothing when I’d clearly said now.  It was him on top of me and I was afraid.  I had no idea what a flashback was, I didn’t know I had PTSD.  I just had an intense physical reaction to what was happening.  My boyfriend stopped immediately.  I remember him leaving the room briefly to give me space.  I remember feeling scared and embarrassed.  I don’t really remember the explanation I gave to him.  Some of my memories are less clear, but I think over time I had told him that my last relationship had been difficult.  I don’t think I fully understood myself at that time that it had been abusive, and that this type of reaction was a normal one for survivors.

I remember the first time I cut myself deeply enough to need stitches.  I was 20.  I was at university.  I remember buying the craft knife at the university book store. I remember walking home.   There was  a bridge on the campus and for months I thought about jumping off it every day.  I knew that I was going to cut deeply.  It was planned and premeditated.  I remember disassociating and thinking only about the injuring.  I remember wanted to make sure it was deep enough to need stitches.  I remember walking to the hospital which was on the campus.  I walked across a field to get there.  It was May or June.  I remember the doctor stitching up the wound.  It was a medical student and I remember feeling afraid.  I remember the resident coming to check the work and commenting that the stitches were incorrectly done.  I remember wondering why the resident didn’t fix them, but I assumed that because the wound was self inflicted they thought I didn’t care about scars.  In the end that wound healed badly and caused me chronic pain until it was fixed about 7 years later by a plastic surgeon at that same hospital.   I remember feeling nothing.  I remember feeling nothing about the injury and having no emotional or physical reaction until the day I went to the health clinic to have the stitches removed. I fainted when the doctor took them out.  My body felt the trauma suddenly and all at once the disassociate wasn’t there.   From then on I always took my own stitches out so I could control the process and do it in a way that I would not feel as much pain.  The ritual of the whole thing was an important part of the process of disassociation for me.

It’s a sad list.  Really sad.  Because some of these firsts are clearly in my mind that pleasant memories I would like to remember.  The way that PTSD stores traumatic memories and erases positive ones is deeply frustrating.  Because the long term consequence of disassociation is memory loss, and rarely losing the memories I wish would disappear.

Picture was drawn in September 1999

 

 

 

Healer, Heal Thyself.

/ hopeforsanityblog / 3 Comments

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Do you ever have the feeling that you are a complete and utter fraud?

I’ve been feeling this way recently, more than usual, as I’ve been reflecting on how little of the advice I share with others that I actually follow myself.   Am I a fraud, if I truly believe what I’m telling other people, but can’t internalize it or believe it for myself?

How is it possible that everyone around me deserves health, happiness and recovery but I somehow feel undeserving of even simple things?

Someone close to me commented on one of my scars this week.  It was a passing comment, about noticing a scar on my hand that he hadn’t noticed before.  To him it was a neutral comment, just noticing, no judgment.  I told him that scar had been there since around 2002, it wasn’t new.  That was the end of the conversation for him, but I started talking about and reflecting on the amount of harm I’ve done to myself over the past 20 years.

Until 2009, I hid all my scars, all of the time, from everyone.  Even when I was home alone I would wear long sleeves and pants.  I was so ashamed of my cuts and scars that I didn’t even want to look at them myself.  In the summer, I was perpetually hot, avoiding swimming, making excuses to stay in the air conditioning.  My life was being seriously limited by my self destruction.

From 2009 on, I gradually began experimenting with uncovering my scars.  I wore t-shirts or skirts when I was hot, and started to swim again.  I still kept a cardigan or long sleeved shirt with me at all times, so I could cover up around people who didn’t know about my habit, or for situations like interviews where I didn’t want to be judged.  I used to have so much anxiety about people seeing my scars and I would imagine all sorts of scenarios where people around me judged me as crazy.  I even thought that CAS would come to take away my  kids because if someone saw my scars they would report me as an unfit mother. Over time, I  became accustomed to uncovering my scars.  I came to a place of a bit more acceptance (plus I got tired of being hot all summer!).  This was a process and today, the only time I purposefully cover my scars is when I’m helping other women at work.  I’m afraid that my scars might trigger others, especially those who are working on their own healing.

I still feel sad though, every spring when the warm weather returns and shorts, t-shirts and summer dresses flood the shopping malls.  I feel sad because in the summer I can’t hide under my clothes.  In the warm weather, I often feel exhausted when interacting with people because I am intensely aware of the visibility of my scars.  It gets a little bit easier each summer, and I think about it less and less often, to the point where there are times that I almost forget about the scars. Almost.

I can’t really forget about them. I can’t forget about them because they represent a huge, unnameable, unspeakable history of trauma and pain.  And at some points I feel crushed by the weight of the realization that I have been my own worst abuser.

I am my own most dangerous and most unrelenting abuser.

It’s difficult to know how to even approach talking about, thinking about or grieving the trauma I’ve inflicted on myself.  It’s not something others discuss or disclose to me either.  We talk about the hurt caused by other people in our lives, the betrayals, the injuries and the abuse.  We talk about being hurt and being damaged.  But how do I start a conversation or healing process around the trauma that I perpetuated?  How do I heal from situations where I was both the abuser and the survivor, simultaneously in one person, in one experience, in one breath?

My experience of surviving sexual and emotional abuse at the hands of perpetrators, is directly linked to my “decisions” to cope by self harming in various ways.  Before I was sexually abused I didn’t have anorexia, depression, PTSD, or obsessive compulsive tendencies and I did not cut or physically harm myself in response to stress.   Before I was sexually abused, I considered myself a “normal” person.  I didn’t have a mental illness, I didn’t have dangerous coping techniques, I wasn’t a psychiatric survivor or  a survivor of violence.   When I look at my scars, I see both the abuse I survived and the abuse I perpetuated.  The scars are an ever present reminder that I have survived, but they are also like a road map of the destruction and self destruction that has woven through my adult life.

Yes, my scars tell a story, but I’m not sure it’s a story that I want to hear.  I’m not sure it’s a story that I want to tell either.

But sometimes I do want to tell my story.  That’s part of why this blog was created.  There just isn’t a lot of space in our busy, day to day lives, to talk about the story my scars tell.  The person who was with me during the majority of those years (my ex-husband) is no longer available or safe for me to contact.  I don’t have anyone to share my memories of those dark years with.  The people who know me now weren’t there with me in the emergency room while my cuts were being stitched.  The people in my life now, weren’t there with me when I tried, multiple times, to end my life.   Except for a few, the people in my day to day life, didn’t know me when I almost starved myself to death.  People see me differently now.  They see me as a whole person, a mostly well person, a successful person, a good mother, a co-worker, a friend…sometimes I feel like a fraud because I can’t, or don’t know how to, talk about these aspects of my past.

And sometimes I want to talk about them.  I really want to talk about what things were like “before.”   Before I left my ex-husband.  Before I stopped utilizing the psychiatric system.  Before I decided to stay alive.

That “before” person is still me.  I’m just not sure how to heal that “before” me and this current me simultaneously.  I’m not sure how to forgive myself, or to have sympathy or empathy for the me that wanted to die.  I’m not sure how to look at my scars without feeling sadness for the fact that I permanently disfigured my body before I turned 25.  I don’t know how to grieve my smooth, scar free skin…I barely even remember what I looked like before I started cutting.

There are days when I accept my scars.  They are a part of me, they do tell a story and they do represent survival.  But there are days when I hate them.  I hate being different.  I hate having a visible mental illness.  I hate feeling ugly.  I hate worrying about what others will think when they see them.  I hate hating myself SO much that self harm feels like a reasonable solution.

Sometimes I look back on the past and wonder what my life would be like if I’d chosen a different way of coping.  Or if I’d never been abused.  Or if I’d told someone about the abuse.   How different would my life be if I’d never picked up a blade, never wished to end it all?

It’s an interesting dilemma, because there are some parts of my survivor self that I like and I wouldn’t want to change.  If I hadn’t had these experiences I would have chosen a different career path.  I wouldn’t have had my children at a young age.  I wouldn’t be as passionate about social justice and advocacy.  I wouldn’t know the majority of my current friends.

My life would be very different.  I don’t even want to change the past.  It did make me the person I am today and I’m okay with that.   What I do want to change is how much I still judge myself, berate myself and hate myself for my past choices.  I want to learn to do more than accept my scars.  I want to do more than tolerate my body, in an uneasy, fragile truce.

Intellectually, I know that I deserve more than surviving.  Intellectually, I know that a deeper level of healing is possible.  I’ve seen people around me heal and recover from unimaginable horrors.  I’ve seen people build a sense of self confidence from the rubble of their lives.  I know it is possible and that self-love and self acceptance are attainable goals.

But emotionally, I just don’t feel it.  And that makes me sad, and maybe right now, the first step in healing self-hatred is just simply grieving the loss of that 15 year old healthy self.

 Note: The illustration was drawn by me around 2004

 

It’s rude to stare.

/ hopeforsanityblog / 2 Comments

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I’m not speaking for all people with disability here, there are my own opinions.  Trigger warning for description of self harm

I identify as a person with disabilities.  The thing is, that I live in an interesting position where some of the time I have the privilege of “passing” as a non-disabled person and some of the time, it’s obviously visible that I’m different, strange, mad, crazy, mentally ill, or whatever label people might want to put on my experience.

I experience my PTSD as a chronic disability rather than an illness.  It’s something I live with and cope with and I don’t expect it to suddenly be cured or disappear.  I don’t consider myself “sick” but I’m not really well either.

One of the ways in which I coped with having undiagnosed and improperly treated PTSD was to cut myself.  I cut myself for many years of my life.  Because I had severe adverse effects from psychiatric medications I cut myself deeply, chaotically and severely.  As a result I have visible scars over the majority of my body.   These scars are covered by long sleeves and long pants, but can be seen wearing any other type of clothing.

I have a number of close friends who also identify as having disabilities, and I work in a field where I have read, heard about and studied oppression related to disability.  What I want to talk about is the situation I encountered last night.  The one in which able-bodied, sane, or well people feel the need to STARE at, or comment on, disabled bodies.   The staring makes me feel instantly like a circus freak, instantly judged, instantly “less than” and instantly oppressed.

I was out at the dance last night and I’d invited along a woman I’ve met up with a few times.   It’s been winter weather so this was the first time she’d seen me in a short sleeved shirt.  I hadn’t mentioned the self harm to her.  I had mentioned my past abusive relationship.   When I arrived, I noticed her staring at my arms. I noticed her staring at them on and off over the course of the evening.  She never said anything about them, just looked at them awkwardly.

I was already struggling yesterday.  I was having a lot of body dysphoria and feeling self conscious and negative about my body.  I’d been at a party earlier and I was hot in my sweater but I didn’t want people looking at my arms, so I left it on.  Often I forget about my scars now, but some days I’m hyper sensitive because I don’t want to risk being under the “judgemental gaze” of able-bodied or sane folks.

Here’s what I wish folks would do when they notice my scars:

  1.  You’ve noticed my scars.  You are curious. I get it. But this isn’t about you.  Please don’t stare.  I’m not a circus freak.
  2. If you must ask questions about it, if possible wait until a quite private moment and then politely ask me what you want to know.
  3. If you absolutely have to know.  Please don’t stare.  I’d rather you ask me a question about what you want to know, even in a public place than continue to stare or sneak glances at me.  Believe me  I SEE YOU LOOKING AT THEM.  You aren’t getting away with looking at them subtly.  In general, people with visible disabilities are vigilant to noticing people staring at them.
  4. Remember, I’m still the same person I was before you noticed the scars. Nothing has really changed.  Your reaction to my scars is more about you, than it is about me.  If you are seeing the scars, it means I am comfortable showing them.  You are the one who is making the situation uncomfortable by awkwardly staring at me!

And here is a list of answers to some commonly asked questions about my scars.  Maybe this will help you to not ask these questions to other people who self injure, maybe it will help others understand a bit better.  To be fully honest, people rarely ask me questions about my scars.  I sometimes wish they did ask me.  I’d rather be asked questions than be stared at and be left wondering what the person was thinking.  But there are some common questions and questions I imagine folks have.

  1.  Do they hurt?  No, most of them don’t hurt.  There are a few that didn’t heal properly or weren’t stitched properly that do hurt.  Some of them itch or the skin pulls at times which can be uncomfortable.  For the most part they just feel the same as the rest of my skin.
  2.  Can I touch them? No!  That’s fucking creepy.  This is a trigger for me, because one of my abusers asked that question.  I don’t think it’s cool, cute, fun or sexy to have them touched specifically during intimacy.  Please just treat them as part of the rest of my skin.
  3. What happened to you?  They are scars from self inflicted injuries, mainly cutting.  I hurt myself as a way of coping with ongoing sexual and emotional abuse over a period of time in my life.  I also had serious adverse reactions to psychiatric medication, especially SSRI anti-depressants which gave me obsessive self destructive thoughts and impulses over a 4 year period of time.  I was told repeatedly that “doctors don’t give you medication to make you sick”
  4. Did you have to get stitches?  Yes.  Lots of them.
  5. Did it hurt?  Sometimes.  But a lot of the time when I was harming myself I was disassociating and I didn’t feel the pain.  A lot of the time I was doing it I was numb and detached and felt very little.  It hurt a lot AFTER and when it was healing, when the disassociation wore off.
  6.  Do you regret it? Sometimes.  It’s hard to remember a time when I didn’t have the scars.  To be honest the scars trigger me sometimes which is why I often used to hide them.  They bring back bad memories of times I’d rather forget.  But they are a part of me as well, a part of my story and a part of what I’ve survived.
  7.  What is the worst part about having self harm scars?  The worst part is the judgement I get when seeking non-psychiatric medical care.  So many times doctors have seen the scars and treated me differently.  They often make assumptions about me that are incorrect.  They assume I’m drug seeking, an addict, or that I’m unstable, lying, attention seeking, borderline etc.  I notice that doctors have the worst misconceptions about self harm.   Doctors often assume I’m LESS able than I actually am, and at times I struggle to receive appropriate medical care.  There is a great deal of stigma attached to having a mental health disability, especially related to self injury.

The take home message is simple:

Don’t stare at people whose bodies may be different than yours.

If you must ask questions, do so politely and privately if possible.  Ideally, don’t ask a lot of questions of complete strangers.  Questions as part of a friendship come across completely differently and can be more acceptable as a part of getting to know someone over time.

I notice you staring at me, and I don’t interpret it as polite concern.  I interpret it as intense othering.

I was just there for the dance.

Why I sometimes miss self harm…

/ hopeforsanityblog / 6 Comments

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<trigger warning for description of self harm>

It’s a strange thing to admit, but if I’m 100% honest with you, I still miss self harm.  As a coping mechanism it has to be considered one of the worst.  Almost my entire body is covered with permanent scars.  The scars cause me to be self conscious and feel shame.  The scars also result in social stigma, and difficulty in being taken seriously by health care providers.  They itch as they heal and sometimes they hurt.  They are constant reminders of parts of my past that I’d rather forget.

Usually when I think about self harm, what stops me is remembering two things

  1. The self harm only ever helps for a brief moment
  2. I will have to hide the wound and feel intense shame about this, as well as worry about the consequences if anyone sees the injury

This usually works, but sometimes I feel bitter and angry.   Sometimes I have thoughts like “If society didn’t consider self harm to be SO AWFUL, I could just keep doing it, because I wouldn’t feel ashamed and I wouldn’t worry about the potential negative consequences on my family.”  I get angry and I feel like my coping mechanism is being taken away from me.  I get angry and think about how some people get fall down drunk on a regular basis and society thinks this is acceptable.   Why isn’t MY coping mechanism acceptable too?  I feel like having a tantrum like a 2 year old child!  I want it and I want it NOW!  But most of the time I refrain from self harming, not just for my children, but for myself too.  It’s not a lifestyle that I want to return to.

I do want to write about some of the complex reasons I miss self harm.  Some of this might sound completely ridiculous to you.  I’m worried about being honest and just writing this down.  I’m worried about being judged for liking some aspects of this self destructive habit.

Self harm gave me something physical to take care of, and be taken care of for,  when my inner pain was un-fixable and unreachable.

Even though I experienced a lot of maltreatment and abuse in the psychiatric system and hospital emergency rooms, I sometimes miss having a physical injury that could be fixed.

There were times when I was almost addicted to the process.  The care I received after self harming was almost as important, if not more important, than the ritual itself.  The trip to the emergency room WAS part of the ritual.   To be honest, without this part of the ritual, without the serious self harm, it seems almost useless to hurt myself at all.

There was a predictable ritual to the emergency room visit.  At times, I felt safe and cared for there.  At times it felt like a pause, a break from the day to day stressors in my life, which at that time felt unbearable.   I think there was a part of me that used self harm and suicide attempts as an excuse.  Not a cry for help or attention, but a cry that said: “I can’t do this.  It’s too much.  I need a break.  I need to be cared for.  I’m not capable.  I’m afraid to fail.”

I remember some of the times I had multiple serious injuries from self harm.  It took the doctor or medical students a considerable amount of time to fix the cuts.  During that time, the doctor would often speak to me.  I had their full attention.  I was being cared for and I was being symbolically “fixed.”

There was a ritual to the process.  Triage.  Waiting room.  Exam room.  The questions.  The cleaning of the wounds.  The freezing.  The sutures.  The bandaging after.  The conversation.  The questions.  For those hours, if I was treated nicely, it was like being numb and being in another world.    A world where time was stopped, my responsibilities were paused, the outside world did not exist.    I actually FELT better afterwards, like I had been healed, but the improvement was so fleeting.  So very fleeting, that often I was injuring again only a day later.

It was as if the injury gave me an excuse to stop, validation to say “I’m not well.  I’m not coping.  I need help!”  Without the injury, without the physical reason, I struggled to ask for or to accept help.  I still do.

I’ve never really verbalized all this to anyone before.

I remember one time, I cut myself on my stomach.  It was deeper than usual, maybe deeper than I intended or realized, because I was new to injuring in that spot.  Over time I had learned to hurt myself in places I could hide.   (When I first started, I was almost hypomanic from SSRIs and I cut in visible places, places everyone could see and that were very difficult to hide.)

I went to the hospital, as I usually would, alone.  At the triage desk they examined me, discovered the wound was serious and triaged me as Emergent rather than Urgent or Less Urgent.   I was put into a wheelchair and taken back into a part of the ER I’d never seen before.  I think it was the place for seriously ill people. The lights were dimmed and the bed was actually comfortable.  I had my own room, not just a curtained area.  It was quiet and comfortable.  I didn’t have to wait very long and I remember feeling safe and calm and protected.  I felt like my health problem was considered important, legitimate and I was being cared for appropriately.  I had a female doctor and she was kind to me.  She was wearing ordinary clothes rather than scrubs or a gown.  I remember her as being fairly young.  She treated me as if I had a physical health problem, not as a mad, crazy, unworthy self harming psych patient.   I felt bad because she got blood on her clothing while she fixed my injury.   I can’t really describe exactly what happened that night.   But I felt protected and the ritual had worked, my mind was quiet.  The racing thoughts were gone.  It was silent and the room was dimmed, like the thoughts were dimmed as well.  For that time I was in another world.

I’m having a difficult week.  I’m feeling overwhelmed and lonely and scared.  I’d like nothing more than to be cared for.  To be honest, the thought of that quiet, dimly lit emergency room bed is very appealing. But I don’t want to achieve this through self harm.  I don’t want to be “sick” and treated in hospital to get a break or to feel validated in resting.

I want someone to take care of me because they care about me, not because it is their job.  I want comfort because someone loves me, not because they are scared that I might harm myself.

I want to be an adult and not a misbehaving, out of control 2 year old.  This is part of what recovery means to me.  I have to use my words, not my actions to let people know that I’m not okay.

Note: the art was made in 2005