Please be gentle - self harm as a feminist issue

"they have misseed me and missed what I am about and we have to start again to keep me safe"

Are they saying they haven't assessed you or your needs properly? Not quite following.

Hope you didn't hurt yourself last night fluffy. Hope you're OK now, whatever happened.

So sorry to hear you are feeling terrified all the time. That must be awful.

Firstly very best wishes to you FDG, I hope you are safe.

I don't really have anything to add myself but another book you may be interested to read is Wasted by Marya Hornbacher (although, I know for some it may be triggering).

She writes primarily from the perspective of someone with an eating disorder (though later in life her primary diagnosis was corrected to bipolar) and she has a lot to say about mental illness as a feminist issue.

What do you have to do? Are you talking about hurting yourself?

Well what they are doing seems like more invalidation of your feelings, rather than anything useful.

How helpful is it for you to be told how lucky you are when you're struggling so much? I can't see it myself.

Do you ever express your pain,your description o four hand I kept thinking you need to scream,to give a voice/volume to your pain, you seem to use it to lock yourself away.

I am no expert, just my thoughts. I hope you get the help you need, keep posting like others have said you articulate yourself so well, do you do that verbally?

Who praises you for reaching the expected standards Fluffy? Whose standards are they?

Who is telling you how lucky you are with your nice husband?

Feminism would say that none of the things you describe will necessarily make you happy, if you aren't in touch with yourself and and aren't getting your real needs met. Are you living the life you want? The way you describe it, it doesn't sound like you are.

(in the first paragraph I meant the sabotage as in by scarring/damaging your body, therefore 'spoiling' the body you are working hard to achieve... Sorry if I'm repeating others there)

It's like you strive so hard for perfection or at least to make yourself acceptable by being well groomed - but yet you dislike yourself too much to let yourself be so perfect/acceptable and so you sabotage the hard work you are putting in.

I've not really considered this side to self harm before - as I said earlier for me it was release of pain, anger, the more well known reason I suppose.

I'm sorry you are going through so much, I remember being in the depths of my addiction (to be honest the worst of it was not when I was in hospital). I am glad the staff are helping you - the manager of my adolescent unit said (quote) "self harmers are manipulative, attention seeking and a waste of space". Twat.

Another one here saying don't worry about the waffle :) say what you want, nobody here's going to judge you.

You are very articulate, fluffy, don't apologise for rambling!

Like others on this thread I have flirted with self-harm (never seriously) and for me it was about self-punishment... there is also something weirdly satisfying about the physical nature of self-harm, expiating one's (imagined?) sins as religious obsessives used to by flogging themselves and praying all night on a cold stone floor.

So the question is, why do we see ourselves as not good enough? What is it, really, that we are punishing in ourselves? Society sets women very high standards, and judges them viciously for not achieving them... it's not surprising, I think, that we internalise this.

"Why is it not enough?"

I second what Catitainahatita says, we are constantly having our experiences and feelings invalidated, why the hell should it be enough? You talk about your childhood feelings being emotionally invalidated Fluffy, is that linked to your feeling that what you've got ought to be enough and that it's wrong of you to not find it enough? If you want to talk about that, please do, don't feel that you're being boring or dull or vile, we are here to support you as well as to try and find some feminist insights into why you might be going through this and why so many other women do. But equally, if you don't want to go there, don't feel you're under any obligation to explore something you don't feel is relevant or helpful to you.

Hi Fluffy, I asked if you were angry because I wonder if you allow others to see your anger? Do you feel you have a "valid" reason to be be angry, or do you think that your reasons are not "valid" and that you shouldn't allow yourself to be angry/let others see you are angry?

I get the impression that you are very hard on yourself, that you don't give yourself a break. You don't want to talk about how you are because you think it will "bore" us; ie, you think that your sufferings aren't important enough to receive sympathy. I think perhaps you feel the same about being angry. You think you haven't had it tough, that your husband is a good man and you have no reason to be how you are.

If I am way off the mark, please tell me and ignore this post. It is not my intention to tell you how you feel or anything. As I said in my other post I am merely wondering if perhaps my experience is of any use to you. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that I was wrong.

So: I think that this is a feminist issue. I think -as women- we are constantly told that our feelings aren't "valid" or that we don't have a "valid" reason of feeling how we do. It is common to dismiss an angry woman as hysterical or silly or say that she is exagerating her feelings with no reason. You will always find someone who will say, "that's nothing compared with what X went/ go through". It is said about rape victims to imply that "date-rape" for example is not the same as "real rape (ie by a stranger with use of extra violence). If you read comment sections, any articles in women's issues is always plagued by the comment to effect that women in this country have nothing to complain about compared to [insert country under a highly repressive regime here]. That we shouldn't be wasting out time on such "unimportant" stuff and concentrate on the "real" problems.

It is easy to internalise this message and believe that you have no right to be upset or angry or have mental health issues. I think a feminist response would be to say that you -Fluffy- are very important person and your feelings etc are important. You have every right to be angry, even if the cause of this anger is not mass murder. If it is important enough to make you angry, it is important enough for others to take seriously.

As I said, if I am totally wrong here, ignore me. I hope you start to get an idea of how to deal with your issues soon.

Fluffy, the last thing you are is boring or shallow.

Thinking of you x

So I suppose the contrast for me is this careful control of my appearance, to the point of obsession at times (I can't go camping because I would not be able to make myself look right for example). And yet my self harm is destructive and ugly and I am very disconnected with that.

I don't see a contrast in those two behaviours: they are both completely consistent with feelings of low self-worth. One is "My body is not worth seeing without a bunch of processing first", and the other is "I am so hateful that I should hurt myself." I hate my body / I hate my soul.

I am so sorry that you feel this way. I think all women feel body hatred, to whatever degree (and far too many also hate their entire selves). I blame our patriarchal society.

Sorry, that might have come across as an implied criticism but it wasn't. It's not shallow for women to be obsessed with our appearances. We're told constantly that's all that matters about us. You say yourself that even the people who are supposed to be helping you comment on your appearance as if it was the most important thing. Those are strong messages, so it's not surprising that women take them on board. None of this stuff happens in a vacuum.

I've been dealing with some stuff from my own childhood and I don't know if you'll feel it applies to you, but these sort of self destructive feelings can come from a childhood where people were destructive to the child, or where people didn't care or even where they actively hurt them. Once again, nothing happens in a vacuum. Those kind of feelings don't come from nowhere. They are usually forced on to someone.

I tried to read Women who Run with the Wolves once, but I only got as far as her take on Bluebeard (extreme male violence towards women) where she was arguing that this story had some kind of psychological significance, quite ignoring that there are men out there who are real Bluebeards, who really do slaughter women, and simply couldn't go any further with it. I couldn't cope with the idea of male violence towards women being turned into a psychological metaphor for something else.

If you want to read feminist analysis of patriarchal sadism towards women, I'd recommend Andrea Dworkin or Mary Daly's Gyn/Ecology, especially the latter. They are feminists who are very helpful when you're looking for answers, I'd say.

Fluffy, I respect that you don't want to talk about it, but don't feel you can't - you wouldn't bore us, your feelings really do matter. The fact you said that just shows how little you think of yourself (I am probably stating the obvious there sorry) :(

It's strange you talk about needing to even control how much SH you do, as last night I cut for the first time in ages, and I found myself thinking I had to make it symmetrical, I was agonising over how many to do. I recently found out I have Aspergers so I think for me that is related to the need for control.