The Cutprice Guignol

Please note that this post will contain discussions of self-harm and substance abuse.

I’ve written a few times about my experiences with self-harm over the years. But, as I enter my thirties, I’ve found that the way I’ve viewed self-harm has changed – and that, despite increasing rates of self-harm amongst adults, the cultural narrative is still very much focused on young people when it comes to self-injury.

Self-harm, broadly, is something that is viewed as being almost entirely limited to young people, teenagers especially; it’s connected to that roiling discomfort of adolescence, a mark of inner tumult searching for some way to express itself before we have the language or skills or knowledge to really make that happen. And I think there are a few reasons for this – most prominently because pop culture focuses its depictions on teens and young people, but also because self-harm can morph in adulthood as we gain access to other ways to manage our pain – binge drinking and taking drugs were as much self-harm to me as cutting was, they just came with with a veil of social acceptance that more instantly-recognizable forms of self-harm might not have.

But, either way, there is this pervasive notion that self-harm is something limited to young people – something you grow out of, a phase you look back on with a grim sense of relief. Maybe you carry a few of the scars as a reminder, but it’s something contained to those younger years, something shrugged off as you grow into yourself. And let me tell you, as someone who started self-harming as a teenager and has dealt with that on and off into my thirties, it’s much, much harder to have a conversation about it as an adult. There’s this profound sense of shame that comes with self-harming as an adult that I didn’t feel in the same way I did when I was a teenager; I’ve never been proud of it, but there was a feeling of the self-harm I went through at that age fitting in to some pre-determined narrative about what self-harm looked like. It wasn’t that there wasn’t stigma or shame attached to it then, but there was a sense that at least it sort of made sense – teenagers self-harm sometimes, and I was a teenager self-harming. Simple.

Except…it’s not. There’s certainly a lean towards the younger in reports on the age demographics taking part in self-harm behaviour, but around 1 in 9 adults report self-harming at some point over the course of their adulthood – and those numbers could well be skewed by the fact that so much research on self-harm is focused on younger people, and a sense of shame or doubt that might lead self-harming adults to avoid self-reporting. The overwhelming feeling that I got when I had self-harm relapses into my late twenties was one of shame, a feeling of frustration at how childish I was being; as ridiculous as it was, it felt like I should have grown out of it by now.

And shame is the primary issue that I’ve come across when I’ve discussed these issues with other people who self-harm into adulthood; that feeling of frustration, guilt, why haven’t I grown out this already?. Which, in its way, is kind of funny; the stresses I faced in adulthood far outpaced the ones I did as a teenager, and this coping mechanism, at times, felt even more urgent than it had in the years before. But self-harm, in a way other coping mechanisms that I still have from those years like drinking and smoking don’t, feels uniquely childish because of its association with adolescence and youth. Drink yourself into a fugue state like a real grown-up, you know? Cutting is for teenagers. The shame was and is profound, that feeling of having to contain this part of yourself that will frame you as immature in some way.

But shame and stigma are intimately connected with worsening outcomes for those who self-harm, and are hardly conducive for getting to the bottom of the problems that have led to the self-harm in the first place. And, as uncomfortable as it is, I think the only way to start to chip away at this stigma is to talk more openly about self-harm that begins or continues into adulthood – the conversations just aren’t happening about this at a level comparable to the amount of people dealing with it, and that needs to change.

Consider this post my attempt to do my part in that, but, with all that in mind – if you’ve dealt with self-harm as an adult, what have your experiences been? Do they differ from those you had as a younger person, and if so, how? If you’re comfortable sharing, please do in the comments below. And please know that, whatever age you are, any shame you carry about dealing with self-harm is not something you need to live with – consider checking out some of these resources for self-harm, including adult-specific.

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