I am not a stranger to the
dark,
Hide away, they say
‘Cause we don’t want your
broken parts,
I’ve learned to be ashamed
of all my scars,
Run away, they say
No one will love you as you
are
- Greatest Showman soundtrack –
This Is Me
I recently
had to see a Neurologist after I began experiencing seizures and was diagnosed
with Non-Epileptic Seizure Disorder. In the run up to the diagnosis I’d had a
few seizures where I’d come round and found people asking if I had a medical
alert bracelet and on trying to find it, they’d discover my self-harm scars.
There
was a mixed response. Sometimes there was ‘awww’ and ‘bless’ and sometimes
there was ‘oh!’ and ‘have you taken something?’
I think that this is just
evidence of the catalyst for the reluctance to show self-harm scars; the opinions
of others. The reaction of others. Their response. Because people aren’t
predictable. Especially with mental health.
It’s
kind of a marmite subject; you know that whole ‘you-either-love-it-or-you-hate-it’
thing? Except with mental health it’s ‘you either show understanding and
empathy, or you hold an ignorant, uncaring, and discriminatory stigma. No one
really, 100% considers the impact their response – no matter which way it is –
has on a person. It can be obvious that you’re going to upset someone, but do
we truly understand the damage it can do to a person’s spirit? Their attitude?
Their outlook on life? Because if you do, why would you continue to do
something when you know the level of the impact it will have on someone?
I
think the problem is that we underestimate the power our responses have on a person. Like we don’t fully recognize
the level of influence we can have on another person’s life. It’s like I say to
the Police in our mental health training sessions with the new recruits – they have
the power to motivate someone to jump or to climb back over the railing. The
mistake people make is thinking that their actions only have that level of
impact in a mental health crisis. When a person ‘isn’t well.’ Well that isn’t
true. It doesn’t matter what your mental state, which medication you take, how
often you self-harm, what trauma you went through…
With
self-harm, I think that the person most considerate of their actions, isn’t the
people responding to it. And don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying it’s a
competition because I don’t think it’s fair to say one is more powerful than
the other. And this post isn’t just to talk about the stigma others hold; their
judgement and their patronizing comments. It’s also about the stigma we hold
within ourselves, the shame we hold. The regret. People talk about regret like
it says a lot about someone who would say they have no regrets in life. And
like it says more about someone who might say they have things they’d like to
do over. I like to think that I have no regrets in life because if I changed
things in my past then I’d be in a completely different place to what I am now.
And the place I’m in now? Well it ain’t all that bad! But when I look at my
arms? When I look at my self-harm scars… yeah; I wish I’d never done it. I wish
I’d never been so angry that I needed a release. I wish I’d never gone through
something that would bring me so much anger. I wish I’d never picked up that
sharp object. And that doesn’t make me weak or ungrateful for the life I now
have. It just means that sometimes I think about having to cover my arms when
children are around. Or having the tumultuous debate as to whether to go for
short or long sleeves in getting dressed for an interview. Or thinking about
what the scars will look like on my Wedding Day. Wondering if they’ll still be
bad when I have children – if they’ll ask me what they are, what they mean.
I’d
hope that if anyone held a stigma towards people with self-harm scars before,
perhaps reading those things will teach you not to kick a person when they're down – a
person’s already going through enough to want to hurt themselves that being
unsupportive and condescending… holding a debilitating stigma towards them, isn’t
going to help.
I am brave, I am bruised,
I’m who I’m meant to be,
this is me,
Look out ‘cause here I come,
And I’m marching on to the
beat I drum,
I’m not scared to be seen,
I make no apologies,
This is me
- Greatest Showman soundtrack –
This Is Me