This speech was given at the "More than Just A Bandaid" Seminar in Brisbane on June 22, 2000.

I began selfharming in minor ways when I was ten or eleven years old, and by the age of twenty, I was cutting or burning myself on almost a daily basis. This activity was at the centre of my existence - it was the event which deliniated the period of intense, illdefined, painful emotion that filled my days, from the strange blend of freedom and shame that followed a "session". I had little understanding of what drove me to cut, what purpose it filled in my life. I hated the secrecy of the activity, and wearing long sleeves all through summer, and washing bloodstains from clothes and sheets. I hated the look in people's eyes when they caught a glimpse of a new wound, and fending off the questions when those who didn't know innocently asked, "what happened to your arm?" I hated myself for hurting myself, and because that hatred was so big I self-harmed even more. In the end, self harm was not so much something that I did, but something that I was - a critical part of my identity, one that I could not seem to erase, no matter how hard I tried.

I spent hours in psychiatrist's offices, weeks on psych wards. But the mental health system had few answers to offer, and those they gave were of little use. For example, I was given diagnoses by the handful - around seven in a year and a half. But calling me "major depressive" or "schizotypal" or "borderline" gave few clues as to how to make the harming stop. Instead, they just increased my sense of being damaged, broken, screwed up, hopeless, fundamentally flawed - and they decreased my faith in those who claimed that they could help me, because how could they help if they couldn't even agree on a label? <

Then there were the medications. I learned volumes about neurotransmitters from the creative mixes of antidepressants I was given, but strangely never became any less depressed. In hospital, the "bad thoughts" of self harm were a signal to request the mysterious "prn" - usually a combination of valium and largactil. Sure, this would sometimes make me feel so sick and so sleepy that I couldn't be BOTHERED self harming for a while. But as I slept I'd dream terrible dreams, and be unable to wake because I was so sedated...and when I finally DID wake up, the feelings would be there waiting, worse than before.

Hospital itself was an experience which wounded me more than it helped me. The first doctor who admitted me avoided mention of the term "psych ward" - his euphemism of choice was "a safe place". A safe place. In truth, hospital held no safety if you REALLY wanted to self harm. The depressed atmosphere of the ward, the lack of any distractions or stimuli to take your mind off your situation, the isolation from family friends and normality, the constant scrutiny, the loss of freedom and choice and any sense of control - it all leaves you feeling lonely and depressed and generally like a second rate person. And if you feel that bad about yourself, and have a history of hurting yourself, and access to the means to self harm - well, you'd probably do what I did. Even if it DID mean being accused of attention seeking, which incidentally didn't help much either.

In spite of my desire to understand what was happening, and my desperation to find someone who could help, I seemed to be trapped. Every time it came to actually talking about what was happening, and how I felt about it, words vanished. I was left silent, helpless, not knowing what to say.

Just last year, I read Steven Levenkron's book "Cutting: understanding and overcoming self-mutiliation". In it he wrote "typically, a selfharmer appearing in a therapist's office has nothing to say. She prohibits herself from complaining about others, or accusing them; to her, that's immoral. she can't complain about herself; that's being weak. She can't analyse or interpret what goes on inside her head, or between the people she lives with, or peers she is friends with, because she has no vocabulary for this. She experiences her feelings of anger (when she CAN feel them) as dangerous."

And there I was. I don't know if you can really understand a pain that is that big, that silent. I don't know if you can comprehend the depth of those feelings that would not or could not be spoken. You know, everyone asked me why I did it, why I hurt myself, and the answer was so obvious that even I overlooked it for a while.

I cut because it hurt.

I think if there is one assumption that it is safe to make about every young woman who self harms, it is this - they are in pain, and they can't give voice to their pain. Whether this hidden pain is from the cruelty of a parent who abused them, from years of bullying from peers who rejected them, from the manipulation of a boyfriend who raped them, a loss of selfworth from constant criticism of failure to achieve their goals, a feeling of powerlessness or meaninglessness or hopeless - whatever that pain is, it is buried in silence and secrecy and it HURTS. And so the wounds become the voice which speaks of this pain - they are the feelings that can't be expressed, the tears that can't be cried. They are an invitation to a counsellor or nurse or doctor or ANYONE to see what is not being spoken.

At a website I visited recently, there was a survey of self harmers. In their own words, they gave over and over again the following explanations of their self-injury - "its to express the pain", "to control the pain," "to release the pain", "to experience physical pain and release mental pain", "there is just so much PAIN...."

One particularly poignant response came from an 18 year old girl who had been self harming for two years. "I do it to stop thinking," she wrote. "The blood, the cutting gives me something else to look at and concentrate on. If I stop then the feelings I'm trying to block out come back. If I do it for long enough then when I'm done that's what I think about...In our household we have to be brave. Crying is not allowed...for my sake its best if I don't. I cut to stop thinking so that I have something else to occupy my mind in times of pain. I cry through the blood, my body cries for me."

And this is what I found too, as I came to understand my own self harm. There was pain, and the inside pain and external wounds were intimately bound together. Still, this was only an insight, not a solution, and the wounds were adding up.

As I fought the battle, I learned another important thing - there was no magic answer, no simple way to stop. Two things became critical, believing I had choice, and finding alternatives. I had to beleive that there was a choice involved in cutting - if there wasn't, then I had no power to change what was happening, and no hope of ever stopping it. I had to start making cutting a choice, instead of just doing it reflexively, whenever the inner tension became too much. I had to say, as I picked up a knifeblade, "this is a choice"...as I cut into my skin, "I am choosing this to get rid of feelings"...even when I examined, with disappointment, the fresh wounds the morning after, to state, "last night I CHOSE to cut."

As I came to believe in choice I also began to find alternatives - other, better choices I could make instead of cutting. Sometimes it was enough to distract myself, playing a computer game or working on some kind of puzzle which kept my hands busy while in my head I tried to sort through the feelings that were making me want to cut. Other times, I found release through some painful but not damaging sensation - squeezing ice cubes, taking a hot shower, or scrubbing my arms with a dry loofah until the numbness went away. Sometimes a symbol of hte pain was enough - drawing on my arms with red biro, or writing the angry names I called myself onto my skin. Another option was to release the destructive energy by walking, or shredding paper, or pounding the padded arms of my couch, even breaking old bottles occasionally. Whatever option I picked, I tried to work on giving names to the feelings that were behind the urge to self harm, identifying the triggers that were pulling me back toward darkness. Sometimes I'd even take the risk of writing the feelings and triggers down, in my journal, or in a letter to my doctor, or in an email to a good friend who understood what I was going through.

This strategy, I guess, was pure trial and error. It was hard to fight the part of me that still felt self harm was justified, even necessary as a kind of punihsment for who I was. But slowly I became better at noticing when the urge to self harm was building, and at asking "what can I do instead?" And every time I wanted to hurt myself and didn't, I knew that it could be done again. I had another alternative that would work, at least some of the time. And as I cut less, I began to like and accept myself more. I began to see that life without cutting could be better, more hopeful, full of possibilities that were limited by the secrecy of self-destruction.

I never promised myself taht I would never self harm again - I just concentrated on what I could do instead. The times when cutting seemed like the best option gradually decreased. From self harming every day, I went to doing it once or twice a week, then once a fortnight, then once a month. It was two weeks AFTER the last time I cut myself that I decided I'd stopped for good. I didn't need it anymore. It was strange going through the house, searching out and removing my weapons from their hiding places. I found twenty three knives and blades set aside for cutting, half a dozen cigarette lighters for burning. Although I never wanted to use them again, I couldn't bring myself to throw them away. In the end I made them a part of a collage - not the kind you hang on the wall, but a very private work of art to symbolise the war I'd fought and won.

Its almost a year since I made that final cut. It's hard to believe, but I did it. I stopped. And I'm glad.