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Body Modification and Self Injury

The connection between self injury and body modification is something that I've thought about a lot. I started self injuring when I was 9 years old and I've struggled with it off and on ever since. After college, I finally admitted to myself that it was a serious enough problem for me to get into therapy. My first therapist was surprised to learn that I had never rebelled when I was young, and told me to go ahead and do something a little unexpected. I've always wanted more than just my standard gunned-at-the-mall ear lobe piercings, so I did some research, and ended up getting my first real piercing. That one little 14 gauge conch changed my life. All of a sudden, it was a touch easier to hold my head high while walking down the street. And like so many other people, one piercing led to the desire for more. That's when I realized that I needed to be careful about my motivation for getting pierced. I wouldn't get a piercing if it didn't appeal to me aesthetically, but even the easiest piercing is at least a little painful. I'm not into pain at all, but there's something especially satisfying in wanting something enough to put up with various degrees of uncomfortableness in order to get it. I don't get pierced because of the pain; I'm willing to deal with the pain to get the piercing. My self injury, on the other hand, is almost always all about the pain. I either need the pain to make myself feel strong and tough when I'm feeling particularly weak and pathetic, or I need the pain as a way to sort of punish myself for doing something stupid. For some people, pain can be therapeutic. For me, it's not a healthy thing at all. I realize that my thought process isn't logical at all when it comes to self injury, but that's just the way my brain works sometimes.

I understand the reasoning behind wanting to do something nice for myself when I'm not in a good place mentally. Things like a new haircut, or a new t-shirt can make me feel better about myself, and I don't think there's any harm in that. New piercings make me feel better about myself, but I want my piercings to be 100% positive things; things that I love and am proud of, things that make me feel good about myself because I like the way they look. I don't want to have to explain my piercings by saying, "Yeah, I was really stressed out at work so I got this one here, and I was having a bad day so I got this one over here." Now, if that's someone else's motivation for getting pierced, and that's what works for them, I don't think it's necessarily harmful or self destructive. I just know that it's not what I want.

Getting into body modification has definitely allowed me to feel differently about my body. I can't say that my piercings have any special spiritual meaning other than the fact that I like they way they look on me, or, for the ones below the belt, that they feel good. My most meaningful mod is a simple 1" tattoo on the inside of my right wrist. A few years ago, I joined an online community support group for self injurers, and one of the people I met there had the awesome idea to keep track of safe days, days without a self inflicted injury, by putting stars on a calendar. It sounds silly, what got me though many difficult nights was knowing that if I stayed safe one more day, I'd be able to add another star to my collection. As a tribute to that community, and as a permanent reminder to myself of all of the days that I did manage to stay safe, I got a green star tattooed on my wrist. This was a major thing for me to do because that wrist was a favorite place for me to take out my aggressions on myself. A tattoo there meant no more cutting there. Which is not to say that I've been SI free ever since, but it was a step towards a commitment to safety. My second tattoo was a vine on my ankle, also covering scars. Like the star, the design itself has meaning, but so does its location on my body.

I have also considered piercing as a way to enhance a body part that I don't particularly like. Currently, I'm debating nipple piercings for that reason. And although it wasn't something I thought about at the time, my genital piercings have changed the way I think about that area. Before piercings, it was just "down there". Now it's a part of my body that I genuinely like. And when I lose enough weight to make a navel piercing something that actually has a chance of healing, I plan to get that done as well, to prove to myself that a belly does not have to be perfectly flat to be beautiful.

My therapist was ok with the one piercing. She wasn't too pleased with the ones that followed and figured that I had just extended my addiction to self injury to body piercing, and she didn't get the purpose of the star tattoo at all. My parents also don't understand my interest in body modification and most likely see it as just a different form of self mutilation that I will hopefully grow out of soon.

I guess everyone draws the line in different places, but ultimately I think what determines whether it's art or mutilation is the motivation of the person getting it done. For example, I can understand how scarification is a form of body art for some people, but to me, it just looks like scars, and in my mind, scars mean bad things. Art should be a beautiful and positive thing. I can't look at the scarification section of BME because most of it is way too triggery for me. I'm not squeamish, and I've been all over BME Extreme. But to me, scars = self injury, and self injury = tempting, even though I know that most people with an interest in scarification are not doing it as a form of self injury. The scarification section also worries me because I could see how a young person already struggling with self injury could come across those pictures and figure that they really don't need help after all because what they do is art, not a sign of mental distress.

The line between self injury and body modification is a very fine one, and I'm inclined to think that it varies from person to person. There is no doubt in my mind that some people do get pierced or tattooed as a form of self injury. I don't think that it's the form of body modification that determines whether or not it's mutilation, but the motivation of the individual. I also think that people need to realize that not only is self injure possible through piercings and tattoos and extreme mods, but also though more socially acceptable things like plastic surgery. Body dismorphic disorder, anyone? Michael Jackson as example A? (I have no verification for this, it's just my opinion.) The majority of people, I hope, who get plastic surgery are motivated by positive things. I think the same is true in the body modification community.

One of the big misconceptions about self injury is that it's done to get attention. While this is true in some cases, most times, the self injurer goes out of her way to hide the evidence. Self injury is a very egotistical thing. I'm not sure that's the right word, but self injury is all about the person doing in. It is for that person, to that person, because of the way that person thinks. It's not really about anyone else. I've also realized recently that most people who aren't into body modification assume that those who are do it for the attention, and most of the time, I don't think that's the case at all. I know that it's not for me. My mods are for me only. The last thing I want is to draw attention to myself, and it's unfortunate that my mods do make me stand out to some extent. But like I tell my parents, if my choice is between being true to myself and looking different, I'll take that any day over fitting in but being uncomfortable with who I am. They don't understand that I don't mind if people stare at me because of my piercings or my stretched lobes or my tattoos or my ridiculously short hair. Those are all things that I love about myself. I know that those things make me look and feel awesome, so I couldn't care less if people stare and think I'm weird because of them. It's a way of taking control of my body, I guess. Before mods, if people looked at me, I assumed that it was because I'm fat, or ugly, or wearing dorky clothes. Now I can assume it's because of my mods and feel good that they're looking at parts of me that I like.

I have noticed that there are an awful lot of people who have mental disorders in the body modification community, enough to make me think there is a connection after all. If nothing else, I think that people who don't have depression take happiness and even regular old every day contentment for granted, while people with depression realize how tenuous true happiness is. As a result, people with depression are more likely to say, "the hell with what society, or my family, or my friends, or the boss think. If getting a piercing or a tattoo will make me feel better, the repercussions are worth it." People who are at an ideal place in their lives might not want to make that kind of trade off.

Another correlation that comes to mind is that many people assume that body modification is a phase of rebellious youth and that no responsible adult would have an interest in such a juvenile thing, which all of us in the community know isn't true. It's this attitude that often makes employers not want to hire people with visible mods. The same thoughts exist about self injury. It's seen as a phase of troubled teens, when the reality is that it is a disorder which affects many adults, who as a result, find it very difficult to get the help that they need.

Now, we just need to get employers to realize that it's an asset to have employees who are openminded enough to have an interest in body modification, and we need to get shrinks and doctors to realize that tossing self injurers into mental hospitals is not the best way to treat their disorder.

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"Now, we just need to get employers to realize that it's an asset to have employees who are openminded enough to have an interest in body modification, and we need to get shrinks and doctors to realize that tossing self injurers into mental hospitals is not the best way to treat their disorder. "