Chandler, Amy

Simopoulou, Zoi

English

This reflective and layered, interdisciplinary paper makes a space to think of self-harming as an attempt at self-care. Specifically, we acknowledge the self-care in turning to one’s own body to provide for oneself. Reviewing accounts in published memoirs and young people’s own personal accounts of self-harm taken from thematic analysis of a qualitative survey, we began to attune to echoes of such attempts at self-care. The wording, the images, and/or the ambience conveyed in some of the accounts, suggested to us traces of a kind of movement. Repetitive, permanent, deep, superficial, pleasing, ongoing, returning; it is an attempt at keeping oneself going even if it is by harming oneself. Sustaining self-harm, sustains one’s sense of self. Self-harming becomes a personally meaningful experience – a provision of, or an attempt at, a meaning. This imagining provides an alternative vision of how self-harm might be thought as an act of care towards the self. Self-harm seen in this way, makes attempts at healing by making attempts at meaning through a relationship with one’s body. Drawing on the significance of the early relationship with one’s own body as both a point of contact and differentiation between the self and world, we consider how the turn to the body in self-harming can be seen as a turn to a refuge through an act of self-care. We look at how qualitative details of pleasurable pain, repetition and permanence are traced in young people’s accounts of self-harm, conveying a self-caring quality by providing a feeling of aliveness, an experience of reliability and a sense of self, troubling dominant narratives of self-harming as a practice of habit, addiction and coping

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     Edinburgh Research Explorer                                      Self-harm as an attempt at self-careCitation for published version:Chandler, A & Simopoulou, Z 2020, 'Self-harm as an attempt at self-care', European Journal for QualitativeResearch in Psychotherapy, vol. 10, pp. 110-120. <http://ejqrp.org/index.php/ejqrp/article/view/101/73>Link:Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research ExplorerDocument Version:Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordPublished In:European Journal for Qualitative Research in PsychotherapyGeneral rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s)and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyThe University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorercontent complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright pleasecontact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately andinvestigate your claim.Download date: 16. Oct. 2020///////////

Self-harm as an attempt at self-care

https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/files/165560570/ChandlerAEJQRP2020SelfHarm.pdf

Self-harm as an attempt at self-care

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