My daughter started cutting herself when she was in the eighth grade. By the ninth, she had scars on both her wrists and her thighs, shallow ones, but visible. Covid lockdowns were beginning to end, but they had taken their toll on this young girl who had been isolated from friends. But the biggest pain was caused by her complex relationship with her father, who had treated her with neglect bordering on abuse. It would have been an awful lot for any adult to bear. She was only 14.
My own response to her cutting was pretty minimal. I saw the scars on her arm, but rather than move into pro-active hyperdrive, I barely acknowledged them. I was taking a gamble, and I knew it. Of course, I was far from indifferent to her pain. But I felt that sometimes moving into a full therapeutic response has the opposite effect of that intended: it might indulge with amped-up seriousness what might simply be an otherwise painful but manageable part of life. I knew that the wound caused by her father would take time to heal, time and other happier things to fill up her heart. And I wanted her to get better without the pathologising rigmarole. But how?
What a professional or a parent can’t accomplish, a friend often can. My daughter was partnered with a group of three boys in her home economics cooking class, all of them “toxically” — and wonderfully — male: irreverent, funny, and just the right amount of mean. “Don’t let Nat get near the knife!” they’d tease. “Knives are for cutting vegetables, Nat. Vegetables.”
This ridicule might strike some as unusually cruel, a form of bullying and an instance of an “unsafe place” in her public school. But it was the mockery and jokes which were precisely what was healing for Nat. In her words: “It showed that they cared because they acknowledged my hurt, but they also showed that I didn’t have to let it overcome me. By drawing attention to my scars, they showed me that I didn’t have to feel ashamed of them. By laughing at me, they showed me that it was okay to laugh at myself.” And just like that, her cutting stopped.
But as I see it, there was another, deeper aspect to their ridicule that helped her to heal. It was the faith they had that she would take the jokes with a good spirit. Implicit in their teasing was their understanding that N would join in on the fun. And the bond created by that faith was the healing she needed. They trusted her to know that implicit in their mockery was care and love. Their leap of faith meant she felt less alone.
A university chaplain once told me something that seems to capture the spirit of our age: the highest ethic for the students she talks to, she said, is to not hurt another person’s feelings. That is a line that the kids will not cross. Not only do we not presume to tell one another how to live, we affirm others in their choices (largely to feel affirmed ourselves in our ethical, nonjudgmental behaviours. We are all such good people). Yet this seems to me to be profoundly anti-life, as well as deeply disrespectful of another’s capacity for good faith. How can one even begin to form real relationships if one is too afraid to hurt another person? How can we discuss ideas and feelings, debate them or contest them? How can we be authentic if we are constantly monitoring our every thought and action so as to not disrupt another’s sense of well-being?
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