From tce 52/53
I have recently been engaged in fascinating discussions about the concept of “voice.” This has included conversations about what constitutes “having” a voice, what it means to be heard, what the difference is between an individual voice versus a group voice, and other interesting ideas. The context for these discussions was the involvement of trauma survivors in a research project focused on improving services for women who have histories of abuse and the resultant problems that come with survival of abuse. This research included the voices of healing women in all of its aspects, including the construction of the research questions, methods, and analyses, as well as the selection and refinement of the services the women and their children received. This involvement of women with experiential wisdom, the recognition of their healing being an area of expertise, and the valuing of such knowledge, was groundbreaking. My involvement in the work led me to this desire to explore the concept of “voice” as it pertains to living with Self-Inflicted Violence (SIV).
What is “voice”? In a limited sense it is simply the physical ability to speak. But there are multiple definitions of the word. My Random House Dictionary discusses several of these, including “expression in words,” “the right or power to be heeded or obeyed,” “an expressed will or desire,” and “to give utterance or expression to.” What do the acts of SIV have to do with voice? How is the cutting, burning, and punching of our own body related to expression? To the right to be heeded? To an expressed desire? What does SIV give utterance or expression to? What is the language of SIV? How is it “heard”?
SIV serves many purposes for the people who need it. People self-injure to cope with a multitude of difficult emotions and experiences. SIV provides people with a means of moderating intense feelings that overwhelm them, with a way of managing dissociation (the sensation of one’s essence being disconnected from one’s body), a way of stopping flashbacks of abuse or other historical trauma, a method of expressing distress when unable to communicate verbally, an outlet for intense psychic stress, and a host of other purposes. What is common to all of these different circumstances is the limitation of expression in a person’s life that does not provide them with a wider array of choices for dealing with all of those situations. People living with SIV often struggle with having a traditional voice with which they can express emotion or state desires or needs. Oftentimes the cutting and the burning and punching are a means of expression as well as release. What is it that the voice of SIV is saying?
There are many ways of communicating, of expressing one’s voice. We have our physical voice, “body language,” the written word, gestures and expressions, sign language and art. And we have SIV. For some people, SIV is a means of self-expression that cannot occur in any other way. It may be an external expression of the degree of intense internal turmoil. SIV is primal. It gives voice to that which has no language to be described. How does one vocalize the feeling of near-disintegration, physical and or psychic, that accompanies the survival of severe trauma? If trauma, especially in the form of profound childhood abuse, occurred at a very young age, before any verbal skills had developed, how can one express and manage such experiences? How can we learn to speak about events that had no language available with which to describe them?
The ability to express deep internal conflicts, intense experiences, or visceral emotions can be very limited. I believe that many people have just begun to explore the world of intense affect and have recently begun to consider how our earliest and/or most intense, often brutally painful experiences, impact their lives. Many of us are bound to rather constricted lives as a result of events that have led us to narrow our choices and abilities. I believe that, for people struggling with SIV, those conflicts are demanding attention, the psyche is presenting itself for healing, and the reality of the internalized pain can no longer be avoided. It may not be able to be spoken directly, but there is a voice that needs attending to. Sometimes, when it knows no other way, it speaks in blood, bruises and blisters.