Why I’ve Stopped Using the Language of “Self-Destructive” Behaviour
Since this post was reported on Instagram, I wanted to give it a safe home here. Content note: problematic drug use, sexual assault and rape, bullying and slut-shaming, and mentions of “self-destructive” behaviours including self-harm and suicidality.
Fun fact about me: I really dislike the language of "self-destructive" or "self-sabotaging." I've always felt like there's something pathologizing about these terms, and Janina Fisher's book Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors helped me figure out why. The words "destructive" and "sabotaging" are used to describe behaviours and actions that are "problems" meant to be solved or "cured." These words bring with them feelings of shame, which cause us to hide the fact that we engage in these acts out of fear of judgment, criticism, and pathologization.
I spent so much of my life ashamed of the things I did as a teenager and young adult to survive: drug addiction, disordered eating (caused by the drugs I used), self-harm, having unprotected sex with random boys, and engaging in high risk behaviours without any care for my own safety. I was pure death drive. It used to feel impossible to look at photos from my teenage years without having a full blown trauma response. The shame would come up and then I'd dissociate. And so I tucked those photos away again and again.
When I moved to Calgary, I knew that I was ready to move from shame to compassion and welcome my teenage self home. I brought my teenage photo albums with me, and have been practicing bringing them out to look at. Now, I keep photos of my teenage self at my altar as reminders that they are loved. Reframing my "self-destructive" behaviours as adaptive strategies and attempts at surviving chronic traumatization has enabled me to heal in ways that weren't possible when I was stuck in shame.
I want to name that the power and privilege we hold impacts whose behaviour is labelled as "self-destructive." The more marginalized our identities, the quicker others are to pathologize our attempts at survival and police them. I think about how normalized it is to judge and shame houseless folks when we see them smoking, drinking, or using substances. Or about how Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour are targeted and incarcerated for possession of substances at dramatically higher rates than white folks. The language we use matters.
First, what are “self-destructive” or “self-sabotaging” behaviours?
Problematic substance use
Disordered eating
Gambling
Compulsive shopping
Risk-taking behaviours, such as having unprotected sex
Re-enacting situations that have been harmful (e.g. being in abusive relationships)
Self-harm & suicidality
Self-medicating
Caretaking & self-sacrifice
Sexual compulsivity
Indifference to safety concerns
Ending relationships that are supportive, while staying in ones that are toxic or abusive
Why We Should Stop Using This Language
1. This language is pathologizing.
When we label behaviours as "self-destructive" we imbue them with shame and blame, and with the belief that these behaviours are something to "fix." While it is true that these behaviours do cause harm, and that the goal is to find new behaviours to replace them, they've also played a vital role in our survival, as these "behaviors represent different ways of modulating a dysregulated nervous system and preparing for the next threat" (Janina Fisher).
Janina Fisher writes: “It would be rare in the mental health treatment world to think of these symptoms as adaptive strategies made possible by the body’s instinctive survival defenses. But from a neurobiologically informed perspective, they are ‘survival resources,’ ways that the body and mind adapted for optimal survival in a dangerous world.”
I love this reframing of “self-destructive” behaviours as “survival resources.”
2. This language misses the necessity of these behaviours to our survival.
Engaging in "self-destructive" behaviours is a sign that we're operating in a false window of tolerance. When we're in a state of chronic hypoarousal, we engage in behaviours that activate our sympathetic nervous system (such as using uppers); when we're in chronic hyperarousal, we seek to engage our dorsal vagal system — and may restrict food intake or engage in self-harm in order to numb. We then feel a sense of energy or calm that makes us think we're regulated and in our window. Recognizing the protective role of these behaviours leads to healing them.
"If we assume that suicidal ideation reflects a conscious intention to die, we will interpret it as a life-threat or a scream for help. And if we do, we will miss the core issue in self-harm: the pursuit of mastery over unbearable feelings or relief-seeking. At the heart of all self-destructive behaviour is a simple fact: hurting the body, starving it, planning its annihilation result in welcome relief from physical and emotional pain” (Janina Fisher).
When I was 14, I started to get high every day. First, I started with pot. Then I quickly moved to harder substances. That this happened in the wake of being raped is not surprising to me. That I sought out harder substances after dealing with slut-shaming and bullying every day at school also doesn’t surprise me. The drugs helped me escape the pain I was living through. They were, in a paradoxical way, keeping me alive.
3. This language causes further harm through policing and an investment in an abstinence approach.
When "self-destructive" behaviours are framed as a safety concern, then we create a dynamic of policing, in which the therapist, caregiver, or parent becomes hypervigiliant and the person engaging in these behaviours feels the need to hide.
These behaviours were developed to help manage the pain of our daily lives. Treating them as pathological and in need of an abstinence-only approach doesn't get at the root of why the behaviours were needed in the first place. Moreover, to remove these behaviours without anything else to take their place will result in even greater dysregulation. In Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma, Janina Fisher explains how:
“sobriety or abstinence in the context of trauma can precipitate a whole series of new crises and symptoms because the individual is now totally without the neurochemical barrier and false window of tolerance created by the substance use, eating-disordered behaviour, suicidality, or self-injury.” When we remove these coping mechanisms before creating new ones, we should expect relapse to occur.
We need a harm-reduction approach to moving from these maladaptive coping mechanisms and towards newer, more supportive strategies for regulation.
4. This language promotes shame. What we need is compassion.
True change does not occur by using shame. In fact, shame shuts down our prefrontal cortext, which is what we need to access if we want to move away from trauma-based responses to triggers.
True change happens when we use compassion. We've already spent so much of our lives punishing ourselves for who we are. Further punishment and shame will only make us need "self-destructive" behaviours even more, will only make our parts scream even louder for the behaviours that enable them to escape.
Compassion supports nervous system regulation, by activating our ventral vagal nerve, enabling us to come back into our window of tolerance. In Healing the Fragmented Selves, Fisher writes: "The more we welcome rather than reject, the safer our internal worlds.” It’s from this place that we move towards healing and new supportive coping mechanisms.
So what language can I use instead?
Here are some suggestions:
Self-preservation
Survival resources
Trauma responses
Trauma logic
Defensive accommodations
Attempts at self-regulation
Relief-seeking
Adaptive strategies
Some Final Thoughts
I’m deeply grateful that I was able to get sober and stop using substances. That was the first step of my journey. From there I was able to stop engaging in unsafe and risky sex, and over time I moved away from re-enacting the scenes of harm and abuse that filled my teenage years and spilt into my young adulthood.
I’m no longer interested in shaming myself for all of the ways that I learnt how to survive. I look to my younger self, and their coping strategies, with so much reverence. Thank you for trying to keep me alive, as best you knew how. And, I’m so, so glad that I’ve been able to find new protective strategies that support me as the adult that I am now.
If you want to learn more about the adaptive strategies of your parts and how to tend to their needs, I hope you’ll join me for part 2 of my Parts Webinar Series:
Carrying Ourselves Home: Tending to & Befriending Our Parts
Sat, Sept 25 11am-1pm MT
$0-80 | Free for BIPOC
Will be recorded | Register here
