Why I Stopped Hiding My Self-Harm Scars

I stopped hiding my self-harm scars so I could feel free. Let me explain: self-harm insists on making its history known. It leaves evidence of itself on your skin in marks both faint and bold and in times of both struggle and recovery. These self-harm scars can make you self-conscious, remind you of a painful past, and draw unwanted attention. The common impulse among self-harmers and those with a history of self-harm is to hide them. But hiding self-harm scars, for me, just never felt like freedom.

Hiding self-harm scars is understandable. For years I hid behind sleeves, wristbands, crew socks, pants, and even chunky jewelry. For years I tried every brand of scar cream I could find, and when that didn’t work, every makeup product matching my skin tone. I had a catalog of lies about my self-harm scars running through my head at all times: which lie I told to whom, and when, and to what extent.

At a certain point, it had to stop. As time went on I started to question whether all the effort toward hiding my self-harm scars was even worth it. Who and what was hiding my self-harm scars really serving?

Hiding Self-Harm Scars Risks and Consequences

Hiding self-harm scars reinforces a toxic sort of secrecy. Self-harm itself is already a toxic, furtive act and hiding it only causes that toxicity to fester. The more you try to hide it, the larger it looms.

The constant lies drive a wedge between you and the people you care about. The lies make you live in fear of exposure to the people around you — that is, it makes you live in fear of the people around you. You are withholding a big part of yourself from them and it will make you feel like a fraud.

Psychologically, you start to view the scars — which are now a part of you regardless of how you feel about them — as something shameful. When you live in shame of any part of you, you are living in shame, period. This shame will only strengthen the forces that drove you to self-harm in the first place (Causes of Self-Harm, Self-Injury, Self-Mutilation).

Hiding Self-Harm Scars and Recovery

This is the single most important reason to stop hiding your self-harm scars: hiding them inhibits your self-harm recovery. All of these things — the lies, the fear, the shame, the obsessiveness — keep you stuck in a part of your life that you may otherwise be able to move on from.

For some (as it was for me), exposing your self-harm scars may be the very thing that starts you on a path toward receiving professional help. For others, it may be a way of finding a life and identity beyond self-harm.

Exposing your scars is not a denial of them or your experiences. Exposing your self-harm scars is the ultimate act of self-acceptance. And self-acceptance allows you to move on.