Seeking treatment and healing from the trauma of self mutilation is attainable
Cutting and eating disorders often go hand in hand. Although recovering seems like an impossible task, healing from self injury is possible. The trauma of self mutilation can be dealt with within the right treatment and with the right therapist.
One of the most effective ways to kick start healing is to know and hear from others who have been through a similar experience. Sometimes realizing that you are not alone and that others share your pain is an important step down the road to recovery.
In Vanessa Vega’s new book, Comes the Darkness, Comes the Light: A Memoir of Cutting, Healing, and Hope, she reveals the struggles, anguish and self torture that were infused in her young life.
The first pages are a personal letter from the author inviting readers into her pain and the recovery it took her over 15 years to find. Her experience is extreme but the book filled with hope. This introduction paves the way for the suffering she will endure and the hope she finds to live her life free from cutting and an eating disorder.
Most importantly, she does not preach that recovery is easy, that anyone else’s experience will be the same as hers, and that it will take as long as hers did. She writes that she's not at a point where she’ll never cut again, but she is at a point where she accepts her slip ups and moves on. This is an integral part of any healing journey.
From when Vanessa was a child, she was taught to hold her feelings in and only appear pleasant when her father got home from work. Whether or not she and her brothers were in the middle of fighting, when dad walked through the door, they all stopped and pretended to get along.
This presented a stable home life that Vanessa never felt. Instead, she found that by hitting herself, she could alleviate some of the emotions she had wanted to express but couldn’t. She learned to go to her room to express feelings her own way; by banging her head against the walls, hitting her legs until they bruised, or digging her nails into her skin, the physical pain was easier to deal with than the emotional.
Her behavior escalated from there and many dark nights were filled with scissors dragging across her skin and scars to prove her torment. A ritual developed, one that would follow her into her adult life, and which could not be broken with even the biggest amount of willpower.
The image of darkness engulfing a person is so powerful. Anyone who has struggled with disordered eating and cutting can certainly relate to the commanding authority of the dark shadows that soon take over. The gloom that replaces childhood is so beautifully expressed in this memoir.
Above all, the book gives light at the end of the tunnel and hope to those who don’t believe they have any. Vanessa shares the group therapy sessions that would change her life and reveals the hard work needed to recover. But it is possible and a read of this captivating memoir will leave readers feeling hopeful, changed and ready to begin their own journey.
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