How Tattoos, Piercings Can Serve as a Coping Mechanism From Trauma

“[Getting a tattoo] is about transmutation — turning one thing so hateful into an emblem of my reclamation, therapeutic, and solidarity with different survivors,” said Marlee Liss, a survivor of rape.

Researchers have beforehand explored the hyperlink between experiencing trauma, and getting subsequently inked or pierced. Now, based on a brand new examine revealed in BMC Psychology, tattoos and piercings is likely to be extra widespread amongst individuals who endured youngster abuse and neglect — serving as a “technique of dealing with earlier adversity and be an expression of autonomy.”

The researchers recruited greater than 1,000 contributors from Germany, aged between 14 to 44 years. 40% of the contributors did, on the very least, have one tattoo or one piercing — amongst them, solely 35% didn’t have a historical past of kid abuse or neglect. However out of 25% of the overall variety of contributors, who reported rising up with vital abuse or neglect, as many as 48% had both a tattoo or a piercing or each. Furthermore, the extra extreme the abuse or neglect they confronted, the extra tattoos or piercings the contributors had, based on the researchers.  

“I acquired Céline Dion’s autograph on my arm. I really met her and this was her precise autograph. Céline has been my ‘protected place’ since I used to be a bullied teen in highschool. Now in my therapeutic journey from trauma and PTSD, she’s what I finish each session of [therapy] with,” Monika S., had told The Mighty in 2018, narrating her lived expertise.

The pandemic, too, has been a supply of “mass trauma” for folks throughout the globe — greater than what the Second World Struggle had left in its wake. It’s hardly shocking, then, that anecdotal proof of individuals getting more tattoos since 2020 is rising — nearly like surviving the pandemic propelled them to it. Ocean Gao, an artist based mostly in New York, says, “When my studio reopened in August, I used to be apprehensive folks weren’t going to come back… However extra folks needed tattoos than earlier than the pandemic. I believe there was an pleasure to follow company, and I used to be tattooing quite a lot of designs that individuals mentioned that they had needed for years.”

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Identical to Liss, many survivors of sexual assault flip to tattoos as a supply of energy — one thing they will draw from, and one thing that protects them. For Landon Funk, a professor at Columbia State Comunity School, a tattoo of Medusa provides her “hope, strength, and agency.” For Alicia Chung from Canada, nevertheless, the tattoos themselves assume the type of protecting armor — shielding them, and giving them the braveness to navigate life independently. “I defend myself by adorning myself. It’s armor… It’s my bizarre, twisted method of gaining autonomy,” they noted.

Upon experiencing bodily ache, the mind releases endorphins, that are chemical substances produced by the physique to relieve pain. This eases one’s emotional misery too by engaged on the ache heart within the mind that senses both emotional and physical pain. “I’m a tat[too] artist and quite a lot of my shoppers are additionally former-self harmers. Tattooing provides you bodily ache and emotional launch, however as an alternative of scars, you get one thing cool out of it,” noted a Reddit person.

Furthermore, the bodily ache can be intricately linked with a component of management one feels over their our bodies — and generally, by extension, their lives. “Not like emotional or social ache, it’s doable to regulate bodily ache,” Joseph Franklin, a psychologist at Florida State College, explained. And so, the ache itself can find yourself turning into a motivating issue behind one taking the plunge to switch their physique. Particularly so, for the reason that ache is certainly one of their selecting — based mostly on the sort of piercings, or the designs of tattoos one chooses, they’re, to an extent, controlling the diploma of ache they are going to endure. This sense of management in a second of helplessness and emotional turbulence makes it a coping mechanism — very similar to self-harm.

Backing up this clarification, a person dwelling with C-PTSD wrote, “[I] skilled quite a lot of bodily and emotional abuse and tattoos let me really feel like I’m reclaiming my physique and therapeutic the harm. Additionally, [it’s] much more productive than self-harm and different self-destructive behaviors.”

Additional, the very fact the ache inflicted within the means of getting pierced or tattooed is extra tangible than emotional misery, makes it extra interesting — its visibility affords a sort of validation that trauma survivors are often denied for his or her invisible scars. “Tattooing begins on the physique’s first line of protection, the pores and skin, and makes use of it as a canvas to bodily bear witness to the assault skilled on physique, thoughts, and sense of self. As such, it usually visually and viscerally turns into a supply of therapeutic,” Suzanne Phillips, a psychologist, had explained.

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Not solely that, Phillips believes the visibility of tattoos and piercings can even assist undo any disgrace one could affiliate with having been a sufferer — by acknowledging that trauma publicly, and in a body of their selecting. In keeping with a 2018 study on the therapeutic energy of tattoos, they “act as a visible illustration of a private narrative” — providing “bodily reclamation and cathartic launch.”

The affiliation between trauma and getting inked or pierced isn’t only a cultural reality, although. The findings of the current examine can, probably, kind a part of extra sturdy psychological healthcare, based on researchers of the current examine. “These findings open up new avenues for help affords (involving tattoo artists and piercers) and screening (in major care). Tattoos and piercings may additionally present an impetus for therapeutic conversations in regards to the significance of previous experiences and about at the moment vital themes,” it famous.

Nevertheless, it’s pertinent to notice that the connection of trauma with these body-altering actions, could not apply to people for whom tattoos and piercings have a cultural significance. In different phrases, if it’s a customized to have younger women’ ears pierced as kids in a sure nation, then a three-year-old’s piercings received’t go on to counsel they’ve been traumatized. First, their guardians made that call for them; second, it’s a ceremony of passage they could really feel socio-cultural stress to take part in, even when they’re an grownup and (seemingly) making that call for themselves.

However for the remainder of us, tattoos and piercings seem like strongly related to a traumatic previous — though a causal hyperlink is but to be established. So, in a nutshell, as Terri White, a British journalist, had written in her e-book ‘Coming Undone: A Memoir’, “[N]ow I select to proudly see [my tattoos] as a written testomony. My testomony. The phrases and shapes and colours that inform my story earlier than my lips can. Even when the one individual listening is me. A narrative that started with trauma, was powered by ache, and is now outlined by neither.”