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This paper is grounded in a first-hand account of my own experiences with self-injury and shame. By using my personal diary entries as support for this account and a sociological framework of shame, I explore the process of shame and shame reactions in an intimate relationship. I illustrate how shame was activated by my internalized critical other, how the shame cycle de-stabilized my relationship, and, finally, how shame was restored through the other's validation and acceptance, or how it led to more shame managed by self-injury. However, this account is not simply about self-analysis, or a need to indulge in my pain; rather, it is an inner dialogue that rests on the commitment to develop a richer understanding of the personal and interpersonal experiences of self-injury and shame. Today, I finally understand how shame works and this has helped me to not get caught up in my emotions. So, although shame may take a hold of me at times, I am no longer, like before, controlled by my shame.

Self-injury is deemed a pathology and a deviant practice that is not socially sanctioned and culturally accepted as soothing and healing the self. The marked female body is also pathologized and perceived as deviant; hence, having self-inflicted scars may easily lead to social stigma, shame, and the need to hide the scars. In this personal reflection I explore how self-inflicted scars can have the same meaning as self-injury to control the self and act as self-expression, and how the marked female body can be a resistance to the cultural idea of femininity. I draw upon my own personal experiences of self-inflicted scars and how these scars have become intertwined with my identity. I have carved or burnt my body in different situations and from different moods in the past, but they are all with me at the present and will be with me in the future. Without the scars, I am not the person that others see me as or I see myself as. I sometimes feel that I would be nothing without my scars.

Although previous studies have considered shame to be a significant emotion in making sense of self-injury, the connection is still not fully understood. Drawing on sociological ideas on shame, this communication contributes to a theoretical understanding of actions of self-injury by demonstrating how shame operates and unfolds in social interaction. It argues for how shame and self-injury may reproduce and amplify each other, hence turning into a self-perpetuating cycle of shame and self-injury. It shows how shame is triggered in social interaction, how shame leads to self-injury, and how self-injury may turn into more shame. Self-injury is used to fend off shame by upholding social and cultural commitments and maintaining social bonds with others. However, self-injury may also threaten social order and social bonds and, consequently, trigger more shame. The most important reason that self-injury does not fully work as emotion work, and internalized social control, lies in the interactive cycle of shame, that is, you feel shame and cut, you cut again and are (a)shamed, you are shamed and cut, and so on. It is proposed that people who self-injure do not necessarily lack the ability to self-soothe or regulate emotions or that they suffer from a clinical psychopathology.

Utilizing published autobiographies, we explore how individuals who self-injure discursively construct their experiences of the self and self-injury. The authors construct their selves into two seemingly opposite subject positions, here named the "bad girl" and the "good girl." For the most part, the authors identify themselves with the "bad girl" position. Although there is a struggle to uphold normalcy in front of others, they regard evidence of the "good girl" position as fake. We demonstrate how they, to a large extent, accept the dominant discourse of self-injury as an individual and pathological problem for which they tend to blame themselves. However, they also challenge the negative subject position by separating themselves discursively from the bad "side of the self." Acts of self-injury are described as a way to cope with the negative perception of themselves and at the same time being what causes feelings of self-loathing. Thus, understanding how the psychomedical discourse affects individuals who self-injure as well as the consequences of the medicalization of self-injury are of importance. Furthermore, social workers may be in a legitime position to work with the self-representations and the social factors that may underlie an individual's need to cut or in other ways physically hurt oneself.

This paper explores parental (particularly mothers') support in the daily lives of children with allergies in a Swedish context. An ordinary life is established by making comparisons to what other children without allergies presumably can do (and eat). Although the parents' goal is to support their child in managing allergies, neither their practical nor their interactional strategies work in a clear-cut direction to promote the child's ordinary life and identity. On the contrary, parents' accounts convey that they function just as much against an everyday life and the child's identity. When managing family relations, parents expect immediate family members (specifically grandparents) to understand and accommodate the child's needs. However, claims of family responsibility are made through moral tales about lack of support from "generalized others." Family responsibility is also downplayed in parents' accounts as demands of support may put parents' moral self at risk. The strategy of information control in certain situations and (non-family) relations used to keep the child safe may risk stigmatizing the child, alternatively, making the child into a social threat. One of the conclusions that could be drawn from this study is that claims of family support may be contradictory to other cultural principles that ascribe responsibilities between families and individuals, as the principles of individual freedom and autonomy.