All my soul is filled of wounds : A study based on women’s experiences of living with self-injury.

This study intends to illuminate women’s experiences of their own self-harm. Self-harm is mostly associated with women and research shows that women mostly are over-represented. This study describes women’s experiences about their self-harm but also how they perceive the elements around them during their illness. There is a focus on women’s abilities to manage emotions and how they are expressed. There is also a focus on how women perceive the support from important people in their individual social network. This study is completed by a qualitative approach based on six autobiographies there young women tells about their self-harm and mental health. The study has a hermeneutic approach which enables interpretation of our collected material. The result is presented based on two themes that focus on the women’s emotional management and their support from their social network. The empirical material is analyzed on the basis of theoretical concepts of systems theory and network theory but also Antonovsky’s (1987) theory; KASAM. The result of this study resulted that the women’s social network have significance for them during the time with self-harm whether their social network are functional or not. The study has also found that the women’s emotional management are affected by meaningsfullness, manageability and comprehensibility