Learning Safer Coping Through Art with Maggie Parr

Content Note: This episode includes discussion of self-harm and cutting which may be distressing or triggering for some listeners. Please take care of yourself while listening.

In this deeply moving episode, Jen sits down with Maggie, an artist and author, to talk about her journey through self-harm and the unexpected place where healing began: art.

Maggie speaks openly about her experiences with self-harm, beginning at a young age and continuing through years marked by misunderstanding, shame and silence. What makes this conversation so powerful is not just Maggie’s honesty about her pain, but her willingness to share what recovery truly looks like — not as a simple “stop and move on” process, but as a slow return to self, compassion and creative expression.

This episode is an invitation into a more truthful conversation about mental health, vulnerability and the ways we cope when life feels unbearable.

When Pain Has No Words, Art Speaks

For Maggie, art became a lifeline long before she realized it was one.

When emotions felt too overwhelming or unsafe to express out loud, creativity offered a place where they could live without judgment. Art became both witness and companion — a way to release what could not be spoken and to gently begin understanding what had been buried inside.

In this episode, Maggie explains how creativity can become a bridge between suffering and healing, not because it erases pain, but because it helps us sit with it in a different way. Through color, shape, texture and story, art becomes a language for what the body and heart have been holding.

Understanding Self-Harm Beyond the Surface

One of the most important parts of this conversation is Maggie’s willingness to challenge common misconceptions about self-harm.

She speaks about how self-harm is often misunderstood as “attention-seeking” or dramatic behavior when in reality it is often about survival — an attempt to regulate overwhelming emotion, to feel something when numbness takes over or to exert control when life feels unmanageable.

Maggie also sheds light on how gender plays a role in reporting and recognition. While self-harm affects people of all genders, men are often less likely to speak about it or seek support due to stigma and societal expectations. This silence allows suffering to go unseen and untreated.

Healing Means Meeting All of Yourself

Recovery, Maggie shares, isn’t about erasing parts of yourself. It’s about understanding them.

Healing involves gently learning why certain behaviors existed, what they were trying to protect and what pain they carried. It means replacing shame with curiosity, punishment with compassion and avoidance with patience.

Maggie speaks about the courage it takes to become honest with yourself — to look at the parts of you that learned to survive in harmful ways and offer them something different: care.

From Lived Experience to Lifeline for Others

Maggie’s journey eventually led her to write her book, A Creator's Guide to Stopping Self-Harm — a resource designed to help others explore healing through creativity.

The book offers insight, reflection and practical guidance for using art as a therapeutic tool. It is not about being “good at art,” but about being honest with it. Maggie invites readers to create not for perfection, but for connection.

If you have ever felt that words fall short, this book offers another way in.

Episode Highlights

• [00:00] Maggie’s Journey: From Self-Harm to Healing Through Art

• [10:21] Understanding Self-Harm: A Deeper Look

• [16:02] The Role of Creativity in Recovery

• [23:31] Art as a Medium for Connection and Healing

• [27:42] The Book: A Creator’s Guide to Stopping Self-Harm

Resources & Connection

To learn more about Maggie’s work and connect with her:

Maggie’s Website https://www.stoppingselfharm.com/

Maggie’s Book https://a.co/d/hQv61Fa

Follow Maggie on social media:

https://www.facebook.com/MaggieParrArt

https://www.instagram.com/maggieparrart/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maggieparr/

You Are Not Alone

If this episode stirred something in you, please know you are not alone — and you don’t have to carry this quietly.

Healing does not always begin with answers. Sometimes it begins with creating space. Sometimes it begins with listening to someone else’s story until you finally feel seen inside your own.

May this conversation remind you that even in the darkest places, there is still a part of you reaching toward life.

And sometimes, that reaching looks like art.