GARBAGE singer Shirley Manson opens up about self-harm, fighting fraud syndrome

The singer of Garbage shared how she resisted the compulsion to harm herself again and fought the feeling she “wasn’t enough”

July 3, 2018

Garbage frontman Shirley Manson has always been vocal about dealing with success and world fame. In a new op-ed, she revealed how success made her self-conscious, recalled her experiences with self-harm and battling the so-called “imposter syndrome”, otherwise known as “fraud syndrome”.

In the New York Times piece, Manson oped up about inflicting self-harm. The singer confessed she first cut herself when she was a teenager, the reason being toxic relationship. “I suddenly felt I was part of something much bigger than this stupid situation I had found myself in,” she explained. “To my mind, my life had just immediately become more grand and expansive. The problem of course with any practice of self-harm is that once you choose to indulge in it, you get better, more efficient, at it.”

As years went by, the old relationship was no longer the stumbling block, and she stopped harming herself. The bigger issue was the load of sudden Garbage success and its consequences. “I was under immense physical and mental pressure. I was a media “it” girl,” Manson recalled, referring to touring with Version 2.0 album back then.

Watch: GARBAGE go seriously political in new, powerful music video for ‘No Horses’

The singer suddenly found herself in the limelight of public attention all over the world and had to review her self-image and perception. “I was suffering from extreme “imposter syndrome”, constantly measuring myself against my peers, sincerely believing that they had gotten everything right and I had gotten everything so very wrong,” she admitted.

You might wonder what sort of syndrome the singer is talking about. “Imposter syndrome”, also known as “fraud syndrome”, is a state of mind causing the person to doubt their accomplishments, and a constant fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. People experiencing imposter syndrome feel as if they do not deserve all they have achieved and tend to explain their success by mere luck or public deception.

The frontwoman of Garbage wrote it took her a lot of time and effort to “resist the compulsion to harm” herself again and get over “the frustrations, the sick, unhealthy comparisons, and the peculiar, destructive feelings that drove me to believe I wasn’t enough.”

In other news, Manson has recently received the NME’s Icon award at the VO5 NME Awards. As for Garbage, they have dropped a 20th-anniversary edition of their successful Version 2.0 album. The big date will enjoy a proper celebration on their UK tour this September. Go here for tickets.

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