If you struggle with self-harm or experience suicidal thoughts, the following post could be potentially triggering.

Most of us know Shirley Manson as the iconic frontwoman of indie band Garbage. Her no bulls**t attitude made her seem like the most confident person in the world.

But, beneath the surface, Manson was not always so happy – something she’s now written about for the first time for the New York Times.

“The first time I cut myself, I was sitting on the edge of a bed inside my boyfriend’s flat,” she writes. “It was late. He and I had been arguing for some time, our voices gradually becoming more and more raised. I was concerned that we might wake his flat-mates, and in a moment of utter exasperation, I reached across for my little silver penknife, pulled it from the lace of my shoe and ran the tiny blade across the skin of one ankle.

“It didn’t hurt. I did it again. And then I did it again.”

After stopping for a period, Manson experienced the “strong impulse” to hurt herself again during the European tour of the second Garbage album, Version 2.0, describing the “immense physical and mental pressure” she was under.

“I was a media “it” girl, and as a result I was lucky enough to be invited to grace the covers of newspapers and fashion magazines all over the world,” she writes. “Perversely, the downside of attracting so much attention was that I began to develop a self-consciousness about myself, the intensity of which I hadn’t experienced since I was a young woman in the throes of puberty.

“I was suffering from extreme impostor syndrome, constantly measuring myself against my peers, sincerely believing that they had gotten everything right and I had gotten everything so very wrong.

“The mental anguish I was inflicting on myself was extreme and drove me half out of my mind. In hysterical, extreme moments, I thought if I could just get my hands upon a tiny little knife it would bring some relief and I would be able to handle the stress. Mercifully, most likely because of the rigorous demands of touring and an understanding that cutting myself was not something I really wanted to get back into, I managed to resist the compulsion to harm myself again.”

“Why it is so important that Shirley Manson has opened up about self harming”