Shirley Manson - Shirley Manson: 'I Have Great Empathy For Self-harming Fans'

The Garbage singer accepts many of her devotees are hypersensitive to remarks and actions and she can only hope that her music helps them through difficult periods in their lives.

She tells Instinct magazine, "As a former self-harmer myself, I really do relate to anyone who is suffering so acutely from feelings of worthlessness that they attack themselves. That's born of a feeling of not being heard.

"It's such a gentle person usually who turns in on themselves, like they'd rather hurt themselves than hurt somebody else.

"I do feel a lot of empathy toward people who suffer like that, or what I like to call hypersensitivity. It's a form of intelligence in a funny way; you're reading things that most people are blind or deaf to."