Self harm, the facts and my personal battle

A lot of people, who have never dealt with a mental illness don't understand why someone would purposely harm themselves. They may not understand why it helps or how it becomes extremely addictive, they just know its not a healthy way to express emotion. Let me explain how it felt for me...


From the first cut, I was hooked. Hooked to the quick relief I felt when I cut, an escape from the emotional turmoil I was feeling. I was 13, and I used a sharp hairclip, it didn't bleed so I kept going until my arms were swollen and red raw. From then on it was my go to tool whenever things got too much. Seeing the scars was proof that what I was feeling was real and painful, as I felt no one understood. Although of course I tried to hide it,  never taking my jumper off, even in summer.


As the addiction grew, I would test myself to see how far I could take it, using blades now as I knew they were more dangerous. It was my way of seeing the pain physically and it was easier to cope with a cut then what was going on in my head.


Why do people self harm?


People self harm for a whole bunch of reasons and sometimes its a mixture of a few. For me personally it was proof of my feelings and also gave me a sense of control over my own pain. Below is a list of some other reasons why someone may self harm:

• express emotions that are hard to verbally explain
• To ask someone for help (note: never call a self harmer an attention seeker! They are in need of help not to be judged)
• stop feelings of dumbness
• To distract from the emotional distress
• Express suicidal thoughts without actively attempting to take their life.
• To feel in control of their pain

What counts as self harm?


Anything in which the person has done to deliberately harm themselves, it is NOT just cutting. Here is a list of examples:

• Bruising
• Burning
• Overdosing
• Making yourself sick
• Cutting
• Scratching
• Biting
•  Under eating or over eating
• punching the wall  

Useful advice to you if you self harm


There is no easy way of stopping or even reducing your self harm. Sometimes something may go wrong in your life and your first thought is to hurt yourself (Mine is for sure) but if you feel like you really want to make an effort to stop, below is some things I've learnt over the years:

• Wait 15-30minutes. When an urge comes on, I try to tell myself to wait for at least 15minutes, if the urge is still there and hasn't died down at all then I allow myself to. But most of the time just allowing the urge to pass has stopped me! To distract myself in that 15 minutes I usually write in my diary or draw how I'm feeling or how I want to self harm.
• Call a trusted friend. I really hope that you have at least one friend you can trust with your secret self harm and that they are supportive. If so, call them, explain the situation like this 'I'm having the urge to self harm so I thought I could talk about it with you..'
• Write down why you want to self harm and the emotions linked with it. This is a technique I learnt when in therapy. It really gets you to focus on the emotions and where in your body you feel them. Writing down everything you can about how you feel is a good way of distracting from actually cutting! Some questions you could ask yourself: Why do I want to self harm? What will it achieve? What emotions have led to this? What urges do I have?
• Learn your triggers. Learning what brings on the urges is a good step to reducing them. If it is something in particular that your family or friend does, try to communicate with them about it. If its seeing a blade or weapon you may use, take it out of your sight. If it is how you feel about yourself, work on your self esteem with a therapist. (Or google online free therapy sheets)

Advice for friends and family of those who self harm and how to help.

• You may not understand their reasons why they self harm but do NOT blame them for it. It will only make them feel worse about themselves and feed into the addiction.
• Ask them about it. TALK to them. As hard it may be for you to hear, you need to talk to them, they need to know you care and are worried.
• Help them clean the wounds.
• Tell them to call you if the urge comes on.
• Do not make them promise to never do it again. This is an unfair thing to ask to them as self harm is a important coping mechanism to them for the time being.
• Do some research.
• Support them on finding the root cause of their problems.
• Urge them to go seek professional help
• And above all NEVER give up on them.

I hope this has been useful to someone, after all that's why I started this blog. There is a lot of information on the internet about self harm and a number of charities that can offer support like Mind.


Talk soon!
Becky x