self-harm

WARNING: the following post may be triggering for some.

What is self-harm?

Self-harm is when you hurt yourself as a way of dealing with very difficult feelings, old memories, or overwhelming situations and experiences. The ways you hurt yourself can be physical, such as cutting yourself. They can also be less obvious, such as putting yourself in risky situations, or not looking after your own physical or emotional needs.

Ways of self-harming can include:

• cutting yourself
• poisoning yourself
• over-eating or under-eating
• burning your skin
• inserting objects into your body
• hitting yourself or walls
• overdosing
• exercising excessively
• scratching and hair pulling.

After self-harming, you might feel better and more able to cope for a while. However, self-harm can bring up very difficult feelings and could make you feel worse.

If you self-harm, you may feel embarrassed or ashamed about it. You might be worried that other people will judge you or pressurise you to stop if you tell them about it. This may mean that you keep your selfharming a secret. This is a very common reaction, although not everyone does this.

Why do people harm themselves?

There are no fixed rules about why people self-harm. For some people, it can be linked to specific experiences, and be a way of dealing with something that is happening now, or that happened in the past. For others, it is less clear. If you don’t understand the reasons for your selfharm, it’s important to remind yourself that this is OK, and you don’t need

to know this in order to ask for help.

Any difficult experience can cause someone to self-harm. Common causes include:

• pressures at school or work
• bullying
• money worries
• sexual, physical or emotional abuse
• bereavement
• confusion about your sexuality
• breakdown of relationships
• an illness or health problem
• difficult feelings, such as depression, anxiety, anger or numbness, experienced as part of a mental health problem.

Some people have also described self-harm as a way to:

• express something that is hard to put into words
• make experiences, thoughts or feelings that feel invisible into something visible
• change emotional pain into physical pain
• reduce overwhelming emotional feelings or thoughts
• have a sense of being in control
• escape traumatic memories
• stop feeling numb, disconnected or dissociated (see dissociative disorders)
• create a reason to physically care for yourself
• express suicidal feelings and thoughts without taking your own life
• communicate to other people that you are experiencing severe distress.

Sometimes people talk about self-harm as attention-seeking. If people make comments like this, it can leave you feeling judged and alienated. In reality, most people keep their self-harm private, and it can feel very painful to have your behaviour misunderstood in this way.

If you do self-harm as a way of bringing attention to yourself, remember that you deserve a respectful response from those around you, including from medical professionals.

How can I help myself?

If you are thinking about stopping or reducing your self-harm, finding ways of helping yourself can feel very empowering.

This section gives some ideas for things you can do to support yourself better. Some can be done when you feel like self-harming. Others can be done at any time. You may need to try a few to find out what works for you. These techniques may be helpful on their own, or alongside professional help. (See ‘What treatment and support is available?’)

There is no magic solution or quick fix for self-harm, and making changes can take time and involve periods of difficulty. It is common to make some progress and then get back into old behaviours again. If this happens to you, remind yourself that it's not failing – it is simply part of the process.

If you do not feel able to stop self-harming completely, it is important to be honest with yourself and consider what else you can do that would feel helpful. For example, you may be able to work towards reducing or stopping your self-harm in the future, even if you find it too difficult to stop self-harming immediately.

Work out your patterns of self-harm

It may be that things happen so fast, it feels impossible to realise you have an urge to self-harm before you find that you are hurting yourself.

Keeping a diary of what happens before, during and after each time you self-harm, can help you work out what gives you the urge to self-harm, and recognise when the urge is coming on. It is helpful to do this over a period of time – maybe a month – so that you start to see patterns.

Learn to recognise triggers

Your triggers are the things that give you the urge to hurt yourself. This could be anything from people, situations, anniversaries, certain times of the day, physical sensations or particular thoughts or feelings.

In your diary, note down what was happening before you last self-harmed.Did you have a particular thought? Did you have an argument? Did you have to see someone you don’t like? Did a situation or object remind you of something difficult?

This can be quite an intense experience and bring up difficult feelings and emotions. If you feel confident to try this on your own, make sure you do something relaxing or enjoyable afterwards. If you find doing this distressing, you may want to ask for support from a trusted friend, family member, or professional. (See ‘What treatment and support is available?’ for more information.)

Learn to recognise urges

The next step is to identify how you experience the urge to self-harm. Urges come in lots of different ways and may be different for you at different times.

Urges can include:

• physical sensations, such as a racing heart, nausea, or very shallow breath
• feelings of heaviness, fogginess or blackness
• disconnecting with yourself, such as feeling like you are outside of your own body or losing all feelings of sensation
• strong emotions, like sadness, fear, despair or rage
• specific thoughts, such as 'hurt' or 'I'm going to cut'
• making decisions that you know aren't good for you, for example by excessive working or exercising rather than experiencing your feelings.

for the full article, including more advice on self-harm and how to help yourself or someone you know visit: 

 http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/self-harm/how-can-i-help-myself/#.UyWMDfl_t1Y

more advice and information on self-harm can be found in the following links: 

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Self-injury/Pages/Introduction.aspx

http://selfharm.co.uk/home

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/self_injury.htm

http://www.nshn.co.uk/

http://www.liberonetwork.com/anxiety-and-anorexia-as-self-harm

http://www.youngminds.org.uk/for_children_young_people/whats_worrying_you/self-harm