Supporting Someone who Self Harms

Self harm is something that affects so many more people than we realise, it is such a hidden and taboo mental health difficulty and I want this to change! As a suffer myself I have experienced my fair share of shame and absolute fear of becoming vocal about my experience of self harm

Self harm is used to describe a wide range of behaviours which someone carries out to cause pain to themselves, which is often a response to emotional pain of some kind.

As someone who self harms myself I can understand the difficulty of supporting someone who self harms, especially someone that you love and care about. Knowing what to say to someone who self harms is difficult, perhaps you don’t understand why, perhaps you want to help but don’t want to say the wrong thing, perhaps you just want to make your friend stop and their suffering disappear?

Here a few thing things that I believe you should or shouldn’t do when supporting someone who experiences self harm (in my opinion and experience, be aware that this might not be the case for everyone):

Mostly just let them know that you are there, be compassionate, be there to support them and hold their hand through their journey. Ultimately please understand that it is a long and hard journey to stop self harming and be aware that someone will only stop self harming when they feel ready and are able to do so and there will be a chance of relapse even after this.

I wrote this as a guest post for Rachel please check out here twitter here.

Do you have any advice on supporting someone who self harms, or if you have experience of it yourself what would you like to hear or your friends do? Please comment below.

Thoughts on my Self Harm story going viral

Sat having drinks with my friends in a beer garden I was weirded out when I realised I had loads of messages and notifications on my phone, I looked and my heart honestly sunk - Time to Change had shared my blog about self harm . I felt sick, I wanted to ask for it to be removed, I did not want so many people to know that I had experience of self harm. My friends? My family? My new house mates?

My "secret" was out and it was out publicly. 

Then my friend (she is amazing!!) took my hand and said you can do it, your story is amazing, I have read it and it is great that it will reach so many people. I was also then reminded why did you write it in the first place and put it on your blog - to help others of course?! So why would I take that away from people due to being scared. Looking back in hindsight (only a couple of days ago haha) and having the inspirational girl Lottie to help me find positives in this situation I now realise that it is very good that this decision for it to become so public is not one that I had to make, it was taken out of my hands and I would like to thank Time to Change for believing in me and feeling that my story could help others. 

Your kind words and heartfelt stories really have shown why I wrote it - to break down the taboo of self harm, which I think is still a massive problem and one that needs to be addressed. So how can we address it - by talking about it, by being open, by showing that it can affect anyone, at any time for any reason. 

Many of my friends were shocked - we didn't expect you to experience self harm, I know you campaigned for the removal of stigma for it but we didn't know you were personally affected. You never know who may be experiencing it - your partner, friend or family. It really isn't as rare as you might think. 

Being open, talking about it, and with the help of my wonderful friend Amelia and her support when I just wanted to burst into tears, her strength gave me strength to be brave and yes I do self harm, and I can say that outloud. 

Here are some of the lovely words and feedback that I am very blessed to have received, especially by those who know me personally:

 Thanks to everyone who made me feel brave enough to share my story, I hope it has helped others, even if it makes a little difference, helps one person then I feel like I have succeeded.