You are ALL great, fantastic, insightful young people, you have you youth on your side, and humans are great at overcoming hardship, difficult situations and suffering.
If this issue affects you, you should read this to the end, and then contact us, or one of the other services listed.

 

Self-harm is known by many other names such as, self-injury, self-mutilation, self-abuse and self inflicted violence.

 

Self-injury is a way of dealing with very difficult feelings that may have built up inside you. You could be dealing with these feelings by cutting or burning yourself, bruising yourself, taking an overdose of tablets, pulling hair or picking skin. Some people may think that the problem can be measured by how bad the injury is. This is not true people who hurts them self a bit can be feeling just as bad as someone who hurts them self a lot.

Self-injury can affect anyone of any age. It’s a lot more common than people think. Many people hurt themselves secretly for along time before finding the courage to tell someone.

Why do you do it?

One of the reasons could be that you can’t control what’s happening around you, but you can control what you do to yourself. There could be lots of reasons why you feel so unhappy and some of these could be due to:

· Separation and loss
· Moving from different placements
· Moving schools
· Abuse
· Bullying
· Feelings of isolation & loneliness
· Sexuality
· Problems with friends
· Pressures to fit in
· Housing problems
· Money Problems
· Pressures at school, college or work.

When a lot of these problems come together, they can feel too much to cope with. If you are also feeling vulnerable, it’s hard to cope as well as you normally do. If you bottle things up inside, the pressure goes up until you may feel like harming yourself.

Stopping Self- Injury

There are lots of reasons why you might want to stop hurting yourself, although you may not know what to do to help you cope. When you harm yourself, as a way of coping with stress it’s a sign that, there are other problems in your life that need sorting out. If you want to stop hurting yourself you may need help to stop but there are also things you can do for yourself. Lots of people don’t know the reasons why they are hurting themselves and it can be hard to look at how you feel and why.

You may need to look at why you started in the first place.

Also you may want to think about:

What was happening at the time when you first started hurting yourself?
What causes you to feel like hurting yourself now?
Do you have the feeling to hurt yourself when you are at a certain place or with a certain person?
Do you have frightening memories or thoughts and feel you can’t tell anyone?
Are there other things that make you feel like hurting yourself?
You may also want to think about what helps you not hurt yourself?

Self-injury can seem very difficult to get over. Yet it is possible to stop hurting yourself, as you gradually learn to understand / deal with and to feel safer with your situation and feelings.

 

How can I stop myself?

Here are a few suggestions that may help;

Find other ways to show your anger and relieve tension: slam doors, throw pillows and exercise.
Try to share your pain with someone who you trust.
Draw on your body with marker pens instead of cutting yourself.
Make use of phone help-lines.
Keep busy and try to distract yourself.
Hold something comforting.
Deep Breathing

Sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard you try you may not be able to stop hurting yourself on your own. If you do feel like this then you will need to talk to someone who you can trust and who will listen to you. There could be a risk that you could seriously hurt yourself or even die. If you feel like you can’t trust anyone at the moment then you may want to try a telephone help line. They may make you feel more relaxed, not so vulnerable and it may feel easier to talk and it’s also up to you how long you talk to them for.

There may also be other places in your local area that you may want to contact for help. Your Doctor will be able to tell you about these or if you don’t want to speak to your Doctor you could contact one of the help lines. Click here for details.

Where to get Help

 

 

Child Line 0800 88 44 44
Self Harm Alliance 01242 57 88 20
Young Minds 0800 018 21 38
Care Line 020 8514 11 77
Youth Access 020 8772 99 00

www.selfharm.org.uk/
www.palace.net/llama/psych/injury.html-2k
www.selfinjury.freeserve.co.uk/-8k
www.mirror-mirror.org/selfinj.htm-13k
www.self-harm.co.uk/index2.html