March 1st is Self-Harm and Self-Injury Awareness Day. At Life & Soul, our mentors come across young people who are struggling with self-harm or self-injury, so we wanted to share a bit on what it is and an encouraging case study of a student one of our mentors mentored through it.
So, what is self-harm?
Self-harm is when you hurt yourself on purpose as a way of dealing with painful or overwhelming feelings. It can help you feel better in the moment but can also cause feelings of guilt and shame.
Self-harm can look like:
- cutting yourself
- using drugs or alcohol to cope with your problems
- not eating or overeating
- hitting things
- purposely getting into situations where you risk getting hurt
Why might someone self-harm?
Self-harm can be a way of expressing emotions that you can’t find the words for or don’t know how to deal with.
Self-harm can give a feeling of control.
Self-harm can be a way of punishing yourself.
How to keep yourself safe when you feel the urge to self-harm:
- Go for a walk.
- Do some intense physical activity like sprinting, skipping, cycling or trampolining.
- Focus on your breathing, breathe in for 6, hold for 4, breathe out for 7, hold for 4.
- Text or phone a friend.
- Hold an ice cube tightly in your hand.
- Tear up a magazine or newspaper.
- Take yourself to a public place like a park or a café.
- Listen to music.
- Call a helpline like The Samaritans.
Ways to keep yourself safe in the long term:
- Talk to someone you trust.
- Get some professional help.
- Be kind to yourself, imagine how you would care for a friend.
- Eat well, exercise and get enough sleep.
- Create a safety plan for when things feel ‘too much’, who can you talk to, what can you do to distract yourself?
There is hope…
Sam came to her first Connect mentoring session saying she was struggling with self-harm and social anxiety. We talked about what she would like to be feeling and doing instead and she said she’d like to feel calm in social situations and learn some healthy coping strategies instead of cutting herself. This then became her ‘best hopes’ for what she would like to achieve by the end of mentoring.
In every mentoring session, mentees share where they think they are on a scale of 0-10 in terms of achieving their best hope(s). In session 2, mentors encourage mentees to imagine being 10/10 on their scale for their best hopes. For Sam, as she described her perfect day where she had achieved a 10/10 on both these hopes, she began to see she was already doing some brilliant things to help her to deal with anxious thoughts. She remembered she had been writing poetry and that had really helped, so she started to focus on the positives of that instead of seeing herself as “someone who self-harmed” and she was so happy to realise this about herself. As we continued with her sessions, she saw more and more about herself that she liked and by session 5 she said, with a massive smile, that she had decided she was really happy in her own skin and no longer worried about what others thought about her.
If you struggle with self-harm or self-injury, please know…
You never need to be ashamed, you are an amazing person doing your best to cope with difficult emotions. You deserve love, respect, help and support. There is hope, life will get easier.
Further sources of help and information
https://harmless.org.uk/our-services/
https://www.youngminds.org.uk/young-person/my-feelings/self-harm/#TIPP
