A Bright
approach to stopping self-harming: Introduction
Self-harming is a complex and paradoxical business. For many people,
self-harming can even overtake the original emotional distress as a life
ruining (and life threatening) problem. This short, practical website
feature is very specifically about self-harming behaviour rather than
about the intense emotional issues which propel people to self-harm.
There are already some excellent resources about self-harming out there,
most of which address the underlying emotional dynamics. But, as with
so many health issues, it's hard to know which ones are useful and which
confusing or positively damaging. This is particularly the case when we're
in the midst of emotional crises - by definition not the greatest time
for calm, leisurely, reflective information gathering! Everyone's circumstances
are, of course, unique. But there are enough similarities in people's
experiences of self-harming and of what can help, to make it seem worthwhile
to add to the available information.
We decided to write the following, as it's information we wish we'd known
when self-harming first became an issue for us, personally or professionally.
As with everything from making ice-cream to tackling pollution, there
are a load of different theories, models, and counter-models to choose
from. Several of these are firmly rooted in understanding, and challenging,
the social context in which the underlying distress occurs. One particularly
compelling description of this is in the Women's Press excellent handbook
Women and Self Harm by Gerrilyn Smith, Dee Cox and Jacqui Saradjian
Our contribution to this medley is based on a fusion of particular approaches
that some of us have found particularly useful in managing, and finally
stopping, our self harming. We hope that it will be of direct help to
some people, and that others will find a few ideas or resources which
they find worth exploring.
Because we feel that for many people there's a need for very different
types of information, and support, at different stages of self-harming,
we've arranged this section in the order of the main 'phases'. This approach
is based on Prochaska's Stages of Change model, which is presented in
easy, self-help style in the book Change for Good.
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