For people who recognise that they’re on the brink of starting to self-harm

Hang on!

So much about self-harming is counter-intuitive. It’s something that people turn to out of desperation and although it can seem to help us get through traumatic times, it is a very short-term solution. Talk about building up much huger problems for later on! What we’re doing when we embark on self-harming as a response to great emotional distress is adding yet another source of anguish and conflict to our lives. To make matters worse, it is generally an escalatory activity – i.e. we have to use increasingly severe practices to get the same emotional result as previously. As if that weren’t enough, for some of us it develops its own addictive dynamics. It’s a real mess and if there’s any way of avoiding plummeting into it, every minute or ounce of energy spent resisting is a brilliant investment.

Many people don’t exactly contemplate starting to self-harm – the first time it just happens, at a moment of intense distress and probably of ‘spacing out’. But for other people it may be something they think or fantasise about for some time before deciding, or having the opportunity, to begin doing it. In which case the following may be of help.

It could be regarded as untrendy or even naïve advice but ….. we’d really urge you to try everything you possibly can not to start resorting to self-harming. It may take exceptional will-power to resist, but it’s well worth it and still likely to be less hard than trying to stop this once it has become an entrenched habit.

“I’d been fantasising about self-harming for weeks before I finally decided to do it. Although it would have felt very frustrating not to have shifted from imagining to doing, there’s no question that it would have saved me much misery, energy and time in the time that’s followed.”

Things that might help

We fully appreciate that it can be agonising trying to resist the impulse to self-harm, but many people have achieved this, by:

∑ wherever possible, addressing the causes of the emotional distress. There will, however, be situations where this is almost impossible, perhaps because the environment is so intolerable (as with prison), or because the extent of the emotional crisis feels too great to begin exploring the underlying causes.
∑ talking to friends (make sure your address book is up to date!)
∑ talking to their GP, if the GP is someone they trust and respect
∑ getting counselling (via the GP, local phone book, library or British Association of Counselling www.counselling.co.uk)
∑ …. or counselling’s slightly more intense sibling - therapy. The British Psychological Society have a register of qualified psychologists www.bps.org.uk
∑ reading about coping with severe emotional distress – Mind, the national mental health organisation, is probably the best source of information and contacts http://www.mind.org.uk
∑ ringing or emailing the Samaritans. (08457 909090) http://www.samaritans.org.uk/
∑ using similar techniques to people struggling with stopping (see section below and full website feature), eg
o support
o trying to minimise stress wherever possible
o having a portfolio of absorbing diversion techniques (or even just one that works for you)
o rewards

Things that might not help

As we mentioned above, learning more about self-harming can be precisely, and dangerously, that. It is very easy to extend our portfolio of self inflicted violence, and our repertoire of justifications, by finding out what others do to hurt themselves. So at this early stage, in particular, it’s often much safer and more constructive to get information and advice from broader mental health sources such as Mind (www.mind.org.uk) rather than from specific self-harm resources.