For people who are managing to stop self-harming

Phew! Well done!

Firstly, congratulations! Stopping self-harming may well be one of the hardest things we’ll ever manage to achieve, because self-harming is such an insidiously effective, and often addictive, short-term ‘fix’. It’s likely that you’ve been able to reach this tough, brave stage with the support of friends and family and perhaps professionals as well as one or a hundred coping techniques ranging from aromatherapy to zymurgy. (OK, maybe not that one which is simply the last word in the dictionary. Definitely not the last word in self-harming recovery techniques.)

Things that might help

Daily

Each day of abstinence is a triumph, and should be celebrated. One cheap and very cheerful way of doing this is to use a particularly attractive calendar which has those squares for writing in, and – well, write in the squares. Or simply fill them in with vibrant colours. Or if you’re the winner of the Turner Prize, with spat out pieces of chewing gum.

Many people handle their distress and their self harming by using a daily, or even occasional, journal to write down their feelings. And if not something as Hampstead as a journal, a scruffy notebook, or the lid of an egg carton or the margins of a dull email can also serve as a space to scribble down how we feel. Once again, lots of mental health websites have good info about expressing feelings in writing.

Weekly and monthly

Whatever feels rewarding. Films, schmoozing, music, walking the dog, pondering how nice it is not to have a dog you have to walk… There are loads of examples in the section on Turnaround Techniques.

Dealing with scars

All the good resources have advice about dealing with scars, especially about what to tell people who see them. Perhaps because it hasn’t been ‘proven’ scientifically, there’s little profile given to Vitamin E as a way of reducing scars’ visibility. It may happen to work very well for you, and is certainly worth trying; the other options are increasingly medical, complicated and costly.

“My cousin, Tricia, told me that her young daughter had badly scarred her back, having tripped and fallen through a glass table. Tricia rubbed the oily contents of Vitamin E capsules into the scar and it completely faded. I was sceptical but thought – hey, I’ve got nothing to lose and at worst I’ll feel like a tossed salad. It turned out that I was lucky and it did make my scars fade much faster than they did when I didn’t oil them each day.”