Self-Harm is a broad term for acts which cause personal harm to yourself, the range of acts is varied, from failure to give yourself attention to your own emotional or physical needs, right through to more direct forms like self-laceration, burning, punching things, to taking toxic substances. Self-harm can also include eating disorders and addictive behaviour. Not a lot is know about self-harm as few people are willing to admit to having caused themselves injuries, but slowly we are coming out and sharing our experiences about this behaviour which is actually more common than people think.

Some people say we all self-harm in conscious ways, by smoking, drinking and taking drugs, we may find ourselves in abusive relationships, or simply deny our own needs. We find many ways to distract ourselves from the way we feel, physical, intellectual and energy consuming occupations can use up lengthy periods of our time, anything to take us away from being alone with our thoughts. We don't like to be lonely. When we feel our emotions are too much for us to cope with we can express ourselves in different ways and one is to self-harm to maintain a sense of being separate to our emotions. Feelings of powerlessness and lack of self-worth may be expressed through acts of self-harm. It is common for people who have been abused to self-harm, low self esteem, hating your body, wanting to feel pain and torture yourself.

Self-Harm provides the means to survive overwhelming emotions, controlling our feelings of helplessness, feelings are numbed or killed off. Some have superficial cuts, others have deeper wounds needing stitches, but the severity of the injuries does not reflect the extent of inner conflict, and we must be taken seriously, and not fear rejection just because our wounds are only superficial. Self-Harm is a means of surviving our emotions, suicide is not wanting to survive our emotions. If living means having to cope with acutely painful feelings and memories, then the choice not to live is understandable. People who self-harm don't neccessarily want to die, as is people who want to die don't neccassarily self-harm.

Many people who self-harm have been abused, although not all people who have been abused will self-harm. For many the abuse happened in childhood and if adequate counselling is given self-harm can avoided, but few even tell anyone about the abuse and it maybe only comes to light at a result of self-harming. There are physical and emotional connections between self-harm and abuse, there is often absence of pain during the act of self-harm, rather like the absence of sensation which often occurs during abuse. A lost childhood needs to be grieved for, fear and confusion needs to worked through, the pain, anger and rage have to be supported and when a child is betrayed by a trusted adult, the child feels it is to blame and feelings are directed inwards. As an adult self-injury can be a way of repressing memories of abuse at the same time it can mirror the original abuse.

I have put links up to some very good sites dedicated to self-harm. Other help - psychologists can be useful in tackling the behaviour behind the need to self-harm, looking at how you feel just before you do it and how you feel during it, keeping a diary is helpful for the psychologist to look at and work with. You need to find someone to talk to, join a support group. Finding other people who self-harm is very important as a lot of professionals still do not have much experience in dealing with people who self-harm. Another issue is whether you have an underlying mental illness such as depression or schizophrenia, because medication can help enormously, along with antidepressants I was given an antipsychotic drug that took the voices away.

Remember stopping self-harming can begin now but will take a long time to work on.

• Cutting is a very destructive act, and while your working on stopping it, make sure that the equipment you use is sterile otherwise infection might occur.
• Don't blame yourself for how you feel, self-harm is an expression of your feelings and you can't help how you feel.
• It's a good idea to keep a diary, emotions can be difficult to deal with and it is helpful to record how you cope with and channel these, record everything you feel and do, and if and when you get help your diary will come in useful.
• Try drawing or painting how you feel, some people draw on themselves using bright body colours
• Line up some cushions to represent people who caused you pain, tell them how they hurt you and that you no longer deserve punishment, kicking or hitting the cushions is good, a great way to vent excess emotions.
• Most of all share with others, I have a good friend that self-harms aswell and we regularly meet up and share how we're feeling

This is a really difficult one, most of my family don't know I've done it and those who do never mention it, all I can say is if you're a parent or friend reading this, don't be judgemental, blaming people who are self-harming is of little use and can make things a lot worse, being uncritical can make the difference between a person feeling even more self-hatred and self-destructive to feeling accepted and cared for. Don't clame you can solve the problem, it needs professional help and the person self-harming has got to want to stop, offer support and encouragement, and find out as much as you can about it, this will make the person who's self-harming feel you really care and want to help.