As a girl, I couldn’t believe that self-harm was something people did to themselves. That is until I found myself in, what felt like such a helpless cycle that I thought I’d never escape.
I hope that reading this piece will allow you to see there is hope.There are so many stereotypes and taboos surrounding self-harm even I, as someone advocating for awareness around it, get an uncomfortable feeling in my chest writing those two words.
However, it’s important to talk about self-harm, not to normalise it but to make people feel less alone, less ashamed and less hopeless in their feelings about it.“We do it as a means of control, which is ironic as for many of us it then becomes an uncontrollable form of control.”There are so many reasons that I, along with many others self-harm.
Doing it as a means of control is a common reason, which is ironic as for many of us, it then becomes uncontrollable. For me, after a while, it got past the point where it was a choice and more something I ‘had’ to do.But learning to manage urges, sit with feelings of upset, hurt or anger and ‘ride the wave’ was a big thing in recovery for me.