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Guest Post - Dr. Kevin Keough

Understand Self Injury- Awareness Video

This is a video on self-harm I made to help those who don't understand. Please check it out and ask any questions if you have any. If there is hate comments, rude or disrespectful I will delete and block you. Below I have posted a lil more details about those who self-harm. Please take a moment to read it. http://www.recoveryourlife.com/ http://www.meetup.com/ http://www.psyke.org

====================== Song: Breathe-Sia ======================

SI is something I go through personally everyday of my life. I think about it all the time. Even tho the thoughts are there, most likely I'll be able to control myself & not hurt my body. Sometimes I slip & hurt myself but it shows how hard I work towards being heathly & safe. DBT is a good source to help the urges & to find safe ways to cope with the feeling.

Self-injury or self-harm is when somebody damages or injures their body on purpose. Self-injury is a way of expressing deep emotional feelings or problems that build up inside.

Cutting the skin is probably the most common form of self-injury. The cuts are not usually deep but in some cases, medical attention is needed to clean, dress or stitch the wounds. The most common places on the body to cut are the wrists, upper arms, inner thighs and upper chest. Less common are the face, breasts, abdomen and genitals.

Often people who cut themselves will use one or two methods, for example, knives, glass or razor blades. The person tends to have a certain area of the body that they prefer to cut, such as the arms.

Burning the skin (usually with cigarettes) is also common. People may also self-harm by scratching, hitting or punching, sometimes using an object. Other forms of self-injury include picking at the skin, pulling out hair, swallowing poisonous substances, taking an overdose of tablets or drugs or deliberately breaking bones.

Although, there is a connection between self-harm and suicide, the majority do not risk their lives. For many people who self-injure, their actions are only an attempt to cope with the stress and difficulties they face; their purpose is not to end their life.

However, there is a possibility that those who self-injure may commit suicide either deliberately or accidentally as the result of their actions.

Self-harm is much more common among girls than boys, often starting in adolescence (between 13 and 18 years of age), although it can affect children from as young as 11 years. Fear of discovery, shame and embarrassment often means that people keep self-injury a secret. Because of this, it is difficult to know how many people self-harm.Some people self-harm only once or a few times while others do it on a regular basis, sometimes throughout their life.

People who self-injure are very careful to hide the damage and scars. They will often injure themselves in places that can be easily hidden by clothing so friends and family members may be unaware of the person self-injuring in private. Another sign that someone could be self-harming is that the person will insist on keeping covered up at all times, even in hot weather.

People self-injure for a variety of reasons and sometimes, the person doesnt actually know why they are doing it. However, it is commonly thought to provide a release for pent-up emotions and feelings. For some people it is their way of coping with a specific problem. Self-injury is a sign of emotional distress and is not an attempt to seek attention.

People who self-harm often describe feelings of numbness or deadness or they may feel detached from reality, as if they are not part of the world. Some may injure themselves to stay separated from reality but others do it to make them feel more real, connected and alive.People who self-harm often describe feelings of numbness or deadness or they may feel detached from reality, as if they are not part of the world. Some may injure themselves to stay separated from reality but others do it to make them feel more real, connected and alive.

People who self-injure risk infections if their wounds are not treated properly. Cuts can become infected if a person uses non-sterile or dirty cutting instruments.

Source:Healing From Addictions

Friday Readers Story

Anonymous said...

im a 14 year old and i started cutting about a year ago. to be honest i dont really remember why i started self harming. i think it began with me just wanting to express some emotion without having to explain myself to anyone. it was the one thing in my life that i felt like i could control. now things are going badly at school and i self harm more. i paniced and tried to find a site to get help. but then i read about all these people who were abused or close relatives and friends had died so they started self harming. that just made me fell worse because i had no real right to self harm, i had no real problem. of course i got depressed and cut myself because i was so ashamed of myself and it ended up going round in a loop. i was cutting to let out my hatred of myself, to get rid of my bad blood which made me want to cut even more. my cuts are getting deeper.

i dont really know why i left this comment i just felt like i needed to tell someone who wasnt going to come up to me the next day and ask me why i did it. thank you

American Self Harm Information Clearing House

Approximately 1% of the population has, at one time or another, used self-inflicted physical injury as a means of coping with an overwhelming situation or feeling. ASHIC - the American Self-Harm Information Clearinghouse - strives to increase public awareness of the phenomenon of self-inflicted violence and the unique challenges faced by self-injurers and the people who care about them.

Self-harm scares people. The behavior can be disturbing and difficult to understand, and it is often treated in a simplistic or sensational manner by the press. As a result, friends and loved ones of people who self-injure often feel frightened, isolated, and helpless. Sometimes they resort to demands or ultimatums as a way of trying to regain some control over the situation, only to see things deteriorate further.

The first step toward coping with self-injurious behavior is education: bringing reliable information about who self-injures, why they do it, and how they can learn to stop to people who self-injure and to their friends, loved ones, and medical caregivers. ASHIC was founded to meet this need for honest, accurate information.

Wordless Wednesday

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

Written by HealthyPlace.com Staff Writer Jan 03, 2009

Full description of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Definition, signs, symptoms, and causes of PTSD.

Description of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder is a severe reaction to an extremely traumatic event. The person can actually experience the event (i.e. be in a plane crash) or be a witness to the event (i.e. rescue worker at a plane crash).

Over time and with psychological help, some people learn to cope with the aftermath of the event. However, for others, symptoms such as flashbacks and depression can become worse, lasting a long period of time, and seriously disrupting the person's life.

Sometimes symptoms do not begin until many months or even years after the traumatic event took place. If post-traumatic stress disorder has been present for 3 months or longer, it is considered chronic.

PTSD is an anxiety disorder which can affect both children and adults. About 7% of the population will develop PTSD in their lifetime; 5 million adults in the U.S. have PTSD during any given year.

Diagnostic Criteria for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

The person has been exposed to a traumatic event in which both of the following were present:

• the person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others
• the person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Note: In children, this may be expressed instead by disorganized or agitated behavior

The traumatic event is persistently reexperienced in one (or more) of the following ways:

• recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, or perceptions. Note: In young children, repetitive play may occur in which themes or aspects of the trauma are expressed.
• recurrent distressing dreams of the event. Note: In children, there may be frightening dreams without recognizable content.
• acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes, including those that occur on awakening or when intoxicated). Note: In young children, trauma-specific reenactment may occur.
• intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event
• physiological reactivity on exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event
  

Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by three (or more) of the following:

• efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
• efforts to avoid activities, places, or people that arouse recollections of the trauma
• inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
• markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
• feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
• restricted range of affect (e.g., unable to have loving feelings)
• sense of a foreshortened future (e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, children, or a normal life span)

Persistent symptoms of increased arousal (not present before the trauma), as indicated by two (or more) of the following:

• difficulty falling or staying asleep
• irritability or outbursts of anger
• difficulty concentrating
• hypervigilance
• exaggerated startle response

Duration of the disturbance (symptoms in Criteria B, C, and D) is more than 1 month.

The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

Causes of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Living through or seeing something that's upsetting and dangerous, psychological trauma, can cause PTSD. This can include:

• Being a victim of or seeing violence (kidnapping, torture, sexual abuse)
• The death or serious illness of a loved one
• War or combat
• Car accidents and plane crashes
• Hurricanes, tornadoes, and fires
• Violent crimes, like a robbery or shooting.

Studies indicate the amount of dissociation that directly follows a trauma predicts PTSD. Individuals who are more likely to dissociate during a traumatic event are considerably more likely to develop chronic PTSD.

There also seems to be a genetic component to post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD runs in families. And, as with many psychological disorders, a person's temperament, brain chemistry and other environmental factors likely play a role in the development of PTSD. In addition, having an existing psychiatric disorder, a family history of depression, or a poor support system following a traumatic event are all risk factors for PTSD.

For comprehensive information on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), visit the HealthyPlace.com Anxiety-Panic Community.

Sources: 1. American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association. 2. Merck Manual, Home Edition for Patients and Caregivers, last revised 2006. 3. NIMH, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, July 2008. 4. Brown, Scheflin and Hammond (1998). Memory, Trauma Treatment, And the Law. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Book Review: Freedom from Self-Harm

Publisher's Site

Post-traumatic stress disorder and deliberate self-harm (also called non-suicidal self-injury) are often linked.

"Deliberate self-harm" means doing something to cause immediate physical harm to yourself but not for the purpose of ending your life. Self-harm behaviors include cutting, burning, scratching, punching, or carving words or pictures on oneself.

Self-harm behavior can be difficult to stop and many people are reluctant to seek out treatment for self-harm due to the shame they feel about the behavior. Fortunately, there is a new self-help book available for people who deliberately self-harm.

A New Resource for Coping with Deliberate Self-Harm Behavior

Freedom from Self-Harm: Overcoming Self-Injury with Skills from DBT and Other Treatments (published by New Harbinger Publications) by Doctors Kim L. Gratz and Alexander L. Chapman may help those struggling with self-harm behavior.

Freedom from Self-Harm is an easy-to-read and accessible book that provides a wealth of information on:

• Why people often engage in self-harm
• Myths about self-harm
• Causes of self-harm behavior
• Mental health disorders that often co-occur with self-harm, such as PTSD and borderline personality disorder
• The consequences of self-harm
• Psychological treatments and medication that may be helpful for self-harm
• Coping skills for self-harm

The information provided in the book is up-to-date and presented in a validating and respectful manner. The authors also provide case examples throughout the book to help illustrate more complicated points.

Probably one of the greatest advantages of the book is its presentation of coping skills that someone struggling with self-harm could implement right away. For example, the book provides information on healthy ways of managing emotions (given that self-harm is often thought of as a way, albeit unhealthy, of regulating emotions), as well as worksheets to help people use these skills.

If you struggle from deliberate self-harm and are looking for a way to stop this behavior, you may benefit from checking out this great resource.

Publisher's Site

Burn Out

Maslach & Leiter define burnout as:

"the index of the dislocation between what people are and what they have to do. It represents an erosion in values, dignity, spirit and will--an erosion of the human soul. It is a malady that spreads gradually and continuously over time, putting people into a downward spiral ..."

Symptoms include exhaustion, cynical detachment from our work, and feelings of ineffectiveness.

Why are so many social workers are burning out? We're good people who are staunchly committed to helping others. Here's where we think the problem lies:

Too many of our employers fail to empower us with the ability to perform effectively, doing so in a multitude of ways.

• Mismanagement While social workers may be nice people, many social work middle managers do not appear on the surface to be skilled administrators. However, looking at the problem more closely, when upper management mandates cost-cutting, middle management is often left powerless to support front line staff. This results in front line workers who are overburdened with unmanageable workloads. We suspect that social work middle managers, squeezed between the directives to "do more with less" and "work smarter," experience burnout just as intensely as front line workers. And we further suspect that we "front line workers" fail to recognize burnout in our supervisors as quickly as we recognize it in our same-level peers. But regardless of the reason for mismanagement ... lack of training, lack of experience, lack of insight, etc. ... when we find ourselves poorly treated by a social work supervisor, it seems to have an especially biting sting because it happens at the hands of "one of our own."
  
  

• Schedule Imbalance Many of us are employed in agencies which provide 24 hour services, such as hospitals, crisis centers, protective agencies, etc. It is to be expected that we all have to share the burden of working holidays, weekends, and off-shifts. Some employers, however, repeatedly assign undesirable shifts to the same workers. Additionally, the distinction between being at work and time off from work becomes blurred when we are required to carry beepers and/or make ourselves available for consultation or crisis intervention on an on-call basis during our time away from the work setting.
  
  

• Intense Work Days It is our observation that the most intensely burned out social workers are those with the most relentless work days. Far too many social work employers schedule exhausting shifts with no provision for meal breaks or short-term, essential mental/emotional refreshment. Burnout under these conditions appears quite pervasive to us.
  
  

• Chronic Fear of Downsizing Money is the bottom line for most of our employers. Social workers in mental health, health care, and many public agencies function with constant fears and sometimes threats of staff reduction. Who's next ... me? This type of atmosphere does little to encourage professional autonomy, growth, or performance.
  
  

• Lack of Professional Projects We've discovered from personal experience that when we do nothing but patient care day after day, week after week, month after month, we begin to lose enthusiasm for our job and our profession. Feelings of professional isolation emerge, as well as the decreased ability to contribute meaningfully to the organization. Time and an opportunity to work on projects promoting better care of clients would lead to much more professional satisfaction!
  
  

• Office and Inter-Agency Politics Who doesn't hate this one? We'd all rather just do our jobs and forget the power struggles that take up time needlessly. Many of our work days suffer from reduced productivity caused by the need to jump through internal or inter-agency hoops that are of little value for the care of our clients.
  
  

Lack of Appreciation This certainly occurs in all professions. But have you ever noticed how social workers are supposed to routinely deal with difficult and stressful situations without so much as a "please" or "thank you?" Management sometimes compounds the our feelings of being unappreciated with last-minute schedule changes, denial of employee benefits, staff reductions, etc.

Personal Risk Frequently social workers are expected to perform effectively in hazardous situations without adequate protective measures for our health and safety. Dangerous situations are common for psych social workers and child protective workers. Medical and prison social workers often face patients with an airborne-communicable diseases such as TB without being informed of the risk and without adequate protective masks. Social workers frequently must interact with clients on a crisis basis without security staff or basic safety precautions. In our opinion, nothing else more clearly communicates an employer's lack of appreciation and respect than to jeopardize social workers in this way during the course of our work day.

It has been a couple of months since I wrote about my teen daughter’s cutting, and what it was like to be a parent surviving through self-injury. Now I see parents arrive here at MereWisdom.org from time to time with searches that break my heart - for I typed so many of the same things trying to find answers. For these visitors, I offer the following wisdom gained from making a million mistakes in responding to my daughter’s self harm.

For those looking for people who are getting through this, I would point you to my daughter’s site where she wrote to share some of her story of Survival of a Self Injurer. Worthy of note and celebration in this is that she now has nine months free of self-injury, one day at a time.

Caring for Myself and Family

1 - There is nothing I can do to save her or protect her completely - The belief that if I just try harder to protect her, to limit her choices, and keep her safe to get her through this without being able to harm herself further is, in the end, a lie. I had to accept my powerlessness to stop her from harming herself before I could stop dying inside from whether she has or has not self-injured today. It’s her behavior and only she can make different choices.

2 - I did not cause it - I struggled with my own guilt for a long time. A long, long time of second guessing myself, thinking that my own faults and failures ends up, really, only another form of the false beliefs in item one, above.

3 - Her Self-Injury is not the most important thing in my life - She is more important to me than what she does. My son is equally important to me, and can’t be ignored because of constant crises in her life. Self-injury can pull a family out of a normal orbit into a tight orbit only around the self injury. This reinforces the self-injury from my experience, and it harms everyone else now out of orbit.

4 - I needed help for myself and my family and not just my daughter - It’s her behavior, but it affects all of us. More importantly as the family increasingly becomes centered on the self-injury, the more the family systems break down and require conscious rebuilding. Normal systems and family behavior that act as balancing forces for our children and ourselves become reinforcing factors for out of control behavior instead. And as we broke down, it was invisible to us. Outside help is critical.

5 - Learn to live in Daytight Compartments - The notion of “One Day at a Time” is almost a cliche in dealing with these situations, but there is some truth to the idea that just for today I can endure and do the things that I could never do for the rest of my life. For me, the idea of daytight compartments, like watertight compartments on a ship, helped me get through tough times.

Responding to Self Injury

6 - Talk about it - One of the things I did right in this was insist from day one that we would not act ashamed about it and talk freely about self-injury. It is always ok to ask if injuries need immediate treatment, for example. It’s ok to talk about feelings - from my feelings about specific events to her feelings before or after cutting. It’s also ok to talk about other things besides self-injury - there is a whole life taking place at the same time.

7 - Set Boundaries on Behavior - I mentioned above that trying to control her behavior stems from a false belief that somehow I can do it for her. This is one of the broken systems that reinforces negative behavior, rather than balancing or opposing it. Natural consequences are much better. One of the first consequences we had was that all cuts had to be examined by a medical professional within 24 hours.

8 - Build a Team - My daughter’s recovery team became her school nurse, her family doctor, her psychologist and later a psychiatrist. Each of them got a copy of the Bill of Rights for People Who Self-Harm and it made a very real difference in the level of care she received.

9 - Stay the Parent - My daughter at one point was using her self-injury as a point of leverage to take control of the family. She would threaten to cut herself to get herself out of situations, and these tools helped get us past that point. She would threaten, and I would respond that I can’t stop her if she chooses self-injury but then medical care is required, and if self-injury was a part of any behavior contract, then those consequences would happen as well.

10 - Love her enough to respect her decisions - This is the hardest one, and a recent bit of learned wisdom. I think this is because the same need I have to protect her from harm is also in play to keep her from harm by way of her consequences of her actions. This is still an ongoing struggle for me as it is a great theory until I see behavior that is likely to cause problems for yars to come or legal issues and so on. In our case, it meant loving her enough to respect decisions even when the consequences included not living at home for a while, hospitalization, school settings that took her away from music, and so on.

Brilliant post written by James at Mere Wisdom, I thoughly recommend his site

Self Harm & Glucose Metabolism in Women with ED

Self-injury (such as cutting or burning oneself) is fairly common amongst people with eating disorders- approximately 25% to 45% of people with eating disorders self-injure, and approximately half of those who self-injure also have eating disorders (full article here). Many people report a sense of dissociation while self-harming, a desire to turn emotional pain into physical pain (ie, "real" pain), and also that this behavior reduces anxiety. Whether self-harm is from issues relating to impulse control, a more compulsive pattern of behavior, or something else entirely, the amount of overlap between self-injury and eating disorders is significant.

An interesting new paper from the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology looked at the relationship between self-injury and glucose metabolism in women with eating disorders, and what they found was significant. Women engaging in self-harm behaviors were given an oral glucose tolerance test, in which they were asked to drink a sweet solution to measure how the body handles sugar. The self-harming women who also had an eating disorder had higher levels of blood glucose after the test, but also higher levels of a hormone called glucagon.

Glucagon is essentially insulin's opposite: when the blood sugar is low, the pancreas secretes glucagon to prod cells into breaking down long chains of carbohydrates called glycogen into small sugars that can be released into the bloodstream and readily used by the body. When blood sugar rises after a meal, the pancreas secretes insulin, which stimulates cells to pull excess sugars out of the bloodstream and store them as glycogen for a rainy day*.

Besides low blood sugar, several other factors can stimulate the release of glucagon, including epinephrine (aka adrenaline), which is involved in the fight or flight response. Though I was unable to find any specific studies linking high levels of epinephrine and self-injury, it's certainly plausible to think that people who self-harm would have higher levels of epinephrine, especially right after an incident where such behavior occurs. Alternately, if high levels of glucagon also stem from high levels of epinephrine, the sufferer may be caught in a cycle of self-harm during episodes of low blood sugar.

For instance, a common pattern in those who binge and purge is binge-purge-self harm, where the self-harm typically occurs after the completion of the binge/purge cycle. After a binge, blood sugar goes up and glucagon levels go down. After a purge, blood sugar goes down, and glucagon and epinephrine levels go up.

No one knows at this point where the relationship between self-harm and glucose metabolism lies on the cause/effect scale. Certainly there is a feedback cycle between all of these systems. But one good point to keep in mind is the importance of helping sufferers regulate blood sugar levels by frequent meals and snacks that involve complex carbohydrates, proteins, AND fats. Food is medicine for the eating disorder, but it also might be true for self-injury.

*Aren't you glad I paid attention in my 8am biochem lecture 10 years ago?

Crosspost from ED Bites

8 Common Myths about Self-Harm

May 8, 2009

We recently received a copy of Freedom from Self Harm: Overcoming Self-Injury with Skills from DBT and Other Treatments by Kim Gratz and Alexander Chapman and can highly recommend this book.

One of my favorite parts of the book is titled 8 Common Myths about Self-Harm. Here’s what the authors came up with:

1. Self-harm is the same as a suicide attempt.
2. Self-harm is superficial and not dangerous.
3. Self-harm is manipulative.
4. If you self-harm, you have borderline personality disorder.
5. Self-harm is a female problem.
6. Self-harm is crazy, sick, and irrational.
7. You must resolve your underlying issues before you can stop self-harm.
8. If you resolve all your underlying issues, your self-harm will go away.

Although this book is specifically intended for those who engage in self-harm, it should be a helpful resource for families and mental health professionals as well.

Birmingham

Support For People at Risk of Self Harm

Last Friday I attended an open day at the Zinnia Centre in Sparkhill, Birmingham where I met staff, volunteers and members of a support and action group for people who are at risk of self harm. The group is called SASH and meets every first tuesday of the month between 5.30 and 7.30pm.

The programme of forthcoming events includes a talk on Distraction techniques on 2nd June, 'Mind,body and soul' - alternative therapies to reduce self harm on 7th July and Good turn week - volunteering your way to happiness on 1st September.

To find out more about the SASH Forum please contact the Zinnia Centre on 0121 301 5700. You will need to check out whether you are eligible to attend the group beforehand (are you living in the right area...there may be a group in your own area).

The group have various resources around self-harm including an information pack full of guidance, information, contact details of support groups and coping systems and strategies.

Self harm is defined as "An intentional self poisening or self injury (such as cutting), irrespectove of the apparent purpose of the act".

The Information Pack goes on to say:

"Self harm is therefore a way of releasing and dealing with emotions, and includes the idea of punishing the bbody. This may be caused by many factors such as:

• past / present trauma
• low esteem - lack of confidence
• feelings of isolation - (agoraphobia)
• fear of being different or misunderstood
• lack of support, including lack of communication

For anyone who knows someone, a relative, friend or service user at risk of slef harming, the pack offers the following Methods for Help:

• Be open about self harm
• Offer advice and understanding
• Support, care and friendhsip
• Offer sources of help
• Show the person is not alone
• Offer the opportunity to share experiences - either in specialist group or 1 to 1
• Give direct answers
• Offer distraction techniques and work through these
• Building on trust (counsellor or psychiatrist)

For information from Birmingham and Mental Health Trust contact 0121 678 2000

As well as local groups such as the one based at the Zinnia Centre, SASH run a national support line on self harm matters on:

07805073590 or 078050735573

Other useful numbers include:

Childline

0800 1111

Samaritans

0845 90 90 90

Focusline (all issues regrading mental health)

0800 027 2127

Dosti Men's Group (Birmingham self harm support group)

0121 685 7120

There are also websites worth visiting for further information:

http://www.selfharmuk.org/

http://www.siari.co.uk/

http://www.youngminds.org.uk/

Source: Spaghetti Gazetti

New Risk Factors For Teen Self Harm

Main Category: Pediatrics / Children's Health
Also Included In: Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 19 May 2009 - 8:00 PDT

A lack of emotional intelligence leads to poor coping strategies and seriously increases the likelihood of self-harm in teenagers, claims a study published yesterday, in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology.

The study, carried out by Moira Mikolajczak from the Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, K. V. Petrides from the London Psychometric Laboratory at University College London and Jane Hurry from the Institute of Education examined the levels of self harm, emotional intelligence and coping strategies of 490 British secondary school pupils.

Dr Petrides said: "People who turn to self harm claim to do so to regulate their emotions, which indicates that they cannot manage their feelings in a healthy way. We wanted to better understand the underlying psychological issues that lead adolescents to harm themselves."

Of the 490 students who took part, 132 (27 per cent) reported having deliberately self harmed, either hitting or cutting themselves or taking an overdose of recreational drugs. 65 per cent of self harmers were found to have mild to severe symptoms of depression.

"We found that teenagers who self harmed had both significantly lower scores on a measure of emotional intelligence and were more likely to use maladaptive coping strategies such as self criticism or self blame. This suggests that self harm is a desperate attempt to reduce the negative feelings that are worsened by their poor and ineffective emotional coping strategies."

"However efficient self harm may be at reducing negative emotions in the short term, this is at the cost of serious physical injury and longer term psychological problems. These findings will help us develop coaching programmes for the treatment of self harm patients that focus on developing both better methods of coping and boosting emotional intelligence."

Source
British Psychological Society

Did you forget me?

Did you forget you loved me?

Did you forget Im one of your children?


or did you chose this path for me?

did I?


I am an incredible woman

did you not notice?

or is the harm, the hurt that I have known

as a girl child, a woman

given to only the special, the strong



I am me, I am strength

You, my God, my poor man,

cant take that back

It is mine, I am me