Meeting-The-Challenge-Making-a-Difference-Practitioner-Guide

PRACTICAL GUIDANCE
THERE ARE MANY REASONS
WHY PEOPLE SELF-HARM;
HERE IS A SMALL SAMPLE
OF EXPLANATIONS:
• To get bad feelings ‘out’
of the body (through
bleeding or vomiting,
for example).
• To help the person feel
in control if they are
struggling with feeling
trapped, desperate
and powerless, or out
of control.
• To give a concrete form
to emotional pain.
• To make the person feel
alive when they feel
‘dead’ or numb.
• To relieve the tension of
lots of pent up emotion,
like anger or hurt.
• To engage people’s
concern or to provoke
a response.
• To bring the person into
the present when they
feel lost in bad memories
of the past.
• To protest about how
they are being treated.
• To punish him or herself,
or others.
“When I was self-harming or suicidal, although I may
not have realised it at that time, it was a call for help.
I just wanted someone to care for me and love me
and not to treat me like I was trouble and meaningless.
When people used to say I was ‘attention seeking’
they used to say it like I was being bad but I was
attention seeking because no-one ever paid me any
attention or cared for me.”
You can see that it would be a mistake to put forward any one
reason why people self-harm. There are many reasons and
sometimes more than one reason will be operating at once. The
important message is to be curious about what has led a
particular individual to do this at this particular time.
Responding to self harm
One of the things that gets in the way of workers responding
compassionately to someone who has self-harmed is that it can
make us feel angry that someone has done this to themselves,
particularly when it may be our job to treat people who have
suffered through accidents or illness. The person who harms
themself seems to be making our job more difficult. But they are
suffering too. No-one does this to themselves if they feel they can
express themselves or get what they need in other ways.
Self-harm may also make us feel disgust, particularly when
someone has done something extreme. They may be very cut off
from their feelings and feeling very little at that moment, but we
feel the shock of the injury they have inflicted. It can sometimes
feel like an assault on our own body.
At times someone self-harming can leave staff feeling very
anxious. We feel frightened that the injury is life-threatening, or
that it signals that the person is at risk of suicide, or we are not
sure what they may do next.
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