 Hi and welcome back. Today I am answering a question that I got through my YouTube channel which was from someone who struggled with self-harm and they said help I haven't self-harm for over a year and I slipped today and I hurt myself what do I do next and I thought this was a really important thing to tackle because it's very very difficult when you have struggled with self-harm in the past if you do have a moment when things aren't going okay again knowing how to pick yourself back up after that can be really hard so my advice for this is first of all it doesn't mean that you failed you need to bear this in mind as a blip a slip a trip it doesn't mean that you've fallen all the way back down the mountain it just means that there's been a little you know crook in the path on the way up so once you have self-harmed once even if you haven't done it for years that does not automatically mean that you're sucked straight back into this self-harm cycle it can feel like that because we feel like we've succeeded we've succeeded we've succeeded we failed and that's often how our thinking is but we need to try really really hard not to allow that kind of thinking to overcome us it's not a fail it's a slip we're going to pick ourselves back up and we're going to continue on walking head held high and the thing to bear in mind with that is if you can pick yourself up after a minor slip a minor blip with yourself harm that's amazing actually it's much more impressive to continue to not self-harm once you've done it you know once again because that kind of reminds your body all the reasons why you used to do it and if you're able not to do it again that's really quite incredible so yeah number one we need to be forgiving of ourselves of having a slip having a blip number two is to be open and honest with the people who might be able to support us so we are in quite a vulnerable position at the point at which we self-harm again for the first time in a long time not least because there will be something that has caused this to happen so there's going to be something underlying emotionally or an experience that has made us return to the self-harm now if there's someone that we've been able to trust in the past this is the moment to pick up the phone go and talk to them open up to them and let them know I'm having a bit of a difficult moment at the minute is there any chance that you can support me what support looks like will be different for everyone but actually being open and honest and allowing people to know that yeah I'm really struggling right now and I might need just a little bit of extra help really really helpful number three is to think about what alternatives can you turn to if your thinking goes there again so this is something we think about a lot all the time anyway but we need to do this more when we're at most dangerous self-harming so we're thinking why did I slip then it was there a trigger that I can avoid or change or did it provide me with some sort of feeling or relief that I am able to get in another way so you're thinking there about what were the feelings that went with the self-harm what was I feeling like before what did I feel like after and how can I either avoid those feelings before or how can I mimic those feelings of after in a way that doesn't cause physical harm to myself I hope that helps a little bit really simple ideas but actually the main thing here is about taking stock about realizing that you can self-harm once and then sort of jump back on the wagon as it were one incident of self-harm does not mean that you are falling back into that cycle and I can say that hand-on-heart as someone who was completely clean for over a year and then I slipped and had one self-harm incident and I had that exact same feeling that this person asked the question about that exact same feeling of thinking oh well it's all completely helpless now and back at square one but I had a good friend who I confided in and he helped me and I climbed back on the wagon and it was just that one time and now it's six months on again from that and I look back at that time and actually I feel incredibly proud that I managed to not only self-harm but then not do it again so that's it try not to let it draw you back in work with those around you and forgive yourself it's okay it's okay and you can do this good luck I hope you found this helpful please take a moment to like it if you did leave a comment below with any other suggestions that you have or ideas for future videos and if you want to hear from more from me in the future then please subscribe thank you bye