 In this series, I answer your questions about self-harm. I'll be adding to this series over time, so if you have a question, please leave it in a comment below or email it to me at pookie at inourhands.com. I really think it's important that we talk more about self-harm and everywhere I go, people have tons and tons of questions for me. So get asking and I'll get answering and I'd really love your input on these questions too, so do comment, please. Today's question comes from Terry Culkin, a great pal of mine over in Twitterland. He's also the person who painted this beautiful portrait of my daughters, Lyra and Ellie. So Terry asks, how do you react sensitively and properly to a person you know or who you know and love, who you discover self-harm? Now, the first thing I would say about this is that it's really difficult when you discover that someone that you care about is harming themselves. So it might be that you're their parent, their teacher, their friend, and this is someone who you've got to know over a period of time and you learn that they are doing harm to themselves and that can be really, really hard to manage. And that throws up lots of difficult thoughts and feelings for us as the person listening in. Now, obviously we want to do our best to support that person, but it's really important that we're a bit forgiving of ourselves for these very difficult and conflicting thoughts and feelings that we might have. You might feel angry, you might feel sad, you might feel scared, you might feel repulsed. There's all sorts of different things that can come up. So in the short term, sometimes it's about kind of putting on our best acting skills and trying to appear calm. Sometimes it's about accepting, I can't do this conversation right now. I care about you, I want to help you, but this is quite hard for me right now and I just need a moment to process and I can give of myself better if we can talk about this again later on. That's okay. So be forgiving of yourself and be forgiving of the fact that you will have all these different thoughts, these different feelings and that, yeah, you might be horrified, you might be scared, you might be angry, all these things. So yeah, forgive yourself. And then in terms of how we respond, there's a couple of different things here. One of the most helpful things that we can do for someone who is harming themselves or experiencing any kind of emotional distress is just to stop and actually listen to them. So this is about actively listening, about allowing them to tell their story, to explore it with us and just to be the person who allows that story to be told. It's not about us looking to solve the problem, it's not about us trying to fix things here or even necessarily to really understand. It's just about that person knowing that we're someone who will listen unjudgmentally to what they have to say. It's the gift of listening is one of the greatest gifts that you can ever give to someone that you care about and love. The other thing is, if you can bear it and those difficult thoughts and feelings aren't too overwhelming for you, if you are happy to ask questions and actually allow this person to talk about their self-harm, I mean, there are limits here and you might not wanna hear the in-depth details, but sometimes we find that we get really kind of, there's a bit of a stigma around the actual acts of self-harm themselves and being able to talk openly and honestly with someone about your kind of rituals around self-harm, about when you do it and why you do it and how it makes you feel can be quite helpful because actually that helps us to understand some of the motivators here. So self-harm, essentially it's meeting some kind of unmet need, it might help you to feel calm or it might help you to kind of get out feelings of anger towards yourself or it might be a kind of mindfulness bringing you to the moment and allow you to feel real if perhaps you're struggling to feel real because you're struggling with depression and you're in that kind of bell jar. So there's lots of different reasons why someone might self-harm and often we might not have taken time to stop and really think about that and pick it apart and having someone that we can talk to who's not so squeamish about talking about the incidences of self-harm can really help us to begin to understand ourselves a little bit better and when we understand ourselves and the act of self-harm on what it's doing for us, what's in it for us that is when we can begin to then ask the question could I replace this unhealthy harmful behavior with a different healthier coping mechanism instead? What else might meet that need in a similar way? Finally, the other thing that you can do as someone who cares about someone who self-harm is to help that person to think about seeking some support if they need additional input. So you might be supporting them in making an appointment to see the GP. You might be thinking about if they are at school, if there's someone at school that they can talk to about this about getting some extra input. You might be helping them to access online counseling through something like Cooth or calling a helpline like Childline or the Samaritans where we can begin to open up and talk about this. Or you might be going through something like iAppt or CYPiAppt are kind of access to counseling therapies here in the UK. So you might be thinking about what are the next steps here? Do you need extra additional support and how can I help you with that? Some of it might be about you helping to research, helping to make appointments or you might literally go alongside the person that you care about to go visit the doctor and to be an extra support, a helping hand literally walking alongside. Don't feel like you have to know the answers. Don't feel like you have to be able to fix this. Sometimes the best friend, the best support is one who listens, one who cares, one who doesn't judge and one who makes it really clear that regardless of this really difficult, challenging behavior that's going on, I still love you, I still care about you. Maybe I'm angry or sad or scared that this is happening but I really want to help you and support you to walk forwards and yeah, we'll make the journey together. It's much, much easier when you don't feel like you're doing this on your own and a good friend, a parent, a teacher can be the person who walks alongside you on that journey. Most important thing is that you care enough to ask the question Terry, that really matters, it says a lot. Thank you.