 Hello, it's Puki and Buddy again and today we're going to talk about what not to do if you discover that a young person is self-harming. Now the first thing that you need to take care not to do is not to judge them. So self-harming is something that's really misunderstood and one of the things that really stops people from reaching out and talking to a trusted adult or a friend about it is that they worry what that person's going to think about them. So try to withhold your judgement and certainly even if you've got a mix of sort of thoughts and feelings going on in your own mind as that person reveals about their self-harm to you, try quite hard to remain kind of neutral and supportive in your response. A calm, supportive response is going to be received far more well than a judgmental one. The next thing is don't tell them to stop. So our instinct reaction is often, oh my god, why are you doing that? Please stop right away. And particularly if it's somebody who we really care about, a friend, our child, or people at school that we've gotten to know, we want them not to hurt themselves and we can't understand, you know, why they would be doing it. When we ask someone to stop and make an expectation of that it can make them much less likely to continue to confide in us. It can mean that that behaviour becomes quite secretive or it can mean that they attempt to stop because they want to do as we've asked and that in doing so they're not managing the kind of underlying thoughts, feelings and difficulties that the self-harm was helping them to cope with and that therefore those thoughts and feelings and difficulties build up and so sometimes then when they do come to self-harm it might be more extreme or they might take more extreme measures still. We obviously would hope to help someone to stop self-harming over time but that's a gradual process and it does involve learning how to manage our thoughts and feelings and learning how to respond in a healthy rather than an unhealthy way. So we're looking at replacing those coping mechanisms. It won't happen instantly however much we might like it to. The next thing is not to overreact. One of the very common bits of feedback I get from young people is that when they confide in someone about their self-harm that that person is really really horrified and often that that person will assume that they are suicidal. This might be the case sometimes but you can't make any assumptions about that and actually again what someone needs when they're talking to you about their self-harm is for you to be calm and supportive if possible and so kind of responding in a very highly emotional way makes it about us rather than about the person who's confiding in us and so sometimes we just have to employ our best acting skills. On the other hand we shouldn't dismiss the behavior either so the other common response that young people find very difficult is if they build up the courage to confide in someone about their self-harm and then that person is is dismissive of it doesn't take it seriously thinks it's just attention seeking or perhaps if they show you their injuries and you are relieved that they aren't worse then that can make that young person feel quite invalidated. So no matter how severe or not those injuries are this is a young person who is finding things very difficult to manage and who needs your your support so again that calm supportive non-judgmental response. What you do need to do is to help that young person to be safe so in the immediate instance if a young person is confiding in you about their self-harm and they show you their injuries then we're looking for things like are these injuries needing any kind of first aid is there any risk of infection is there anything that we need to do here to make sure this young person is kept safe in the immediate instance if for example they are suicidal we need to think really carefully about how we're helping them in that instance so help to keep them safe you need to listen listening means not talking so much actually just allowing that young person to tell their story because they're the only one who can tell it don't make assumptions about what they're doing and why and what's driving this just let them tell you their story themselves and finally if you can be open and honest in your response and kind of walk with that young person through what's likely to be a relatively long and not very easy journey towards recovery it's much easier when we make that journey with other people by our sides and one of the things that you can do as the person who's been trusted with this really really difficult conversation is to say this isn't something I know a huge amount about I'm willing to learn more I want to help you I'm here to listen I'm here to support and in terms of very practical first steps and one of the things that you can do is to sit down with that young person and have a think about the last few times they self harmed and have a think about what was the trigger for that what were the feelings that went with that why do they think it happened and why did it make them feel better and then we just begin to start thinking about what we might be able to do to help coping instead of the self harm or to avoid the triggers that caused it so a whistle stop short tour of what not to do and what not to say if a young person self harming a few tips on what you should say I'm really happy to share more information about self harm and a whole range of other mental health and emotional well-being issues just let me know what would be helpful please take a moment to like or comment on the video I'm hoping to make this channel really interactive with you and so if you have something to share something to say and or you just found this useful or not then please take a moment to say so thanks have so much and we'll see you again soon say bye bye buddy I totally forgot to say please subscribe I think I worked out how to put the button there now so please subscribe to my YouTube channel and then you'll get to see the next one when it comes out okay