Self harm awareness day (1st March 2021)

 This week is eating disorder awareness week but today is also self harm awareness day too, a day to help raise awareness, understanding and empathy around self harm. Self harm and eating disorders are both misunderstood and stigmatized and I write my blog posts to hopefully help raise awareness and understanding from my own perspective of someone who has suffered from both eating disorders and self harm and made suicide attempts (which are different to self harm but there is a big overlap and people who self harm are at higher risk of attempting suicide). As I have said before I'm not proud of my mental health problems but I'm also not ashamed and am proud of how far I have come on my recovery journey. 

For me my mental health problems began with eating disorders and I tried self harming once as a teenager but it became a problem in my 20s after years of struggling with my eating disorders, anxiety and depression. The first time I self harmed "properly " I was maybe about 22, I had an eating disorder voice in my head and I was crying sitting on the kitchen floor arguing in my head, the anorexic voice was telling me I couldn't eat, the bulimic voice was telling me I could eat if I was sick but the anorexic voice would make me feel guilty that being sick doesn't get rid of all of the calories and my rational self just wanted to eat to be able to live my life. I was so upset I threw a mug and without even thinking about it I cut my arm with a piece of the broken mug. It then wasn't long before I was in a cycle of eating, making myself sick then cutting myself to punish myself for eating. When I first told a friend she contacted the crisis team who basically said they didn't deal with self harm and my gp just put me on prozac with no other help offered. Prozac is known to increase impulsivity and suicidal thoughts in younger adults which I was at the time but when I told my gp I was getting suicidal thoughts he told me to take a higher dose and I ended up impulsively taking 3 overdoses in one weekend yet was still just sent home with no more mental health support. By the time a few years later I got a care co ordinator because of my eating disorder my self harm was normalised by services because by then I did it "safely" as in I didn't bother a and e with it often and bought my own steristrips and dressings, I think even I saw it as normal and it became a way to deal with my emotions. I would self harm to punish myself if I thought I had upset someone or if I thought I had done something wrong, I would self harm if I was feeling angry or upset to release the emotion and I would self harm still to punish myself for eating. At one point I even carved the word "fat" in my arm and leg at different times. 

As the years without mental health support went on (despite me begging for help but me being told I was too high functioning for help because I worked), the worse my self harm became and I became more out of control with it. For me my self harm then included taking overdoses and I became scared I would kill myself but it was an obsessive thought that I deserved to die but there were times I took overdoses as a way to self harm to deal with my eating disorder because if I was physically ill I couldn't eat and it quietened the eating disorder "voice". It got to a point I was overdosing every time I got chance  and was also still cutting myself but I would get medically treated and sent home still no more mental health help. Between 2012 and 2014 I took about 60 overdoses and got diagnosed with personality disorders but was classed as too complex for local services but we found a hospital in London that would treat me but I was so out of control with my self harm I took more overdoses and got admitted to the local mental health hospital. After 3 months I was sent to a locked hospital for ladies with personality disorders and was sectioned for 10 months. In hospital my self harm changed from cutting to banging my head on walls and tying ligatures and pulling my hair out I just had obsessive self destructive thoughts 24/7 and I had got to a point I thought I couldn't live like that anymore and did just want to die. There is such an overlap between self harm and suicide attempts. I first tied a ligature because I got a thought no one could help me and I couldn't live with my mental health as bad as it was at the time and there were other times I tied ligatures as a way to just quieten the self destructive thoughts but not wanting to die but it got to a point I wasn't safe even on the mental health ward without staff with me 24 hours a day. For about 4 months I was getting restrained to stop me banging my head on walls and to stop me self harming in other ways but just taking things off someone who self harms just means the self harm changes so for me I ended up banging my head but I needed therapy to help me manage my emotions in a healthier way which I never got but i found my own strength from somewhere when i nearly died of meningococcal septicaemia and pneumonia and that was when i got safe enough to be discharged back into the community to a supported rehab, but then i relapsed with my self harm as i was anxious living outside of hospital with less support and was depressed that I had no friends I saw often anymore as their lives had continued whilst I was in hospital for a year and the year before that I had spent in and out of hospital for overdoses. 

I now haven't taken any overdoses since the end of 2018 and rarely self harm although there have been a couple of times especially in lockdown I did struggle with my mental health but I'm in therapy 3 days a week and the main problem I now have is my eating disorder. I still get the same thoughts and feelings that led to me self harming but mostly can stop myself apart from times I get really emotional and upset so my medication is in a safe so I can't impulsively take it but I'm getting alot better at managing my up and down moods.

Self harm can be any way you intentionally try to hurt yourself, it can be cutting, burning, scratching, overdosing on medication, headbanging or burning and can be for lots of different reasons. Reasons include a coping mechanism to deal with negative feelings and emotions, or a way to punish yourself. It might be seen by some as attention seeking but I know for me it was a secretive thing I did that I am ashamed and embarrassed about.

I hope mental health support for early intervention has improved as early treatment leads to higher recovery rates. If you or someone you know has a problem with self harm contact the local mental health crisis team or your gp who can refer you to mental health services and don't suffer as long as I did before anyone helped.

I feel I should be ashamed of my scars but am trying to be proud of the fact they tell a story of survival and I want to share my story to help people understand what it is like for someone who lives with mental health problems.