If you need help, come here.

Hotlines

Depression, anxiety and mental health

08457 90 90 90 - Samaritans UK (Support for feelings of distress or despair)

0300 5000 927 - Rethink UK (Living with mental illness)

0808 802 5544 - YoungMinds UK Parents helpline (Information on child and adolescent mental health)

0800 068 4141 - Papyrus HOPEline UK (Young suicide prevention)

Abuse (child, sexual, domestic violence)

0800 1111 - Childine (for children up to 19 years old)

0808 800 5000 - NSPCC (for adults concerned about children)

0808 2000 247 - Refuge (domestic violence)

Addictions

0845 769 7555 - Alcoholics anonymous

0300 999 1212 - Narcotics anonymous

Bereavement

0844 477 9400 - Cruse bereavement care

Crime victims

0845 30 30 900 - Victim support

Also visit rapecrisis.org.uk to find your local helpine

Eating Disorders

0845 634 1414 - Beat

Obsessions

0845 390 6232 - OCD action UK

Panic and Anxiety

0808 808 0545 - No Panic

08444 775 774 - Anxiety UK

Relationships

0300 100 1234 - Relate (information on services)

Self Harm

Before you self harm in any way, you should probably know what you’re getting into.

Before you make that cut, please keep in mind that you will find the pain release and blood strangely addictive.

You may think to yourself that you’ll be able to control it, that you won’t let it get out of hand.
You may think that you can just stick to a few small, shallow cuts here and there that won’t be deep and that will heal quickly and easily.

But you’re wrong.
You can’t control it, it’s impossible to control. It controls you. It’s an addiction.
The cuts will get deeper, they’ll scar. They’ll take weeks to months to heal and years for the scars to actually begin to fade.

You’ll find that soon, you depend on it. You can’t go more than a few days without cutting. You’ll go crazy as your skin itches and burns, your hands shake, your head pounds, your vision goes blurry as you try to keep your mind off of it, try to hold back from giving in. But you will.

If you think you can limit the cuts to just one area of your body, you better think again. It’ll spread slowly but steadily, like a deadly virus. It’ll spread as you run out of skin, from your wrists to arms, past your elbows, up your shoulders down to your stomach, across your hips and waist and soon will cover your every inch of your legs right down to your ankles.

I hope you’re prepared to withdraw from others and live in a constant state of shame and guilt. Even if you have been the most honest person to ever live, you will lie to your friends, family members, everyone around you who you care about.

You’ll find yourself jerking back from the touch of someone, as if their fingers and hands have been bathed in a toxic, burning poison. You’ll be terrified that they will feel a scar or cut from beneath the fabric of your shirt or because it just plain hurts so much to simply be touched.

Be prepared to become your own worst enemy. You’ll fear yourself, your head, the urges that taunt you every minute of every day. You’ll come to fear the next time you cut because you don’t know how bad it’ll be.

Wait for the 10 cuts to turn into 20 then 50 then 100. You’ll be covered in scars and cuts.

Your entire life will begin to revolve around your addiction. You’ll constantly be thinking about cutting, covering up your cuts, how you’ll hide your blades, scissors, bobby pins and the other objects you use to destroy your body.

And then..the first time that you cut “too deep.” The bleeding won’t stop and you’re gasping, shaking, panicking, fear takes over you. You pray and hope that the bleeding will stop. Your purpose wasn’t to die, you won’t ever go that deep again. Right? Wrong. You’ll go there again, and deeper.

But don’t worry. You’ll learn how to take care of your cuts so you don’t have to take a trip to the hospital every night. The better you get at treating your wounds, the worse they become.

You’ll lie to yourself and try to justify it when you go to the pharmacy and drug store, finding yourself spending 20, 30, 40 dollars on dressings, gauze, alcohol wipes and sterile strips.

You’ll tap your foot impatiently, hoping that no one stares and asks you why you’re buying all of these things. But at the same time..you hope someone asks, so you know they care.

Be prepared to spend even more money on an entire new wardrobe. Long sleeved shirts, hoodies, long pants, boots, bracelets, wristbands. The list goes on forever.

You’ll keep scanning other people’s bodies for signs of self harm, hoping that there is someone else out there who feels the same way you do. Hoping, praying that they will be like you. But that’ll never happen. You’ll see clean, uncut, unmarred arms and feel even more alone and ashamed than before.

You’ll do a lot of things alone, be prepared to kiss your social life goodbye. You’ll always be doing your laundry, always in private so no one sees the blood stained towels and clothes. You’ll be spending hours scrubbing blood from the bathroom floor, and wiping dried blood off of your keyboard.

You won’t be able to make it a day without cutting. You’ll carry an emergency kit in your wallet or purse. A key, safety pin, a needle, a paperclip, even a pencil. Everything around you will become a weapon. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it gives you that feeling that sends you reeling.

Next thing you know, you’re in the bathroom stall at your school or work, picking open the scab of an old cut with a needle.

Say goodbye to all of the things you took for granted. Shorts, sandals, tank tops, swimming in the summer, going to the beach. All of these things will be a far off memory.

I hope you like itching and scratching non stop. You will itch and itch and itch. It’ll be so much that it’ll look like you have some sort of flesh eating disease.

You will become an expert on your body as you carefully destroy it, taking it apart piece by piece.

You will dream of cutting, dreaming of getting caught. It will haunt you day and night, in your dreams and when you are awake. Cutting will take over your life. It now has it’s hold over you, it controls you.

You’ll hate yourself, hate yourself for making that first cut that threw you into this vicious, neverending cycle.

You’ll wish you never made that first cut.
You’ll wish you had read something like this, or that someone had told you what would happen.

But as much as you hate your addiction and self harm, you love it and can’t live without it. You’d rather die than go just a few weeks without cutting.

Now, I’ll tell you what the title pertains to.
How to self harm.
Here is where I tell you how to successfully hurt yourself.

Put down the blade.
Put down the pair of scissors.
Put down the knife.
Put down the needle, safety pin or paper clip.
Because you are so much better than this.
And believe me, you don’t want to get involved with the monster of SH.

Suicide

If you are feeling suicidal now, please stop long enough to read this. It will only take about five minutes. I do not want to talk you out of your bad feelings. I am not a therapist or other mental health professional - only someone who knows what it is like to be in pain.

I don’t know who you are, or why you are reading this page. I only know that for the moment, you’re reading it, and that is good. I can assume that you are here because you are troubled and considering ending your life. If it were possible, I would prefer to be there with you at this moment, to sit with you and talk, face to face and heart to heart. But since that is not possible, we will have to make do with this.

I have known a lot of people who have wanted to kill themselves, so I have some small idea of what you might be feeling. I know that you might not be up to reading a long book, so I am going to keep this short. While we are together here for the next five minutes, I have five simple, practical things I would like to share with you. I won’t argue with you about whether you should kill yourself. But I assume that if you are thinking about it, you feel pretty bad.

Well, you’re still reading, and that’s very good. I’d like to ask you to stay with me for the rest of this page. I hope it means that you’re at least a tiny bit unsure, somewhere deep inside, about whether or not you really will end your life. Often people feel that, even in the deepest darkness of despair. Being unsure about dying is okay and normal. The fact that you are still alive at this minute means you are still a little bit unsure. It means that even while you want to die, at the same time some part of you still wants to live. So let’s hang on to that, and keep going for a few more minutes.

Start by considering this statement:

Suicide is not chosen; it happens
when pain exceeds
resources for coping with pain.

That’s all it’s about. You are not a bad person, or crazy, or weak, or flawed, because you feel suicidal. It doesn’t even mean that you really want to die - it only means that you have more pain than you can cope with right now. If I start piling weights on your shoulders, you will eventually collapse if I add enough weights… no matter how much you want to remain standing. Willpower has nothing to do with it. Of course you would cheer yourself up, if you could.

Don’t accept it if someone tells you, “That’s not enough to be suicidal about.” There are many kinds of pain that may lead to suicide. Whether or not the pain is bearable may differ from person to person. What might be bearable to someone else, may not be bearable to you. The point at which the pain becomes unbearable depends on what kinds of coping resources you have. Individuals vary greatly in their capacity to withstand pain.

When pain exceeds pain-coping resources, suicidal feelings are the result. Suicide is neither wrong nor right; it is not a defect of character; it is morally neutral. It is simply an imbalance of pain versus coping resources.

You can survive suicidal feelings if you do either of two things: (1) find a way to reduce your pain, or (2) find a way to increase your coping resources. Both are possible.

Now I want to tell you five things to think about.

You need to hear that people do get through this — even people who feel as badly as you are feeling now. Statistically, there is a very good chance that you are going to live. I hope that this information gives you some sense of hope.

Give yourself some distance. Say to yourself, “I will wait 24 hours before I do anything.” Or a week. Remember that feelings and actions are two different things - just because you feel like killing yourself, doesn’t mean that you have to actually do it right this minute. Put some distance between your suicidal feelings and suicidal action. Even if it’s just 24 hours. You have already done it for 5 minutes, just by reading this page. You can do it for another 5 minutes by continuing to read this page. Keep going, and realize that while you still feel suicidal, you are not, at this moment, acting on it. That is very encouraging to me, and I hope it is to you.

People often turn to suicide because they are seeking relief from pain. Remember that relief is a feeling. And you have to be alive to feel it. You will not feel the relief you so desperately seek, if you are dead.

Some people will react badly to your suicidal feelings, either because they are frightened, or angry; they may actually increase your pain instead of helping you, despite their intentions, by saying or doing thoughtless things. You have to understand that their bad reactions are about their fears, not about you.

But there are people out there who can be with you in this horrible time, and will not judge you, or argue with you, or send you to a hospital, or try to talk you out of how badly you feel. They will simply care for you. Find one of them. Now. Use your 24 hours, or your week, and tell someone what’s going on with you. It is okay to ask for help. Try:

Send an anonymous e-mail to The Samaritans
Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TTY:1-800-799-4TTY)
(In Australia, call Lifeline Australia at telephone: 13 11 14
Teenagers, call Covenant House NineLine, 1-800-999-9999
Look in the front of your phone book for a crisis line
Call a psychotherapist
Carefully choose a friend or a minister or rabbi, someone who is likely to listen

But don’t give yourself the additional burden of trying to deal with this alone. Just talking about how you got to where you are, releases an awful lot of the pressure, and it might be just the additional coping resource you need to regain your balance.

Suicidal feelings are, in and of themselves, traumatic. After they subside, you need to continue caring for yourself. Therapy is a really good idea. So are the various self-help groups available both in your community and on the Internet.

Well, it’s been a few minutes and you’re still with me. I’m really glad.

Since you have made it this far, you deserve a reward. I think you should reward yourself by giving yourself a gift. The gift you will give yourself is a coping resource. Remember, back up near the top of the page, I said that the idea is to make sure you have more coping resources than you have pain. So let’s give you another coping resource, or two, or ten…! until they outnumber your sources of pain.

Now, while this page may have given you some small relief, the best coping resource we can give you is another human being to talk with. If you find someone who wants to listen, and tell them how you are feeling and how you got to this point, you will have increased your coping resources by one. Hopefully the first person you choose won’t be the last. There are a lot of people out there who really want to hear from you. It’s time to start looking around for one of them.

Now: I’d like you to call someone.

Somewhere in the madness, she found herself