WARNING! THIS CONTAINS A FEW GRAPHIC IMAGES!

Please be advised my aim with this article is to educate. I don't want to trigger anyone battling self harm now which is why i have placed a warning on the top of the page.

As a student who knows a lot of people, its hard for me to come out to my friends, and admit that i used to self harm. It's because of the stigma around it. In high school i was constantly judged for my ongoing battle with self harm. I was told things like "You're crazy....Unstable.....An Attention Whore." Just things like that. I was heavily bullied for it because people did not understand why i did it. I wanted to write this article to destroy this idea that people who self harm are "crazy" ... and all of the above things mentioned before. Here are some things that i have been asked, and things that have been told to me personally when i was battling it. I am three years clean now. I just want to tell people WHY these things are untrue, and WHY its unfair to say them. I am also going to explain the best ways to help someone dealing with self harm, and how i recovered from it. Hope this helps, stay beautiful.

1. "So... Why do you do it?"

People who self harm much like people who are suicidal do NOT cut for attention. We cut because we feel internal pain so deep, it is the only way that we can express our emotions.

I know a problem that i had when battling self harm was that i just did not know how to say "I'm feeling sad because..." "I am feeling depressed because" or even how to say "I'm feeling depressed, sad, lonely, dejected." Sometimes we cannot express how we are feeling. We also do NOT want to make other people worry about our problems, so to hide, we cut. It's having depression so bad, that it makes you lash out physically because you cannot stand the stress from it all. Certain things trigger us. For me it was anxiety. I would get anxious by small, stupid things, and lash out. For others its anger. It is because of pain usually, but we all have different reasons. It could be to cope with death, ect. It's because we do NOT have the knowledge of coping skills or mechanisms which is why we often end up in hospitalization. We are SURVIVORS. We all have stories.

2. "You should really see someone about that..."

The funny thing is... most of us who battle self harm ARE IN FACT SEEING SOMEONE.

So you saying this to us, DOES NOT HELP US, its actually very rude. This can also be triggering. This makes us feel like people did NOT actually care what we're going through. It's hard enough for us to even TALK about this kind of stuff because of stigma in general, try coming out to your friend, and having them say THIS to you! It's not fair!

3. "You're Emo, you must be SUPER ugly."

Yeah, We are Emo "freaks", the only people who are ugly though are people who say that. Yall are just judgmental.

But we are NOT ugly. We have pain so deep, it HURTS PHYSICALLY. This dosn't make us ugly human beings. It makes us gorgeous humans. I have met people who have battled things as ugly as child abuse that use cutting as a coping mechanism. I have met people who use it to battle rape. The funny thing is most people actually want help. They are willing to accept help. They don't know HOW to get it though.

4. "Everyone will hate you if you tell people about what you have gone through, it is best to keep silent about it. You wouldn't want to embarrass us, would you? We just don't want people thinking we are bad parents for this happening to you."

While this has not happened to me because i had loving adults in my life, this has happened to many others. You are NOT a bad parent if this is happening to your child. Your child just has wounds that they cannot express so they lash out.

Most of us are SURVIVORS. We will NOT be silenced because Stigma tells us to, or our parents tell us to! You CANNOT TELL SOMEONE TO STAY SILENT ABOUT ABUSE! We are all victims! Not just of abuse, but trauma!

5. "Well someone needs more therapy."

Yes, we are in therapy, we have gone over this. Therapy works its own course. The first couple sessions are always the roughest, they were especially for me. Its because we cannot tell our therapists always right away whats going on.

The first part of mental health psychology is admitting you have a problem to accept you need, and want help. Not all of us can do this right away. Parents, the therapy is working, you have to give it time. Be patient. I know it's frustrating because you just want your kid to get better, but BELIEVE ME it will work eventually. Also, if your child is saying they do NOT agree with this therapist, or they do NOT like them, find a different one please. Please do not make them suffer further by forcing them to talk to someone they don't trust.

HOW CAN WE HELP?

1. Listening

Someone being thoughtful, and listening to us is more then enough. When we come out, and share our stories, don't be that one jerk.

2. Not being afraid of us

We are not scary people, we do not bite. Quit judging us, we are just people like you! There is no reason to feel like we will come after you! And just because somebody else who battles it may have in the past (because of deep wounds) dosnt mean everyone else will.

3. Not suggesting we get help

I know that this sounds bad, but like i said before it just aggravates a person who has self harm. It's okay to ASK if we are receiving help, but do not suggest it because you could offend someone and provoke them further. We do NOT need suicidal help lines or anything.

I BATTLE SELF HARM, HOW DID YOU STOP?

1. Therapy

I took DBT therapy, Expressive therapy, Music therapy, and i even had a one on one therapist provided from time to time. DBT was what i chose to stick with. DBT really helped me learn how to cope with what i was facing. It was scary the first couple of times, but i did it. Please try DBT. It really helped me!

2. The Butterfly Project

So the butterfly project is a project where people instead of cutting draw on arms. This really helped me. I would draw hearts on my arms until one day i decided randomly to stop.

3. Going on walks, or exercise when getting to the point where i wanted to self harm. Using coping skills.

This probably helped me the most. I would go to the gym for three, four hours (and i ended up weighing 120 pounds) just to battle my racing thoughts around self harm. I still walk to this day to help with my anxiety. Coloring apps helped me as well. It kept my mind off of things. Also, i realized talking about it really helped as well.

I hope that this article educated the few people who are uneducated about self harm. I hope that this article has brought a new light to the subject at hand. Thank you for reading, please share, and pass this along to END THE STIGMA!

-DS