Recently, I visited home, and I was sitting in my living room with my mom. Just like any other night before bed, I did my last sweep of social media for the day as she did hers. A few moments later, she asked me something that stopped me in my tracks.

Before I continue with this, I’d like to provide you with some background information. I am a 19 year old girl, who was diagnosed with depression and anxiety at a relatively young age. My experience with mental health has been no easy journey between extensive therapy, hospital stays, medication, and more. I still have some bad days, but none as dark as I had experienced at one point in my life. While overcoming my mental illnesses, I’ve become a mental health advocate and have worked alongside others to help #endthestigma. However, I still feel that a huge part of mental health is overlooked: self-harm.

My parents, who were a huge support system for me along the way, still struggled to talk to me about my own self-harming behavior as they didn’t understand it at the time and weren’t sure they ever would.

With that being said, that night in the living room, my mom told me she checked one of her Facebook pages, where she was a member of a support group for mothers of children with mental illnesses. She shared that one mother noticed her daughter began to self-harm, and she asked if any of the other mothers in the group could help explain this behavior to her or share their experiences. Due to that fact that at one point my mom was in this woman’s shoes, she felt obligated to share her own experience as a mother. However, she still struggled to understand what goes through someone’s mind to bring them to self-harm so she asked me to help construct a response.

I told my mom about an extremely helpful tool I learned in therapy called the C.A.R.E.S.S. technique, developed by Lisa Ferentz. C.A.R.E.S.S. can be used not only to help others understand the behavior of someone who self-harms, but it is also a method used to terminate the behavior.

C.A.– Communicate Alternatively –

A lot of self-destructive behaviors are in part to communicate the pain that a particular person is experiencing without actually admitting to it. An alternative to self-harm while still letting someone know what’s going on would be to write a letter.

R.E. – Release Endorphins –

Another common reason for self-destructive behaviors is because of the release of endorphins that occurs with self-harm, which in turn helps regulate intense feelings and emotions. An alternative way to release endorphins would be to go for a run or a bike ride.

S.S.– Self Soothe –

Studies show that many people also self-harm in an attempt to soothe themselves from the emotions they are experiencing. Different ways to healthily self-soothe depend on the person involved. For example, I might go get a pedicure in order to self-soothe, while someone else may enjoy taking a bubble bath.

All in all, I believe self-harm is extremely overlooked despite the fact that so many people cope in this way. I understand that it can be extremely uncomfortable to talk about and that there are so many preexisting stigmas surrounding the delicate subject. However, the people who don’t understand it – the people like you – are the people who are able to make a larger impact. Hopefully by having a better understanding of what may be going through the mind of someone who self-harms, you will be able to advocate for the person in your life suffering and be able to better assist in their recovery.

(NOTE: Not everyone’s reason for self-harming falls within C.A.R.E.S.S. Just because your loved one’s reasoning doesn’t fit into any of these categories does not make it any less valid.)