How I coped

i started to self harm after being bullied through school then i fell out with one of my closest friends big time. i felt so low and from the minute the blade touched my body it was such a sense of relief like i was punishing myself but at the same time every drop of blood was like a problem being released from my body and the feeling was brilliant i felt like i was someone.

what helped me too get through it was when my best friend and parents found out i saw how hurt they were and how much my actions affected them. they felt like they were bad parents but they werent at all. it was just my way of coping!!

its taken a lot of willpower, determination and support to come through it and sometimes i feel the urge but then i just take a look around me and think of a gd laf ive had with my family and friends and how life is far to short to be down!!!!

ive learnt to smile and live life to the max x x x x

claire Scotland

For anyone scared about telling anyone about their self-harming my experience might help you:

I began self-harming when I was 13. At the time I was being bullied. I had and still have very low self-esteem. I am now 17 and still self-harming. However, it is a lot better now and I feel I am only doing it as it's part of my life now, its what I grew up doing, and not because I am depressed. About a month ago, it all came to a head. I was an emotional mess, and ran away from home, almost to escape from myself. I came back and told my mum it was about my low esteem of my body image. She helped, but of course I wasn't telling her the whole story.

About a week later, I went to stay at my cousins and it came up. I broke down. That's when everything came out, all of us sharing secrets we've never told before. Then my cousin rolled his sleeve up and showed me his scars. Thats when I knew he understood me completely. I was crying my eyes out so I ran to the bathroom, I locked the door and found myself scratching vigorously at my arm. I'd calmed down and walked out, my cousin was stood there. He gave me a massive hug and took me into another room. We sat and talked for hours, through the night, I have never felt so close to anyone. He opened up and told me everything, and in return I did the same, well most things, about the self-harm anyway. Since then I have felt a lot better, and I don’t feel alone anymore. It doesn’t mean I’m going to stop; I’m not ready yet, just that I feel like I have someone to talk to or to stay with if it ever gets too much again.

Therefore my advice to anyone in a similar situation to me, is to just talk to someone, anyone. It took me 4 years to get the courage to tell anyone this secret I’d been carrying around with me, and it just happened that the person I told had been through the exact same thing. You’ll be surprised at what other people hide, what skeletons they’ve got in their closets, and at how good it feels to just get it out in the open, not to everyone, just to someone you trust. It does actually help. Trust me.

The world on my shoulders

I am 17 and at 13 felt the world was on top of my shoulders and I just wanted the ground to swallow me up!!

It all started at school I had so much pressure on me to do well but everyone knew including myself that that wasn’t going to happen because I’m not academic. So you can imagine the pressure both at home and school to do well, and be my normal confident bubbly self!

I got to year 10 and couldn’t handle being someone I wasn’t, because inside I felt like curling up into a ball and my body was crying out for help but no one could hear me. It was like I had a little man sitting on top of my heart screaming his little lungs out begging for help and no one was there, not family, friends, nothing.

My Science lessons were hell. I decided to change the way I went about who I was mates with and who I wasn’t to see if it helped and my science lessons I was put with the people who I hated and they made my life hell. So I walked out of my lesson and confided in an L.S.A who at the time was just a shoulder to cry on, so every lesson that got difficult I would take time out and go and talk to this L.S.A.

Year 10 Mock exams came by and I panicked…All I could think was “I’m stupid, this is not going to work, I’m going to fail, I’m a disappointment, I want to die.”

That day I went home and took some scissors from my mums cupboard and hid in the corner in my room door closed and started to cut my wrists. I didn’t have any feelings of what I had done to myself until the following morning when the pain had kicked in. Covering it was fine for my school uniform but at home I had not thought about…because you don’t think of anything before you cut, it’s only after that I personally felt relief, which is a classic feeling to have. I just did it to see what it was like having no clue the world I was going to get mixed up in.

So every day after school, making sure no one was upstairs I would get the scissors which I now kept in an old pencil case and would cut I did this until I was 16.

The day when I found out that my good friend had been doing it since she found out I had was the day I knew It had to stop.

I became close friends with the L.S.A. and it was like god had brought us together for a reason and we were so similar it was great. Year 11 flew by and I didn’t even have time to think about cutting but each day I still went to see my LSA because It was like I had to wean myself off of it.

I’m now 17 and I won’t deny it I have cut since but not as much or as bad. I have my own counsellor who is amazing and my friends who are my world and my parents (who still don’t know but so do coz parents are not stupid they so do know!) who are my rock, my support and I do love them even if I forget to do the chores or disrespect them deep down they know and help in their funny parent ways.