What on earth would you do that for? You did WHAT? I don't understand what you're saying. Show me! When did you do it? What did you do with all the blood? Have you lost your mind? Are you on drugs? You're making this up! These are the kinds of things friends, partners and family say when a loved one makes the momentous decision to confess to self-harm. These generic responses are characterised by the same bag of emotions: anger, shock, fear. For parents and partners, the first thoughts are: Is it my fault? How could I not have noticed? Why didn't you tell me?
According to the Mental Health Foundation, an estimated 1 in 130 Britons have deliberately hurt themselves. Every year across the UK, 142,000 cases of self-harm are treated by accident and emergency wards. Scary statistics indeed, but they are just the tip of the iceberg. Most self-harmers never seek medical attention. I never did.
Due to its inherently secretive nature, self-harm is difficult to research. Most reports say the majority of self-harmers are adolescents, typically female. Recent films such as Thirteen and Girl Interrupted reinforce this, having us believe it's a teenage girl thing, a rite of passage like getting a piercing or experimenting with drugs. Rebuffing this stereotype, another recent film, Secretary, portrays self-harm as a problem that many adults also wrestle with.
A friend, a veteran of 12-step programmes that help her deal with drug addiction, anorexia and alcoholism, says many of her close recovery buddies, men and women ranging in age from 25 to 50, have successfully conquered addictions to cocaine or drink but are absolutely incapable of beating self-harm.
Although Young Minds, the childrens' mental health organisation, rightly argues that self-harm is reaching alarming levels in children and young people (a 2001 National Statistics report found an estimated 2.1% of 11- to 15-year-olds had hurt themselves), it would be wildly misleading to write this off as an adolescent condition. That's too tidy. And it gives the false impression that it's a spin-off of teen angst, something you grow out of.
The National Self Harm Network, the UK's leading advisory bureau on the subject, concurs: "There is no evidence to show people 'grow out of it'." If you know the most common tell-tale signs of self-harm - lots of angry little red cuts, burn marks or healed white scars on the arms and legs - then you realise just how prevalent it is. Rarely a week goes by when I don't see someone on the tube with the aforementioned SOS screams written on their flesh. I know this secret skin code because I went through it myself. Like most self- harmers, for me it was a typical morbid behaviourial symptom of depression. It was never a failed attempt at suicide. I didn't want to die. I just wanted relief from depression and self-harm does exactly that: after cutting or burning, endorphins rush to the source of the pain, the accompanying euphoria yanks the self-harmer from the numb, alienating, catatonia of depression, instils a blissful disassociation.
For five minutes, you feel OK again. Bizarre as it sounds, for that five-minute high, it's worth hurting yourself. As a self-harm expert once told me: "Depression is a downer, self-harm is an upper. If you're battling depression, it's easy to get hooked on something that picks you up." I didn't grow out of self-harm (it was part of my everyday life from 18 to 22); instead I found less self-destructive ways to cope. Self-harm is essentially a coping mechanism.
A good place to start breaking the habit is in a library: find out why you're doing it, how you can stop, learn new ways to cope. The best books are: Steven Levenkron's Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self Mutilation, Tracy Alderman's The Scarred Soul and Caroline Kettlewell's Skin Game. There's also a hugely supportive website called Secret Shame (Palace.net). Beyond that, get professional help - medication, therapy. Find your "voice'. Find healthy "uppers" such as swimming, keeping a journal, yoga.
You learn that self-harm is a short- term solution, a quick fix. You learn that there will always be days when the swipe of a razor blade across depressed flesh will seem like the easiest way out of an unbearable mood. But you don't give in. You sit it out and it passes. And most important and difficult of all, you learn to like yourself.
