Self-harming or self-hurting
Self-harming is a complex problem so I will run through some basics first. It does tend to be in younger people – often betwwen 14-25. But it can be found across a much wider age range and across genders and races.
What is self-harming?
Self-harming is when you harm or hurt yourself on purpose. There are many ways people self-harm the most common ones are listed below.
Person self-harming by burning
- Cutting: using knife, razor or scissors
- Stabbing: sticking sharp objects into your body – pins, needles, nails, staples
- Burning: with cigarette, lighter or matches
- Scalding: with hot water, rarely cooking oil
- Banging against hard objects to cause bleeding and injury
- Scratching parts of the body until they bleed
- Picking at the skin until it bleeds
- Breaking bones
- Hair pulling: usually until there is a bald patch
- Self-strangulation
- Taking things that are toxic – overdose of medication, drugs, household fluids, etc
- Drinking too much alcohol to harm purposefully yourself. (Very different to drinking or for pleasure).
Self-harm thoughts and actions are very different to suicidal ones. Self-harming does not mean you want to kill yourself. However; people who feel suicidal do want to end it all.
Why do people engage in self-harming?
It is almost impossible to write a list of all the reasons that people self-harm for. The most common are listed below:
- to cope with strong negative emotions like anger, grief, remorse and guilt
- to punish them self for things they feel they have done wrong
- to try to feel normal – pain give a sense of relief and normality
- to take their mind off the negative feelings.
Some peoplestart self-harming over the same thing each time but many people do it for different reasons every time.
Typical reasons for self-harming;
- difficult family life and/or other relationships
- being bullied or abused
- depression, anxiety or a personality disorder,
- issues with housing – homeless
- drugs taking or too much alcohol.
- coping with bad thoughts, emotions and feelings – they cause overwhelm
- to feel like they are in control of their body and mind
- punishment for ‘being a bad person’ or ‘it’s all my fault it happened’; self-hatred
Is it right to say that self-harming a mental health problem?
This is a little bit tricky to answer. Self-harming is a very clear sign that someone is in distress, which may be due to a mental illness. However; there are many people engaged in self-harming who have no mental illness.
So we have to say that self-harm is not a mental health issue in itself. However; it could be a part of a diagnosis procedure for: eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. It is important for a person and their doctor to find out why you are self-harming. If it is due to bipolar disorder or schizophrenia I cannot work with you.
Research has shown that people who self-harm are at more risk of suicide than people who have never self-harmed. The figure quoted is 66 times more likely that someone will end their lives if they have recently had a bout of self-harming. Women are at a greater risk of suicide than men.
These figues may be somewhat skewed. If the person’s method of self-harming was drugs, too much alcohol, strangulation or injury, there is high a risk that they could have accidentally ended their life.
The Flourish Programme is to be used instead of or alongside the standard conventional treatments for Self-harming support. I will never suggest stopping any form of treatment.
Flourish Hypnotherapy Treatment Sessions
Flourish Hypnotherapy is Phase 1 of the Flourish Programme. It can get people where they need to be in just 2-3 sessions.
The Flourish Programme is in 2 phases – Phase 1: Working on the immediate problems using Flourish Hypnotherapy.
Phase 2: Life Builder© to provide ongoing support until recovery is complete. (Optional – not all people need this).
What happens in a session
The Flourish Programme is an amazingly effective and empowering way to significantly improve your situation.
- You will connect to the real you – the person before the self-harming took hold.
- You will be able to completely change the way you think and feel about yourself, enabling you to live a happier and positive life.
- You will be able to remember the problem occurred but not have all that negative clutter associated with it.
Most people can work through their problems in 3 hours of Flourish Hypnotherapy, some people may need a session or so of Life Builder afterwards.
Please note. I do not regress people to remember repressed events, unless someone specifically asks for it. I will use a very radid form of hypnotic regression based on Flourish principles. It does not take several weeks it is normal to complete it in 3-4 sessions over 2 weeks.