I first came in contact with self harm two years ago when one of my best friends sunk into depression. Before this I had never met anyone who felt so unhappy and it was hard for me to understand and accept that it didn’t matter what I did, I couldn’t take her pain away. All that I could do was support her and listen when she needed someone to talk to. I can’t convey how hard it was to sit by and watch her destroy herself believing that I was completely powerless to help her. I asked my friend why she hurt herself but the answers she gave me never made much sense and I continuously asked her not to. I was yet to learn that harming herself had slowly become an unconscious decision she made when she was feeling severely stressed and unable to cope. During the months that followed I did my best to learn about self harm and depression in a desperate attempt to find some sort of magic cure that would make my friend better.

At some stage in my search I stumbled across a website that dealt primarily with self harm and depression. I was amazed to discover how many people there were who felt the same way and who dealt with similar things to my friend on a daily basis. I was horrified to learn that one in eight people have a direct link to self harm and that this statistic is higher in teenage girls. One in three teenage girls self harm, or know someone that self harms. It was sad to think that many of these girls believed that they were alone and that no one would ever understand how they were feeling. Many, like my friend, were too scared to tell anyone else because they felt ashamed or guilty that they couldn’t cope.

Many people have misconceptions about self harm. They assume that those that self harm want to die, that every time they cut their arms or burn themselves they are trying to commit suicide. This assumption could not be more wrong. There are many reasons why a person self harms but for most it is a coping mechanism that gradually becomes an addiction. This addiction is what made it so hard for my friend to stop. She had become reliant on the release of the pain she had inside her that she felt whilst self harming and felt unable to survive without doing so. My friend didn’t want to die and that is why she was hurting herself. She was turning the emotional pain she felt into physical pain.

Of course I could not leave my friend feeling like this indefinitely and, when one day she decided to attempt suicide, I decided that someone had to know what had been going on. I’m pleased to say that eventually I managed to persuade her to speak to someone and get the help that she needed to battle her depression. I know that she found it hard opening up and being honest to begin with but once she had mastered the art of talking about her feelings, she found overcoming self harm was a lot easier. She was channelling her pain outside in a different way and the urge to hurt herself gradually decreased.

It wasn’t easy and there were many times when I thought she was going to give up and resort back to self harming again but as her focus moved from the negative aspects of life to the positive I was confident that she was going to be OK. My point is: that whilst someone is depressed they find it hard concentrating on the good things that life has to offer, their judgement of life in general is obscured by something they don’t understand and everything looks bleak. It is only when you have seen someone go through this, or been through it yourself, that you realise how easy it is to take things for granted. It is only when you have experienced immense sadness that you appreciate the pleasure of smiling and laughing and only when you have felt extreme loneliness and as though you have nothing in the world whatsoever that you begin to value the people around you and the things that you do have.

I urge anyone who is suffering themselves, or knows someone that is suffering, from self harm or depression to seek help or at least tell someone how they are feeling. It may seem as though you’ll never smile again but trust me when I say that things do get better. You can walk through this storm back into the sunshine and when you do, you’ll be a much stronger person who is so much more thankful for life, however many hardships you have to endure.