Posts Tagged ‘self harm training’

Self Harm Help

Friday, January 13th, 2012

Health care professionals, family members, friends, and relatives may mistakenly regard self harming teenagers and other people with mistrust and even fear that their behaviour is attention seeking and manipulative. Because it is generally a hidden act, self harm is hard to comprehend and hence the important of self harm awareness for all professionals Self Harm Awarenessand self harm awareness amongst family and friends, although this should not be left for the person who is self harming to provide this awareness for you.

 

When you know someone who engages in self harm, you may find yourself helpless at the face of their wounds, scars, and bruises. Your own emotions and fears of the situation may override the emotional pain and suffering experienced by teenagers, which might lead you to blame self harming teenagers and self harming pupils instead of giving them support. Keep in mind that they may only be using this as a means of communicating their dilemma and confusion about their feelings and other matters and get the attention, comfort, and care that they have always wanted and needed. However distressing it can be for you, this is not necessarily their intention.

 

Whether people have got slight bruises, deep cuts, or others, the problem represented must be taken with seriousness, even if we don’t understand why people cut themselves. The depth of the wound, if it is cutting, does not in anyway give an indication of the depths of their despair and anguish. While some behaviours are considered attention-seeking, self harming in teenagers, self harming pupils and other people is not attention seeking. What is vital for you to know in order to be able to get the proper support for your loved ones is that self injury is essentially attempting to alleviate oneself of intolerable tension, deep distressing emotional pain and suffering.

 

Self Harm Awareness

Self injury should not be considered to be a wish to commit suicide unless the person specifically expresses such thoughts. The reasons why self harm is not merely an act of seeking attention is as follows:

 

–  It creates numbness through physical sensations and feelings become very intense

–  It is about stopping the turmoil plus confusion resulting from uncontrolled emotions

–  It is about punishing oneself because of contempt and self hatred

–  It communicates one’s needs for help

 

Self harming in teenagers and people is a coping mechanism. During challenging stressful and distressing times of emotional pain of being betrayed, neglected, abused, and abandoned, self injury and other physical pain relieves this tension, for a period of time. Teachers are another category of professionals that  Self harm awareness and self harm training is essential for to provide crucial resource materials for teachers to be able to offer relevant and appropriate self harm help for self harming pupils.

The Effects of Bullying on Self Harm

Friday, August 20th, 2010

It is a general perception that people who have been bullied at some point in their lives, often go on to bully others.  This is a perception often reinforced by Hollywood and the media, however as is often the case with Hollywood representations, this is not always a realistic portrayal.

People make unconscious decisions to either externalise or internalise their emotions.  In many situations, the emotions that result from being bullied are internalised, however, as pressure builds people need to find a way of releasing this pressure. In so doing, one of the options may be to externalize this need. One effect of such externalization may well be to project negative emotions on other people and to follow through perhaps with the physical act of bullying.

The use of self harm as an externalisation of negative emotions however, is generally less understood, and carries with it a high level of stigma and many more negative implications.  In this case, the harm is inflicted on the self rather than on other people.

Self harm as a result of bullying is an issue that needs to be addressed, especially in the case of adolescents who are already at an emotionally and physically challenging stage in their lives. The self harm therefore only serves to mask and compound the complications of these emotions, possibly triggering a downward spiraling effect.