I run a lived experience led self harm support charity - AMA

[doricgirl80]

I run a small charity which focuses on support around self harm and providing it in a range of ways (phone/text/face to face/self help etc) and supports people of all ages from once to multiple times over years. We also support friends and family and frontline staff.

If you'd like to know more about how it works or support then please AMA

Thanks for this.
I have someone in my life who is a counsellor, and she predominately works with clients who self harm. She says she does not discourage self harm, because it is what a client is using to cope at the time.
I wonder what you would think to that approach.

What training do you and your team/other volunteers have?

Sorry for the delay in replying - been a hectic week.

Our stance is pretty similar to the person you know but the key thing is to discuss with the person we support and find out what they want/need and also how much risk there is to them from the self harm.

Research and our experience in offering support shows that just focusing on stopping self harm in support settings is unhelpful as it is focusing on the symptom not the cause and can cause people to withdraw from support if they feel they are being pushed into something that they are not ready for. This can sound counter intuitive but for a lot of people we support self harm is serving a function in their lives and if we take that away without exploring what that function is and whether they could put something different in place it can actually make things escalate and push them to do riskier things. For some people self harm is actually protective from acting on suicidal thoughts.

That said it's really important not to just assume anything and we would always talk to people about the role of self harm in their life and what if anything they want to do about that. Some people we support just want a space that is without judgement and others want to reduce or stop. Our focus would be on supporting people to understand the function of self harm for them and see if they can work towards reducing the frequency or severity. What we do find is that offering compassionate support with no pressure to stop often gets people to a place where they can reduce or stop anyway.

Risk is the other important factor though and if what someone is doing is really high risk we would be looking at how they can reduce that risk and what support they need to do that.

Hope that answers your question but really happy to explore further.

Thanks for this question - it's quite a range across both staff and volunteers.

Frontline staff have a range of backgrounds but need to have relevant experience working in support settings so these include helpline work, mental health support work, counselling, emergency care and community advocacy and development work.

Volunteers often work in related jobs or are doing training towards counselling or therapy qualifications.

Everyone joining the organisation does training in understanding self-harm and mental health, supportive listening skills, safeguarding and limits of confidentiality, understanding health and societal inequalities and the impact on mental health, therapeutic boundaries and vicarious trauma as well as taking part in ongoing training and reflective supervision.