If someone self harms for attention

[Mycherry]

And in their words they do can this still develop into a mental illness

why is it stupid.

i mean to NOT be all “omg youve cut your arm i’ll get you a bandage and some sweets and a cuddle and sit with you all night and buy you some stuff online to cheer you up” when they harm? surely that teaches self harm = extra love which is nice so i will do more self harm. which i presume is the problem here.

surely it would be better when they harm to be a bit more “oh that looks sore better bandage it as i don’t want to see it” Let’s do stuff together tomorrow as im not good with thinking about self harm as it makes me feel sick.

and keep your word. do nice stuff together.

that way they get lots of attention when they are doimg well and have NO NEED to self harm for attention as they’ve already got it?

or maybe im misunderstanding how it works.
my ex did self harm up his arm if i didn’t do what he wanted. i left him as i was damned if i’d be manipulated by emotional blackmail.

I self harm but not because I want to hurt myself or get attention, but because I have angels that tell me to do it. So there can be other reasons why people do it.

Self harm is always a symptom of mental illness. If someone feels they need attention (or HELP/someone to notice them/ someone to see they’re struggling) so much they are willing to inflict violence upon themselves to get it then their mental health is already disturbed.

That’s also mental illness.

why would angels, beings of love, want you to harm your body? Angels dont do that.

They don’t self harm for attention. People self harm to maintain control. It’s you that perceives it as attention seeking.

Well that's PPs mental illness cured then. Shall we all form a queue for this healing?

Or perhaps we can go with the reward/punishment advice from another posters because surely if we just treat distressed people like puppies then everyone will be sorted.

@JanglingJessica
I couldn’t help but remark I had a problem with self-harm and you describe how the feelings were for me (I did it into my forties btw).
What stopped it was I went to EMDR for PTSD after an assault (at 44!!) and went through the difficult stuff I’d never talked about (talking is a minimal part of EMDR) and now I can’t imagine self-harming. I wish everyone who self-harmed could have EMDR )obviously not people with hallucinations as it may not be effective, I don’t know)

So you're mentally ill.

Fucking hell. If someone had said to me 'i don’t want to see it... im not good with thinking about self harm as it makes me feel sick.' when I was self harming I'm not sure I'd be here today.
The level of self hatred someone who self harm has is overwhelming. The lack of respect or care for your own body that you're willing, and happy, to damage it to release your emotions. The lack of value you feel you have.
Your suggestion would validate all of that. It says your mental health issue is gross, what you're doing is gross, you are gross.
I didn't do it for attention, I hid it as much as possible, but had someone noticed and reacted like this it really could have been catastrophic.

No, I didn’t mean that.

I am anticipating the OP posting about someone in her life who is self harming, and my advice to her would be different depending on whether the individual is her child, or her parent/partner/friend etc.

same dangerous and ill informed poster!

I missed that!! That is truly awful.

So you would tell someone that’s experiencing distressing overwhelming emotions and self-loathing that you don’t want to spend time with them because that makes you feel sick. That’s hope no one close to you ever comes to you needing support for their MH as it sounds like you’d be absolutely useless.

My mother actually did that to me. I’d been sent home from boarding school for a serious act of self harm (they considered it a suicide attempt) and I went with my mother to pick up my little sister from school. Before we got out of the car, she said “pull your sleeves down over your wrists, will you…I don’t want people seeing THAT. I’ve got feelings too, you know.” I guess @TalulahJPwould get along famously with my mother!

Same. I got sectioned and my mother didn’t want to see my SH injuries.
FWIW, I did them in secret so no one saw them but they found my knife in the psych ward

I'm so sorry that happened to you. I know it's hard for people who haven't been there to really understand self harming but that's such a disappointing lack of empathy.

Hello everyone. We hope you don't mind, but when these threads are flagged up to us we usually add a link to our Mental Health resources for those who may find them helpful.

We also wanted to share Mind's information - it has practical tips on what you can do when you feel like this and where to get urgent help. https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/self-harm/helping-yourself-now

You can also go to the Samaritans website or email them on [email protected].

We are going to move the thread to the Mental Health section shortly.

@NadineMumsnet I think moving it to mental health is a bad idea. There are some very judgemental posts on this thread.

Absolutely it can

More context is needed here. People self harm for a variety of reasons.
There is a big difference between someone who self harms as a way to manipulate people, and someone who self harms to cope with difficult feelings.

Also, self harm does not mean someone has a mental illness. It is a harmful coping mechanism, but that does not mean the person is ill.

Maybe, but I’ve been discharged by the mental health team so I don’t think so.

It definitely is. Self harm because a hallucination tells you to is absolutely mental illness.

All self harm is mental illness no matter the reason anyway. Please see a doctor again.

Self harm is not a mental illness. It can be a symptom of one, but not everyone who self harms has a mental illness