Now that we’re syndicating our blog articles, we want to expand even further. We’re looking for people to submit their emotional wellbeing or mental health themed articles to us, for publishing or re-publishing here on our blog.

Your articles don’t have to be brand new – you might already have published them on your own blog or website.

All we ask is that your articles are in tandem with the ethos of FirstSigns / LifeSIGNS – we are very much a pro-recovery organisation so are looking for articles that inspire and promote mental health and emotional wellbeing.

We’re looking for one or two people to contribute a few articles each and every month, but you might only have one article to donate, and that’s fine too.

Your articles will be read by hundreds of people, so it’s a good opportunity to reach a larger audience. Your articles might even inspire more people to leave comments on our blog, so we’d love it if your articles touched the hearts and minds of our members enough to make them want to comment.

Your articles would be pushed out (kinda copied) to our official social network sites, like MySpace, Bebo and Facebook.

Would you like to write for us? Write with us? We only use first names here, so you could remain anonymous; you could even make up a ‘pen name’.

Email Wedge@firstsigns.org.uk

Guidelines

We’d love to publish your articles on our blog, but of course writing for one’s personal blog is quite different to writing for an organisation, and it’s important that everything we publish falls in line with our Mission and ethos. So please bear these short guidelines in mind when submitting your articles:

• No triggering content or graphic descriptions (focus on emotions and reasons rather than methods or severity of SI);
• Keep it positive, e.g. rather than sharing a horrible experience, discuss how you would ideally like the situation to work, and only mention the horrible experience as part of the article;
• Be clear about the difference between facts and your personal opinions;
• Avoid language that might offend (for example many people dislike being referred to as ‘cutters’ and prefer the phrase ‘person who self-injures’). Our audience is wide and diverse, not everyone cuts themselves;
• Don’t refer to other people either by name or in such a way that they might recognise themselves if they were to read the article;
• Be aware that we might need to edit your writing before we can publish it; but we will always check with you first;
• Let us know exactly how we should credit you; your first name? A pseudonym? With a link to your Twitter / blog?

Click for a larger image.

Thanks to ‘Analytics to Earth’ and Google Earth, we’re able to visually display our visitor statistics, and as you can see, people come from all over the world to visit FirstSiigns.

It’s great to see so many people from the UK and from Europe visiting our website, but you can also see how many people in America take an interest in our work. This is interesting, because America has larger organisations (with more money than us!), so it’s great to think that our website is still highly rated.

(Wedge]

We are busy planning for Self Injury Awareness Day on 1^st March 2010, and we have loads of great ideas that will help make SIAD 2010 our best ever.

One of these is to produce a FirstSigns calendar, and we thought it would be great if some our members could get involved and help us with the pictures. So, we’d like to invite you to submit pictures of your artwork or photographs for possible inclusion in the calendar, our books and on our website.

Don’t worry if you’re not artistic; we’re not looking for perfection here. All we ask is that your pictures are positive and / or inspiring; after all, they’ll be viewed for a whole month in people’s homes and offices!

If you’re not into art or drawing, then maybe you’d like to take a photograph of something that makes you smile or that inspires you. It could be a tree, a favourite view, or even a pet! If you’re over 18 you are welcome to include yourself in the picture if you wish, but we are unable to publish pictures involving other people.

Please email you pictures or images to Jules@FirstSigns.org.uk and include the name you would like your picture published under (either your first name or a nickname) and one short sentence describing what the picture is.

Please ensure you send us the largest image your camera is able to take, as the ‘image quality’ needs to be high. This means the file you attach to your email will be quite large, so don’t be surprised if it takes a couple of minutes to send.

We’ve got some great pics already submitted to our Confessions / Expressions wall, and you’re welcome to upload your artwork there still – right now we’re asking for your artwork and photographs to be emailed in.

Many thanks and we look forward to hearing from you.

Wedge and Jules

Or maybe you aren’t ready to talk yet, but need to get your feelings out somehow. One way of achieving both these things is by writing a letter to the person you want to tell. You never have to send the letter, it’s for your eyes only, but it will provide a route for your emotions and help to clear things up in your head for if you decide to have ‘the’ conversation for real.

Why?

Before you start writing, have a think about why you want to ‘come out’ to that person. Everyone is individual and experiencing a unique combination of circumstances, but here are some examples:

• You are tired of suffering in silence and need the support of your loved one;
• You have a holiday coming up and know that your scars may become visible;
• You feel ready to become intimate with your partner but realise he / she will see your scars;
• You need help and can’t deal with things on your own any more. Maybe you want some support or someone to go with you to see your GP;
• Someone else has found out about your self-injury and you are worried your loved one will be told. You would rather it came from you;
• You want to confide in your best friend and let him / her know what’s really going on in your head and how you are dealing with it;
• You want the person to understand how they affect you, and how they’re involved in the way you feel.

Once you start to write, just let yourself go and be honest about how you feel. Remember, this is a dummy letter and nobody need ever read it. You are doing this for your benefit only, and you need to be truthful to yourself. Try not to talk too much about the self-injury itself, but instead focus on the causes and emotional distress behind it. Take the time to think about how you really feel, try to dig a little deeper.

What?

Some things you might want to include in your letter are:

• Real-world reasons why you resort to self-injury (i.e. too much school work, financial problems);
• Emotional reasons why you resort to self-injury (i.e. depression, family arguments, anxiety, identity confusion);
• How long you have been self-injuring and whether it is getting better or worse in your opinion. Think about why you started to self-injure in the first place and whether you now self-injure for different reasons or whether you can now cope better before resorting to self-injury;
• Things that trigger you, including anything involving the person you are telling (such as arguments, invalidation of your feelings, too much criticism etc.);
• What you would like the other person to do to help (i.e. going with you to see you GP, giving you more space and time to yourself, creating a calmer environment for you to live in or providing an ear for you talk to when you feel the urge to self-injure);
• Any support you feel you need but aren’t getting. Do you need your loved one to be more aware of your emotional state or to spend more time with you for example;
• Efforts you are making to move away from self-injury; or
• Reasons why you don’t yet feel ready to move away from self-injury.

Bare in mind that although it’s easy to blame others for our emotional states, we are ultimately in control of our own actions and we make our own decisions. It’s not a good idea to blame others directly for our self-injury, no matter what they may have done. By claiming responsibility for ourselves, we ultimately gain control of our own recovery.

Send us your letters

If you wish, you can send us your dummy letters for publication here on the FirstSigns website. All letters will be published anonymously but please do not use real names or other personally identifiable information within your letters.

Email your letters to letters@firstsigns.org.uk

We will not keep any record of your email, and will simply publish your letters at www.firstsigns.org.uk/out/letters.html in a matter of days / weeks. Letters may also appear in our Blog and within our Newsletter.

We reserve the right to edit letters submitted which may include removing any graphic, triggering or inappropriate content.

{Wedge}

Unfortunately, although scars may fade in time, they are permanent. However, there are things you can do either to reduce the severity of scaring, or to camouflage the scars you are left with. Thanks to Denice (aka moderator D-Elle on our Message Board) we now have two new pages on our website.

Written by Denice, and expanded by Wedge, we now have a page on Scar Reduction which details various methods of reducing the vividness and texture of scars. In addition, we have a page on Skin Camouflage, in which Denice helpfully talks about her own personal experiences of camouflaging scars with make-up. Both pages are located within our Helping You section.

We hope you will find these two new pages helpful and, as always, welcome your comments.

Many thanks to Denice for writing for us. If you have something self-harm related that you’d like to share with our members, then please do email Jules@FirstSigns.org.uk

Follow @FirstSigns on Twitter for all the latest news and views.

It means a lot to me, to have engaged and interested visitors. It means a lot to Jules and me when we hear back from members or visitors who tell us that our stories, articles and information has affected them, that they recognise themselves in our words, and we’ve made them think.

I hope FirstSigns provides fantastic inspiration and information. Obviously, we don’t give advice or tell people what to do – that would be awful, after all, I still struggle with the urge to self-injure, and even when I haven’t hurt myself for a year or so, that doesn’t mean I’ve got all the answers.

Answers come from within, from you yourself. And I’d love to hear some from you.

Would you care to use the comments system below to tell us how you feel about FirstSigns and the information we provide? What could we do to improve our services?

Thanks for visiting, please let us know your thoughts.

Wedge

I remember LifeSIGNS back in the early days when I was a member of the first Message Board. I can’t remember my username back then, but I do remember the name Wedge! Of course I never knew at the time that one day I would be working alongside the man himself, but even from the beginning I knew that LifeSIGNS was something special, and it’s certainly had a huge impact on my life.

I’d spent so many years struggling with my own self-injury, but I was in a silent and lonely world where I didn’t even know the words self-injury existed. It wasn’t until I discovered LifeSIGNS that I realised I wasn’t alone, I wasn’t the only person hurting themselves, and there was help and support out there. Because of LifeSIGNS I felt empowered to face up to my own self-injury, ‘come out‘ to my loved ones and seek support. So you see, I am living proof that not only has LifeSIGNS been in existence for 6 years now, but it has been helping people all that time too. Literally tens of thousands of people.

I’ve not been a constant at LifeSIGNS for all these six years. I’ve left and re-joined three or four times over the years. But I always felt myself drawn back, whether it was for some extra support, some ideas for distraction techniques or simply because it was somewhere I always felt I belonged and would be welcomed. The one reassuring factor each time I returned was the presence of Wedge. LifeSIGNS has changed so much over the years, but Wedge has always been here, and that in itself makes it all the more special.

The last time I rejoined two years ago, it was for a specific purpose, and that was to finally give something back to Wedge and his organisation that had done so much for me. It took me a while to persuade him that I wanted to help, but I was so proud when I first accompanied Wedge to a conference last year as a Director of LifeSIGNS and heard him speak, and I’m both proud and honoured to be here now working alongside him for LifeSIGNS as we celebrate our Sixth Birthday.

Thank you LifeSIGNS and, more importantly, thank you Wedge – for without you the LifeSIGNS we all know and love today would not exist.

Please do join us for our 6^th Birthday Facebook Event – you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything – it’s just a show of support.

Happy 6^th Birthday and I hope I’m here to celebrate the next six too!