Wedge and I were delighted to accept, and we travelled to Somerset where Alison took us on to a large school in Wells. We received a warm welcome and Wedge spoke for 90 minutes to teachers and Year 12 students about self-injury. It’s always fantastic when a school is open and forward thinking enough to enable a talk on this difficult subject, and it’s great to be able to hand out our Fact Sheets and Guidance for School Self-injury Policy in real life.

In the evening we were taken out for a meal, where we enjoyed the lovely company of Alison and Flora, and were able to explore some subjects surrounding self-injury in a light and relaxing manner.

We were collected from our hotel early the next morning for the long drive to Buckfast in Devon, where we helped Alison facilitate a conference / networking event for a group of counsellors. Wedge spoke in the morning, and then after a lovely lunch and browse of the Abbey shops, we regrouped for a more informal talk as Wedge and I went through some of LifeSIGNS’ ideas for moving away from self-injury. The delegates then split into groups to discuss various scenarious and experiences, with Wedge and I floating between the groups to join in conversations and share ideas.

The final part of the day enabled everyone to pool their thoughts and share everything that had been learnt.

The whole event was a great success and the feedback we received was lovely; with everyone commenting on how much they had got out of the day. And that goes for us too; we learnt a lot from the experiences of these fine professonals, and we came away with some great ideas that we’ll be sharing with you over the coming weeks and months.

On a personal, I had a fantastic time. I love meeting people and talking about self-injury with people who work with self-injury in real life. And I never tire of hearing Wedge speak. Although I’m sure he gets a little embarrassed by all the praise he receives, it makes me very proud both of Wedge and of LifeSIGNS.

Many many thanks to Alison for again giving us this opportunity to talk about self-injury in real life, and for taking care of us so well. We had a super couple of days and look forward to working with Alison again in the future.

On another quick note, our shiny new wristbands and key rings are now available, so please do grab one now in time for SIAD (Self-Injury Awareness Day) on 1st March :)

LifeSIGNS is the name I chose for our voluntary organisation back in 2002, and now that we approach our tenth birthday, it’s a great time to revert to our original name.

LifeSIGNS suits us really well, as while we are a self-injury awareness organisation, we have a positive outlook and believe everyone can make choices for a healthier and happier life. LifeSIGNS is also made up of the acronym ‘SIGNS‘ which stands for ‘Self-Injury Guidance & Network Support‘ which is what we offer. We don’t advise people, we offer guidance and a network of people offering support via our website and online services.

Lots has changed in the ten years since we started talking about self-injury and self-harm in the UK; larger organisations have touched on SI, local groups are available and new websites have popped up. There’s a wealth of information available online now, which wasn’t the case for the UK in the early years of this century. We believe it’s important for people to hear from professionals who know something about the recovery path, but we absolutely believe it’s crucial to give people with direct experience of SI a voice, and our website is completely written and produced by people with such experience.

We welcome contributions from people who feel trapped within SI, who are fighting the Urge and who are recovering and moving away from self-injurious behaviours. We don’t pretend to speak on behalf of anyone, but we hope that people living with self-harm can recognise themselves in our website, and can make use of the guidance and ideas we provide.

LifeSIGNS couldn’t exist without you – we are unfunded and run by volunteers – we do everything we do for you, because we know self-injury from the inside.

Ways we can help you

• Consider what self-injury and self-harm are
• Learn new ways of looking at your distress
• Try new ideas for reducing your self-injury
• Help parents, teachers and friends understand
• Get online support from our support forum community
• In SI emergencies, Read This First Before You Hurt

Ways you can help us

• Buy an awareness wristband or key ring
• Retweet our Tweets
• Reblog our Tumblr blog posts
• Donate £1

It’s fantastic to see the increase each year in the number of people taking an interest in SIAD and wishing to raise awareness about self-injury.

A lot of people ask us to send them material through the post, but as we’re an unfunded voluntary organisation with a tiny budget, we simply don’t have the resources to do this. But we do have lots of useful information for you to download for free from our website, and you’re welcome to photocopy and distribute these as you wish.

On our publications page you’ll find all our Fact Sheets, covering parents, friends, healthcare workers, teachers, males and employers.

There’s also a guidance document for creating a school self-injury policy.

In addition, on our SIAD page you can find lots of information about SIAD and the kind of things you can do to help raise awareness.

We’ll also be selling self-injury awareness wristbands and key rings during February and beyond.

It’s a busy time of year for us (and we’re all volunteers!) but we’ll be updating the above pages over the coming weeks. So please do subscribe to our RSS Newsfeed or keep an eye on our website home page, Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook for full details.

Thank you to everyone who is interested in raising awareness about self-injury – please do let us know of your plans for 1st March.

Whatever the holiday season has meant to you, we wish you the very best in 2012. January brings a fantastic opportunity to review your life goals and consider new ways to seek health and happiness.

It is a shiny, bright new year. May you have the determination to become who you want to be during 2012. We wish you all the very best for everything you set out to achieve and experience.

We know life can be hard, can be awful. Take pleasure in the small things. Love yourself. Love others. And take time every day to seek out the peace and beauty of the world in which you live.

The new year will bring some wonderful developments for us, and we hope we can serve you better than ever in 2012. We will change our name back to ‘LifeSIGNS’ and provide brand new wristbands in February in time for Self-Injury Awareness Day (SIAD) in March, and we’ll publish our book – to help answer all those ‘difficult’ questions about self-injury.

Find us on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook (Page & Group) for more details and updates.

All the best, from all of us at FirstSigns / LifeSIGNS

www.lifesigns.org.uk

Photo credit: Robert Couse-Baker

The results show that:

• 65% of you love Facebook, with Twitter and then Tumblr coming second and third.
• The vast majority of people say they can live without Bebo and MySpace.
• Most people think that Twitter and Tumblr are working hard to be awesome and will be ‘great’ in 2012.

This is great for us to know. It’s important to us that we make it easy for you to interact with us – that we’re where you’d like us to be -  and the results show that we’re getting it right :)

Thanks again for your help and we look forward to seeing you on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr during 2012.

We hope our website with its wealth of ideas and information is of some help to others, and we’re always pleased to hear from people who are working to move away from self-injury. ‘MarisStella’ was kind enough to send us this message to share with you:

“I just wanted to say a huge thank you for the section called ‘Read This First Before You Hurt‘. I’ve been in a terrible state lately, and I really thought I would do some serious damage to myself tonight.

“I clicked on the ‘Read This First’ button, and cried all the way through reading it, because it really was written as though there was someone right here with me, telling me they were proud of me for continuing to read the words rather than hurt myself.

“I want to say thank you. You kept me from seriously harming myself tonight, and even though you probably get a lot of messages from people saying that nothing will be able to help them, I wanted to tell you that I think you saved a life tonight.

“I know I have a long journey ahead of me, but tonight’s journey was made easier because of you.”

from MarisStella

We hope the sentiment in MarisStella’s note might encourage you to try our ‘Read This First Before You Hurt‘ page if you ever find yourself overwhelmed by the urge to self-harm. Or you might have a friend who could benefit from a little extra support.

We’ve been really touched by MarisStella’s journey, and we believe in determination to seek health and happiness and move away from self-harm at her own pace. We know we can’t magickally wave self-injury away, but we do mean to support you on your personal journey.

The purpose of this article is to provide immediate support and distraction for people who are overwhelmed by intense feelings of emotional distress and about to hurt themselves.

We hope that people will choose to read through the interactive page *before* making the decision to self-injure. As always, we don’t tell people what to do and we certainly don’t judge. Instead we have aimed to offer virtual support, insight and empathy that may help a person during times of acute distress.

We have written this article for anyone who relies on self-injury in order to cope, and we hope that whoever you are, and whatever your background or circumstances, that you’ll be able to relate to our article and find some hope, comfort and distraction in our words.

We know from our own personal experience of self-injury that when triggered the most important thing we can give ourselves before choosing to self-injure is time. ‘Read this first‘ aims to enable a person to give themselves that time and distance between their initial need to self-injure, and their decision to do so.

So if you work with people who self-injure, or have a loved one who hurts themselves, please share our page with them. And if you rely on self-injury yourself, please give yourself a little time to read through our article before you hurt yourself.

Christina is writing an article about self-injury, and would ideally like to talk to a mother who found out her child was self-injurying. Christina would be especially interested in talking with sons or daughters who had been hurting themselves since primary school, but is open to hearing different stories from people who have self-harmed from a young age.

If you are interested in talking to Christina, and appearing in That’s Life magazine, and you’re in the UK, talk the idea over with your family and then email wedge@firstsigns.org.uk with the subject line of ‘Christina That’s Life’ and I will pass your details on.

Please only include your names (mother and child), your ages and your general location (town or city).

Christina means to write a sensitive feature article, and you can be in control of how your story is presented, as Christina intends to work closely with you to make sure you’re happy about the article. There is an opportunity to earn a considerable fee if your story is published, and if you’re willing to have photographs published you would earn more money, but it’s your choice, you don’t have to share more than you want.

Talking about your family in a national magazine is a big step, so you should talk it over with your whole family before deciding. You should decide if you’re happy to have your surname published and if you’re happy to share family photos, it’s all up to you.

If you’re interested in emailing Christina to ask any questions (you can pull out at any time) please email me on wedge@firstsigns.org.uk and I will pass your details on directly.

Of course our present selves are a cumulation of past experiences. Bad things happen to good people. And sometimes we do things that we regret and feel guilt or shame over. But apart from learning from our mistakes, and hopefully gaining strength from difficult or traumatic events, is there really a need for them to negatively affect our present and future? These things only have power over us if we allow them to.

There are few things I can’t forgive a loved one for. And yet I’ve struggled to forgive myself for a great deal. Why? I honestly don’t know. Perhaps it’s because we love others more than we love ourselves.

But perhaps the truth is a more difficult concept to consider. Could it be that it’s because there’s a certain amount of comfort in carrying these things around? You know, like something that’s broken or damaged that you can’t throw away. You cling on to it, even thought it’s serving no purpose and taking up space that you could use for something shiny and new. You don’t really know *why* you’re keeping it, but it feels safe to do so.

It’s really scary letting go of the past and forgiving yourself for mistakes you’ve made. It means you no longer have anything to cling to as an excuse for *present* mistakes and behaviours. It means you can no longer blame something that happened a decade ago for your behaviour today.

But it’s also incredibly liberating. Choosing to live in the present opens up space in your life, and in your head, for new ideas and thought processes and filters. It makes you *lighter*. It gives you more *space*.

You can’t change the past, but you can prevent it affecting your present and future. Where do you want to be in five years’ time, in ten years’ time? Will you still be carrying around all the baggage you have with you today, plus several more years worth? Or will you choose to free yourself of the past now, and only carry around a small handbag of the happiest memories?

Sometimes huge things happen that it’s difficult to let go of by ourselves. Sometimes we need a little, or a lot, of support and help in moving on. Sometime friends and family can help with that, and sometimes more professional help is needed. But ultimately it’s the choices *you* make that will determine how much of your past you will carry into your future.

Photo credit: robef

If you are seeing someone privately – it’s your money. You are the customer.

The first counsellor I saw via the NHS had me in tears after the first session, and not for the right reasons. For me, he was awful. We spent most of the session in silence as he waited for me to say something. For some people this method works – they want to fill the silence, or relish the time as their chance to speak. For me, I have no problem with silence. I needed someone to prompt me, to ask me questions, to encourage me to speak, even if it’s just about the weather.

The next day I went back to my GP, explained what had happened and asked if he could help me get a different one. He did, and she was fantastic. She had me in tears after some sessions too, but for the right reasons. Tears brought on from the natural process of partaking on a course of counselling.

My GP surgery has a policy where you register under a certain doctor, but you’re free to see anyone within the practice. I’ve seen several there when I haven’t been able to get an appointment with my preferred GP. There’s a few I would chose never to see again, and will opt to have an appointment and day or two later rather than have to. The others are okay as a second choice. But it’s my choice.

And it’s your choice. If your doctor or counsellor suggests you do something you don’t want to do, then don’t do it. Obviously there are often things we don’t really want to do, but are in our best interests to. I’m talking more about doing things before you are ready. For example, the GP I saw the other week suggested it might be time to start lowering my anti-depressant dose. I said I would think about it after my wedding. You don’t have to do everything they suggest.

Remember, these are all individual people. They bring their own methods, ideas, attitudes and personalities to the table. Find the one that works for you.