Let’s Talk About… Self-Harm

By Jeremy Godwin

Why are you being so unkind to yourself? What are the different types of self-harm? How does self-harm affect your mental health? And how can you be a lot kinder to yourself for the sake of your wellbeing?

That’s what I’m talking about this week here on… Let’s Talk About Mental Health — the weekly podcast about looking after your wellbeing, with simple ideas you can put into practice immediately. So, get comfortable, and Let’s Talk About Mental Health…

Please note: This episode contains discussions of various forms of self-harm including attempted and actual physical self-harm, as well as suicide, which may be distressing for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised.

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This podcast episode was originally released on 19 February, 2023.

Hello and welcome to Episode 167, and thanks so much for joining me as I talk about self-harm and mental health!

I’m Jeremy Godwin and I help you improve your mental health, with  simple tips you can put into practice immediately. All of my episodes are based on both quality research and my own personal experience of learning how to live with anxiety and depression following a breakdown in late 2011. Each week I look at how to improve one specific aspect of your wellbeing. 

In this episode I’ll be talking about what self-harm is, why addressing it matters, and how to stop causing yourself harm. So, let’s talk about self-harm…

Introduction

I’m just going to start by saying that this is likely to be a challenging topic for us to talk about, but that doesn’t change the fact that we need to talk about it a whole lot more than we currently do… which is why I’m doing this episode. The fact is that I know there are particular topics that I cover which probably won’t do that well in terms of numbers, but that I know in my heart and soul are important to cover because if they help even just a few people then I’ve made a positive difference. When I covered death back in Episode 92 there were a bunch of people that freaked out, but it’s still one of the episodes that I’m most proud of because it’s a subject that affects us all and yet we so rarely ever talk about it. 

So today I’m not going to shy away from having an honest conversation about the ways in which we harm ourselves — emotionally, physically and more — and yes, it will probably be fairly confronting but you know what they say: you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs! 

So let’s begin with some definitions and let’s talk about… 

What is self-harm?

And according to the Oxford Dictionary, ‘self-harm’ is defined as “deliberate injury to [yourself], typically as a manifestation of a mental condition.”

Taking that one step further, Mental Health America are a lot more specific in their definitions and they describe self-harm as “anything that someone does to intentionally hurt themselves—or something that they know is harmful but do anyway” (and I’ll include a link to that article in the transcript, which you can find at letstalkaboutmentalhealth.com.au/episodes in English, Spanish and Portuguese).  

There are many different kinds of self-harm; the term tends to conjure up mental images of people inflicting physical harm on themselves, such as by cutting or scratching at parts of their body, which is one type of self-harm, however — as that definition I just shared suggests — self-harm is anything where you are hurting yourself deliberately or in spite of the fact that you know it’s hurting you… so that means we could be talking about harmful actions that are physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social or financial in nature. And that’s the main reason why I want to talk about this topic today, because there are many different ways we can do harm to ourselves and those choices, whether conscious or subconscious, have far-reaching impacts on our mental health and overall wellbeing.

For example, types of self-harm could include alcohol or drug use, disordered eating, behaving in a self-destructive way, neglecting some or all of your basic needs, engaging in risky or dangerous behaviours, being overly self-critical to the point of self-abuse and bullying, etc. I mean, the amount of damage you can do to yourself physically and mentally through unhealthy coping mechanisms is enormous (and I’ll be talking about coping mechanisms later this year).

Let me share a random personal story about these types of harmful choices that helps to make my point. I’ve shared in past episodes that my mother has dementia and she lives in an aged care home now, because her condition means she can no longer care for herself. However, she is constantly talking about wanting to go home and so even though she thinks she’s in a hospital, I think part of her knows she’s actually in a nursing home which she never wanted (she has almost zero short-term memory, so each day is like a fresh start for her), and so she acts out and refuses to participate in basic hygiene practices like showering, brushing her teeth or changing her clothes. It’s a form of self-control that can happen with some people dealing with conditions involving dementia or hoarding (or both, as my mother has), and even though it’s clearly harmful — I mean, she has maybe two or three teeth left at this point — I think it’s generally a way of being able to assert some control over the one thing they still have a degree of control with, which is whether or not to co-operate… as messed-up as that self-harming behaviour might seem. Mind you, this hygiene stuff has been an issue with her for over 20 years but it’s gotten far worse as the dementia has advanced. 

Anyway, I’m sharing that story because I think it’s hard for many of us — myself included, sometimes — to even begin to understand why someone would or could do something obviously harmful to themselves. But so many of us do, even if that thing is just constantly making life choices that are unhealthy or even potentially damaging.

So, why do we harm ourselves? Well, to answer that question I’m going to jump back over to that article by Mental Health America that I mentioned earlier and there’s a paragraph I want to share, which is:

“People self-harm for many reasons: to punish themselves for something they’re ashamed of, to gain a sense of control, or just to feel something. Often, the goal of self-harm isn’t the harm itself—the goal is to distract from or release underlying emotional pain. Self-harm is a maladaptive coping mechanism: [in other words] something that may make you feel better in the moment, but is harmful overall. Most conversations about self-harm focus on cutting. While skin-cutting is a common form of self-harm, it’s not the only one—and all types of self-harm [not just the physical ones] are important to address.”

And, again, that’s linked in the transcript.

So, with that in mind, now let’s talk about… 

Why addressing self-harm matters

And I hope this is fairly obvious by now but the fact is that addressing it matters because any form of self-harm is doing you harm, end of sentence. And if you want better mental health, heading in the direction of anything harmful is the opposite of where you should be going in order to improve things for yourself! 

The really challenging thing with this subject is that learning how to deal with and overcome self-harm is really tough; it’s not like you can just pop a pill or say a mantra and be done with it. These are behaviours that have likely developed over a really long time and for many people they’re also an indication of what a state of distress they’re in; if you feel bad about yourself then you may find it harder to make healthy choices or treat yourself with kindness and compassion. The worse your situation, whether that’s generally how you feel about your life or how you feel about a specific situation, the more likely it is that you’re going to find it harder and harder to find a path away from doing harm to yourself (but it is definitely possible, and I’ll talk through how to improve your situation shortly). 

First, however, we need to have an honest conversation about the elephant in the room, which is the ultimate form of self-harm: suicide. Generally-speaking today I’m going to focus on the more ‘unkind’ forms of treating ourselves, but the reality is that for some people that can become so severe that thoughts of suicide (called suicidal ideation) can begin to form, and that’s when things can go from bad to worse very quickly.

This is tough to talk about but it’s something that needs to be discussed, and so I’m going to take a few minutes to share a very personal story and that involves admitting that I am a suicide survivor; I made two actual attempts on my life (when I was 15 and again when I was 20), and then nearly attempted it again at the age of 36 (so in 2012) but I was stopped at the last moment by my cat, Pushka, who’s no longer with us (strangely enough, it took me about four years before I could accurately recall the specifics of what happened that day; prior to that, I had no idea what had stopped me). I also lived with feeling suicidal almost non-stop for over a year around the same time, so I feel like I know a thing or two about what it’s like to not want to go on.

Part of me wants to insert a joke or a song quote here to try to ease the tension, and yet another part of me knows that that’s just the part of myself that still finds it hard to fully accept the fact that, but for a cat’s miaow and a loving rub of her head against my arm, I might not be here today… which is just so weird to think of, and yet it’s a part of my story. I am who I am today because I have lived through looking into the darkest corner of my soul and somehow being able to say, “not today!” even when going on with life was the last thing I wanted, because everything in my head was screaming at me to end the pain and suffering once and for all.

But here’s the thing: self-harm of any kind doesn’t end the suffering, it prolongs it… not just for you, but for those you love, and that’s not fair. While I understand the pain associated with feeling like you’ve had enough, I can tell you that suicide is a very permanent solution to a temporary problem; now that I have my mental health under control, and now that I have a life that feels much more fulfilling and satisfying, I can say hand-on-heart that there is no way that I would want to miss out on everything that has happened since that time 10-or-so years ago where I was convinced that nothing would ever get better. Guess what? It did get better. In fact, it got so much better that it’s the better-est it’s ever been! 

And so I say this to each of you: whether you’re inflicting pain on yourself physically, emotionally, spiritually — whatever — or whether you feel like you’re in so much pain that things will never turn a corner, I am living proof that things can get better and they will get better… so don’t you dare even think of harming yourself in any way, shape or form. OK? Because I’ve got you. And I wouldn’t tell you it’s going to be OK, and that you can get through whatever you’re going through, if it weren’t the truth and if I didn’t know it from my own personal experience. 

Today is the day that things change for you. Regardless of your situation and the ways in which you’ve been harming yourself, today is the day that you say, “enough!” by making a choice to turn a corner. This is the day you begin to take small steps every single day to make things better for yourself and to finally stop being so damn cruel and unkind to yourself.

And, as a side note, the day I wrote this I was sitting in a café and I had to work really hard to hold back tears because there are times where I feel very strongly that I went through what I went through for a reason, and sharing my story like this feels like it takes a truly awful part of my life and puts it to good use so that I didn’t go through it for nothing. 

So, today is about moving forward and that’s exactly what we’re going to do, so now let’s get into the how-to part of this episode and let’s talk about… 

How to stop causing yourself harm

And I’m going to start, as I often do, by suggesting that you work on your self-awareness — and by that I mean to take time to reflect and get to know what it is that leads you to make harmful choices. Journalling can be helpful for this, as can mindfulness and talking to someone (which I’ll come back to shortly). I’d also suggest putting in the work to identify common triggers and to consider what leads them to be triggering for you (for example, birthdays have never been particularly great for me due to parent-related trauma, so I know I need to be extra-kind to myself and take the day for myself to reduce the risk of engaging in unhealthy coping mechanisms). I covered self-awareness in Episode 62 and triggers in Episode 91, so you may find those episodes helpful. OK, next… 

Make a choice to stop being so unkind to yourself — and let me first say that I don’t think that just making a choice will magically cure everything, because life doesn’t work like that, but I do believe that a choice has to be made (and possibly even made over and over again) in order to keep yourself focused on why you want to stop making harmful choices. When I quit drinking in July 2018 I went cold-turkey by spending the next year or so continuously reminding myself of the damage my drinking was doing to my physical and mental health, and having that reason for changing etched into my mind on a daily basis really helped to work through all of the challenges that came with making such a massive life change. OK, next… 

Use strategies to help you manage urges — and this continues on from the last point with some specific things you can do in partnership with that conscious choice I discussed (and these suggestions are adapted from an article by Lifeline which I’ll link to in the transcript). First, you can delay by challenging yourself to hold off on doing whatever you were going to do; start with 10 or 15 minutes and then build it up over time if you need to. Second, distract yourself by doing something else like going for a walk or talking to someone. Third, divert your attention by doing something, and I quote, “similar to self-harm but [which] does not cause injury, such as holding an ice-cube, having a cold or hot shower, punching a pillow, eating something with a strong taste like chilli [etc.].” And the fourth and final one is deep breathing, which is simply to use a technique like inhaling slowly for five seconds then exhaling for five seconds slowly, and repeating until you feel calmer and the urge to do something harmful has passed. OK, so my next point is…

Work on creating a more positive mindset — and this is related to what I said earlier however now I want to encourage you to be more proactive and to take a bigger-picture view of how you look at the world and your place in it, as well as how you process and deal with challenges. I’ve covered quite a lot of topics that will be helpful — self-confidence in Episode 166, mindset in Episode 31, optimism in Episode 47, self-acceptance in Episode 154 to name a few — and I really do encourage you to put the work in every single day to improve your mental health little by little; my primary reason for saying that is that doing a little each day really does add up to huge results over time, but the other benefit of a daily proactive approach to your mental health is that it helps you to consciously make it a priority… and so that means that, if you’re struggling, you’re more likely to get on top of it quickly because you’re already doing the work every day. Make sense? OK, my next tip is… 

Practice self-compassion and self-forgiveness — because let’s just be honest here and admit that nobody can be as harsh and unforgiving to you as you can, right?! Honestly, why do we do that to ourselves? Why do we bully ourselves so much and so intensely? I mean, honestly, there’s no point trying to have a conversation about improving your mental health if you’re going to keep on allowing yourself to speak to yourself in a toxic and even hateful way… so, make it stop by doing the work. That means giving yourself space to make mistakes so you can learn and grow, and choosing to focus on your strengths and positive attributes rather than just being laser-focused on all the things you don’t like about yourself. We all have aspects of ourselves that could do with some improvement, but you don’t have to magnify them and beat yourself over the head with them repeatedly; all that does is take away from all of the wonderful things about you that you should be celebrating on a daily basis! I talked about how to improve your self-compassion in Episode 153 so if you haven’t already then check that out next. One way to feel good about yourself is with my next point… 

Set achievable goals and celebrate your accomplishments — and by ‘achievable’ goals I also mean realistic goals; rather than focusing on massive things, break it down into smaller steps and then focus on one thing at a time. Why? Because then you’re going to see success more quickly and you can celebrate it when it happens, which makes you feel good and spurs you on to the next thing (something I talked about in Episode 161 about progress). Remember that even small steps add up over time to create huge progress! OK, next… 

Make time for self-care — and I’m not talking about three-hour-long bubble baths every day (but if that’s what does it for you and you have the time to do it then go for it and all the best to you!); I’m talking about the ‘getting the basics right’ thing like having a balanced diet, regular exercise, quality sleep and regular rest, time for yourself and your hobbies, even just taking care of your appearance — sometimes, if you feel like crap, a hot or cold shower can be just the thing to help you feel a little more human — and these are all things that cost you nothing and which you can easily do at home, and really it’s just about showing yourself through your actions that you do matter by caring for yourself, which can help you to feel more positively about yourself. OK, next… 

Surround yourself with positive and supportive people — because the people you spend time with have an enormous impact on you, whether you care to admit it or not, and so if you’re regularly around people who bring you down or who make unhealthy choices or engage in risky or dangerous behaviour, it’s probably just a matter of time until that rubs off on you in one way or the other. Look, I found that after my breakdown in 2011 and then the anxiety and depression that followed for a few years after that I just didn’t have anything in common anymore with a lot of the people I used to spend time with, and that meant those relationships had to change because I had changed. And it happened again when I quit drinking once and for all in 2018, because suddenly it was clear that there were many friendships in my life just built on getting drunk together and nothing else. It’s completely OK to let go of old relationships that no longer serve you; it’s challenging, and it’s painful, but it is necessary. OK, next…

Work with a professional — so, usually at some point or another in most episodes of my podcast I will gently suggest that you work with a professional if you’re struggling in a particular area (or with your mental health in general) however today I’m going to be a lot more prescriptive and say that, if you are really struggling with any form of self-harm, you really need to work with a counsellor, psychologist or psychiatrist. Here’s why: there are plenty of things you can do to look after and improve your mental health, but sometimes you need a professional. I think of it like home improvements: there are many things you can do if you have the skills, but some things require the expertise of a professional so you don’t wind up making the entire structure collapse! It’s why I see my own therapist on a regular basis; an external and objective person can see things that you can’t, and that the people closest to you either don’t see or do see and don’t feel comfortable telling you about. That goes for the good stuff as well as the bad stuff, and for me having my therapist see particular positive traits in me has been really validating because it’s unprompted and it’s also a lot more objective than if, say, my partner or a family member said those things! Plus the other great thing about a professional is that you can work together to identify why you do and say certain things, without any judgement, so that you can then begin to address those things. It has certainly brought me a lot more peace of mind to understand why I default to particular thought patterns and behaviours, and so rather than beating myself up over those things I can instead limit my emotional reaction to it if and when it happens (which then frees me up to do or say something different instead of what I might usually have done). Anyway, it’s something for you to think of and I will say that if you’re worried about cost then it doesn’t have to be expensive and there are lots of different options out there, so do some research and consider it an investment in your peace of mind (like a gym membership for your brain, just with less sweat… but probably a whole lot more swearing, if your sessions are anything like mine!).

Summary and Close-Out

Because when it comes to self-harm and mental health, what it all boils down to is this: When you treat yourself in a harmful way, you’re making your mental health worse and worse each time you do it. Whether you harm yourself physically, mentally, spiritually, socially, emotionally or financially is kind-of irrelevant; the end result is still the same, in that you’re taking yourself further and further away from feeling good about yourself. When you choose to consciously treat yourself with kindness and respect, you begin to really believe in your self-worth and you begin to make life choices that are going to be much better for your overall wellbeing in the long-term. 

The choice is yours, as it is with all things related to your wellbeing… so, what choice will YOU make today? 

Each week I like to finish up by sharing a quote about the week’s topic, and I encourage you to take a few moments to really reflect on it and consider what it means to you. This week’s quote is by an unknown author, and it is:

“Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of strength.”

Unknown

Alright… that’s nearly it for this week.

Next time I’ll be talking about dysfunction. Unfortunately many of us have been exposed to dysfunctional relationships in our lives, whether that be with family members or romantic partners, or maybe even with friends or work colleagues, and the thing with dysfunctional relationships is that they can feel incredibly consuming and difficult to break free from. However it is possible to create and maintain functional relationships in your life, and so that’s what I’m going to be exploring next time. I’ll be talking about what dysfunctional relationships are (and what they are not), why addressing them matters, and how to manage dysfunctional relationships in a healthy way.

I hope you’ll join me for that episode which will be released on Sunday the 26th of February, 2023. 

You can find more practical tips to improve your mental health in my latest book Life Advice That Doesn’t Suck! and in my recent book, Let’s Talk About Mental Health (Volume One) which are both available from Amazon and Apple Books, and sign up for my free newsletter Thursday Thoughts at letstalkaboutmentalhealth.com.au for a weekly dose of inspiration. Plus, join me on Patreon for exclusive extra content and benefits, including early access to episodes; those are all linked in the episode description.

And you can find me on Instagram @ltamentalhealth for bonus content. Plus, check out my other account, @itsjeremygodwin, where I post daily tips for better mental health.

Thank you very much for joining me today — look after yourself and make a conscious effort to share positivity and kindness in the world, because you get back what you put out. Take care and talk to you next time!

Jeremy 🙂

Let’s Talk About Mental Health is an independent program proudly produced by Reconnaissance Media, helping you find gratitude and meaning. For more information visit reconnaissancemedia.com

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Let’s Talk About Mental Health.
Simple ideas for better mental health.

Let’s Talk About Mental Health. © 2023 Jeremy Godwin.

The information provided in this episode is for general awareness on the topic and does not constitute advice. You should consult a doctor and/or a mental health professional if you are struggling with your mental health and wellbeing. You’ll find additional information on the Resources page of this website.