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It is estimated that more than one in five girls self-harm in the UK. One parent details the journey from the realisation that her teen was self-harming, through the maze of bureaucracy to try and get help. 

Links to organisations that can offer help and support are listed at the bottom of this post.

Chapter four: “I stopped having any life of my own”

My daughter has been self-harming for a while. This and her violent episodes are having such a major impact on the whole family in many different ways.

My son is scared. He can’t sleep at night as that’s when the majority of the issues happen. He hears her hurting herself and throwing her belongings around. During the day, chairs and other objects will get thrown, doors will get slammed, other items will be destroyed or damaged and he gets upset. He cries and runs away to a safer part of the house.

I have stopped having any life of my own. She sleeps in our room next to me, or I end up sleeping on her floor, as by the end of the evening she is so distraught she cannot get herself to sleep. I’ve tried waiting up until she’s asleep, but then I’m awake most of the night and she’ll wake up in the middle of the night and still be distraught. So we’ve just got into a pattern of me sleeping near her.

I can’t go out. Whenever I do, she threatens to hurt or kill herself. At times she has run away saying she is going to kill herself, so I’ve stopped even planning to go out. I can’t tell my friends because she doesn’t want anyone to know so I’ve just been making excuse after excuse as to why I can’t meet up. My partner and I have not had a night off in over nine months.

I stopped working. One day I was travelling to a meeting and had a mini panic attack. I was so scared that she was going to hurt herself whilst I was away for the day, and I just couldn’t cope any more. There had been a couple of times when I was away with work and received phone calls from her telling me she had cut herself. It was awful. Being hundreds of miles away from home when you receive a phone call like that hits you in the stomach and the heart. I don’t actually have the words to describe how it feels.

Work were great. I told them what was happening at home and they gave me time off, which was great in some ways. It meant I could actually take some time out in the day for me – I’d go for a walk along the seafront or go to the gym, and I could spend some quality time with my son who was so clearly upset by it all. It also meant I could spend some more time with my daughter. At first this was really helpful as I had more patience and was able to deal with her outbursts and self-harming with more calmness as I wasn’t so tired and stressed. She started to confide in me, but I also think she became too dependent on me and I became the focus of all her anger and outbursts.

My partner withdrew a bit. I guess as I was dealing with everything at home, he threw himself into work as a distraction. It has had a massive impact on our relationship. The dynamic has changed so much as I had all of a sudden changed from being the major breadwinner to stay at home mum. I was doing all the household chores, and everything to do with my daughter was left to me. There were so many appointments and meetings which I attended on my own or with my daughter. I spent many hours each day researching mental health and self-harming. I felt like I had lost all sense of my own identity. I had simply become my daughter’s mother.

Next post: “My daughter is addicted to social media”

Read previous chapters from our blogger mum’s story:

Where to get help and advice

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It is estimated that more than one in five girls self-harm in the UK. One parent details the journey from the realisation that her teen was self-harming, through the maze of bureaucracy to try and get help.

Links to organisations that can offer help and support are listed at the bottom of this post.

Chapter three: The CAMHS appointment

We were told there could be a really long wait for the CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) appointment, so I was really surprised when the letter came through in about a month.

I was so nervous. I wasn’t’ sure I could actually get my daughter to turn up to the appointment. And if she did turn up, would she just stay quiet or worse lie and tell them that everything was fine? Would they be able to get her to be honest with them? She hadn’t been honest with any of the counsellors, so why would this be any different? Would they judge me? Would they be willing to help her or would they think that her situation wasn’t serious enough? Could they actually help her?

If I was this worried and nervous, I have no idea what emotions my 12 year old was going through.

It took a lot of convincing and persuading for me to get her to agree to come to the appointment. Her agreeing to seek help was, in itself, a massive step.

The day of the appointment started off badly. She didn’t want to go and had a few angry episodes during the day. It took a lot of bribery for me to get her to go to the appointment. I promised her that they would be able to help her. But what if they couldn’t, then what? I just felt that this was only chance to get her the help she needed and I couldn’t let this pass us by.

When we met with the CAMHS practitioner, she asked my daughter if she knew why she was there. She replied by saying, “ No, not really”. The practitioner then read out the letter of referral from the doctor, and asked me to say why I thought we were there. This was so tough as I knew my daughter would be mortified at having to sit there and listen to me telling a bunch of strangers all about her anger and self harming, and her talking about wanting to kill herself.

The practitioner was brilliant at getting my daughter to open up and talk. I left the room so they could talk privately. Whilst I was in the waiting room, the same fears returned. I’d promised my daughter and myself that we would get help. I was pinning everything on this, and I didn’t know what to do or where to go if they turned us away.

I was called back into the room and again the practitioner was fantastic. She didn’t say anything was wrong with my daughter but she did say she could help her by having some sessions with her, and also suggested a group mindfulness session. Both of these would start the following week.

I was so immensely proud of my daughter that day. I was in awe of how she’d handled the situation with everyone focusing on her. She was able to articulate herself and her situation so clearly and she was so brave. I no longer felt like I was dealing with this alone. We finally had help.

I went home with much more hope than I’d had in ages and collapsed. I hadn’t realised how much tension and stress I’d been carrying around trying to get my daughter help – and finally we were getting help. It was such a sense of relief.

Read more from our blogger mum’s story:

 

Where to get help and advice

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It is estimated that more than one in five girls self-harm in the UK. One parent details the journey from the realisation that her teen was self-harming, through the maze of bureaucracy to try and get help. 

It’s incredibly brave to put your private life out there in the public eye, but our blogger  mum has done just that in the hope that others will see that they’re not alone. After last week’s post was published, she contacted us to say: “I felt so alone and didn’t want to talk to others for fear of making things worse with my daughter which just adds more pressure. It’s like walking on eggshells on top of broken glass whilst carrying the world on your shoulders. So many others must feel the same, so it’s a great that Brighton5 are helping to make a difference.”

Links to organisations that can offer help and support are listed at the bottom of this post.

Chapter Two: Getting help

My daughter had cut herself a few times by the time I went to the doctor for help. Each time she did it, I hoped it would be the last time, but after a few times I realised that wasn’t going to be the case and that we needed help. I’d previously been to see a doctor about her as I was worried about her behaviour. She didn’t seem able to control her emotions and would go from states of high anxiety into angry and violent outbursts. She would lash out at anything or anyone nearby and then hate herself afterwards.  She was a young developer and I thought that it could be due to hormonal changes, but did wonder if she was suffering from anxiety or depression.

I was told by the doctor that it was just part of growing up, and anyway, there wasn’t any help available. At 12, she was too young for one type of help and too old for another. Each time I visited, I left the doctors feeling frustrated and thinking that I was a terrible parent for not being able to deal with this.

After she had self-harmed a few times I visited the doctor again. I was told it was very common nowadays. They said that CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) get so many referrals and, yet again, said that she was too young for the type of help that was offered.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing so I started to do my own online research into where to get help. I sought out a counsellor, but my daughter wouldn’t open up and just told them that everything was fine and she refused to go back.

I decided to speak to my daughter’s school about it. At first I was scared, thinking that the school would judge me as a bad parent, but it was the complete opposite. It was then that I realised how many children were self-harming. The school explained that it was more common in recent years, but this didn’t mean that my daughter, and us as a family, shouldn’t get help and support. The pastoral leader I saw was amazing, so reassuring and full of advice about where I could go for help. She suggested I go back to the doctor and try and get a CAMHS referral. For the first time in ages I felt that I was getting somewhere, and that my cries for help were being taken seriously. I felt a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders knowing that someone at her school would be keeping an eye on my daughter.

I went back to the doctor. By the time I had the appointment things had escalated. The self harming was becoming more frequent and there was also an incident where my daughter had climbed out of a window and said that she wanted to kill herself. The suicidal talk was cropping up more and more often and I was despairing. I was worried that I was attending the doctor’s appointments alone; my daughter wouldn’t come as she didn’t want to talk about it or seek help. Without her there, I wondered if I would be taken seriously. Would they want to see that she was ready to seek help?

This time I saw a different doctor. I explained everything and by this point was exhausted. I virtually broke down in the doctor’s room. I asked “at what point will we actually get help? When she’s actually killed herself and it’s too late?!” This time I got the referral to CAMHS and I felt a glimmer of hope.

Read more from our blogger mum’s story:

Where to get help and advice

on

It is estimated that more than one in five girls self-harm in the UK. One parent details the journey from the realisation that her teen was self-harming, through the maze of bureaucracy to try and get help. 

We will follow mum and daughter’s story over the next few weeks. Links to organisations that can offer help and support are listed at the bottom of this post.

Chapter One. “Mum, I cut myself”

I will never forget that day. My daughter came into the room and said, “I’ve cut myself”. “Oh,” I replied, “how did that happen?” She looked at me and paused and said again more slowly. “I cut myself”.

Normally my daughter, who is 12, looks much older than her years but at that moment in time she looked like a young child again. Her face was such a mixture of confused emotions; pleading for help, plus embarrassment and perhaps shame mixed in as well. I remember that moment so clearly. It was like when you watch films and they freeze the frame.

Reality kicked in and I went into practical mode. I remember telling her not to worry and that we could clean it up. It was a large cut on her arm. Much later I found out she’d done it with a pair of kitchen scissors. We talked about why she’d done it and she started to cry. “I don’t know” she said and became even more upset.

I tried to reassure her and told her everything was fine, and I just sat hugging her whilst she wept.

I look back at that moment in hindsight and realise I am lucky. Obviously, I wish my daughter didn’t feel the need to harm herself. But I have discovered that so many parents find out much further down the line or worse, that many children self harm without telling anyone or feeling able to ask for help. I feel lucky that my daughter could let me know what she had done.

Later that night I cried and cried. I spent the whole night worrying and asking myself questions. Why had she done it? Was this all my fault? Why did she feel the need to hurt herself rather than come and talk to me? Was this a one off? Was this an attempt to kill herself? Would she try and cut herself again that night? What was going through her mind when she was cutting herself? What had happened to her to make her want to hurt herself in that way?  Should I have contacted someone for help? Who do you contact for help? Would other people blame me?

As a parent I had always felt that I could solve my children’s problems. This was the first time that I felt helpless and didn’t know how to help her. We both needed help.

Read more from our blogger mum’s story:

 

Where to get help and advice