Nathalie is a 20 year old law student, who turned to self-harm during her first term at university. She explained to me that falling into bad habits and dealing with her workload pressure caused her to “downspiral” into a long period of “negative thoughts and mind-games” which led her to self-harm.
After an initial chat, I gave Nathalie a Facetime call to chat about her experience with self-harm and how her recovery was impacted by her friends and family. Now recovered, Nathalie recalled what she’d gone through over the past couple of years to help me understand more about her story.
For her, self-harm acted as a coping mechanism, which helped her to translate her painful mental state into physical pain, which she described as “more tolerable”. She also referred to her self-harm as a cry for help, in that she partially hoped someone might accidentally notice and reach out to her. Nathalie used self-harm to provide her with "temporary relief", although she soon explained to me that looking back, it was definitely not good for her mental state and getting back on track.
Each story I was hearing on this journey, including Nathalie’s, had similar aspects, but were so different and complex in their own way. Similar to Sadie, Nathalie had spoken to me about how she didn’t want to tell anyone about her self-harm, and said that she didn’t know how to even start that conversation with someone. She feared judgement, disappointment and shame from her actions from her loved ones, which led her to stay silent to those close to her for a long period of time before her best friend Alayna found out.
It made me think about the things that we can be doing, as friends, family and peers to build confidence around talking about self-harm, and make it easier for those who are struggling to open up. It led me back to my chat with Satveer, and reminded me that the first step to be able to support somebody comes with understanding, something that those who self-harm often think friends and family might not have.
I watched Nathalie’s eyes fill with tears as she spoke about her lowest points, about how her friend Alayna found her after self-harming and how they sat together on her bed that night talking everything through. Because of that day, Nathalie believed that Alayna had kickstarted her recovery process and gradually helped her see the positive in life once more. It was through Alayna’s actions over those coming months that led Nathalie into a steady recovery back to stability with a much improved quality of life, which you can hear about in the full documentary here.
Nathalie had told me the story of how having somebody there to support her throughout that point changed her life. It proved to me that peer support is most definitely as important as I thought it was, and made me feel my work was even more useful for helping people to understand more about self-harm to improve the way that we support others.
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