Alex's Answer

Hi there and welcome to Ask Alex,

You have told us you are making yourself sick after every meal and that you’re self-harming. You told us you want to stop, but you don’t know how. You are saying you hate yourself and feel like you want to die, but you don’t know how to tell your parents, as it would affect your mum very much. You are worried that you are telling us a lot, and you are sorry about it, but you need answers before it gets worse. At the moment, you are already vomiting blood and your legs are covered in cuts. You are asking for help on how to stop this.

Thank you for reaching out. We would like to start by saying that there is no need to apologise. We are here to help no matter what and we will do our best to support you.

We can see you are struggling a lot and that you are not finding it easy to reach out to your parents. You might not know how to explain what you’ve been going through, or you might be worried about how the person will react. Although you might feel terrified to tell them, we believe it is the most important and urgent move to make. They will be the people to link you with specialised mental health professionals that could support you to get through everything you are experiencing now. It seems like your body is telling you already that you cannot wait any longer, and by what you said, even though you kind of feel like dying, you don’t want to. What you want is for this need to hurt yourself to stop.

We have looked up for some more information on communicating strategies when disclosing you’ve been self-harming. Spun Out has a good resource on how to handle that conversation: spunout.ie/mental-health/self-harm/tell-someone-self-harm. They highlight that opening up to someone you trust about self-harm is one of the most important steps in the recovery journey, and that sharing what you’ve been experiencing can be a pathway to understanding, care and support.

This same resource has a section in which they suggest talking to someone you don’t know. In that section, they mention our service, Childline, as one of the helplines you could reach out to. Childline will listen and support you through anything you need, either over the free phone 1800 66 66 66 or using the webchat service by clicking on the purple Messenger circle on www.childline.ie.

We hope this helps in your path to recovery. Please, do not hesitate to contact us again if you need further support. We will be here for you.

Sending lots of positive energy your way,

Alex