ABSTRACT
Many women are desperate to stop self-harming but are too wary to seek help. Women have told us that in part this wariness is based on a fear that they will not be understood and that their self-harm will be interpreted in a way that bears little or no resemblance to their own personal experience. They say that the interpretations that many professionals over the years have put on their behaviour often minimises what they consider to be most important and maximises what they consider to be least important. Some say that they also worry that if they try to get help, they will be given a psychiatric label with all the stigma that entails. Additionally, women have told us that they have also had some negative experiences of counselling and therapy as again the particular therapists they saw had their own understanding of self-harm which they wanted to impose on the woman’s experience.
