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Riki, first of all I want to say that what you have done here took alot of courage. I cant imagine how distressed you are feeling right now and I am really happy that you have posted here.

I think you have a better understanding of self injury than you realise, or indeed its just your good intuition coming through.

The best way to benefit your friend is to be there for her and an option if she needs to talk to someone. This is not always an easy task and it will be stressful on you. The main thing to realise is that this is something your friend can come through and the fact that she has done it a minimal amount of times is all in her favour.

When going through a process of getting help, it may not be "possible" for the person who injures to stop immediately. Self injury can become a habit - like biting nails etc but these habits can be broken - it just takes some time.

Your friend is in alot of emotional distress if she is trying to cope with it by harming herself, by giving her a journal, yes this would be a sweet thing to do and a very thoughtful thing to do. I know I have found writing something positive and I am sure there are others who would agree that getting things out on paper can be a form of release - other than cutting. There is a distraction list on our website -

Distraction list

I am pretty sure that if you worked together you could come up with more distractions together.

You being there or not having been there in my opinion was not going to have an effect on whether she harmed herself or not - something inside her has probably been building up for a long time. Please do not blame yourself - I am sure that is the last thing your friend wishes for you to feel. I can personally say, I felt a terrible indescribable guilt over how my injury upset my mother as she blamed herself for it.

It could be possible that she cut herself the 15 times in one go.

I am really glad your friend has you riki. And you may be feeling like you are not doing anything right or your not doing enough, but being there is so much. Its great that katie has told you she cut - many of us, including myself can feel too scared to tell anyone, even close friends, for fear that we will be rejected by them.

Anymore specific questions you have please feel free to ask. There are also links that you could go to in the sticky thread that could offer you more insight.

You could also suggest she could look around this forum and read the posts or use the links in the "wee resource room". But only if she felt up to it - I am not here to recruit!

Take care hun, know that you are important too and deserve some support through this also. I wish katie and yourself the best,

Cinders xxxxxxxxx

Glad we could be of some help to you hun!

Take care

xxxxxxxxxxxx