Forgiving your friend

Forgiveness takes a lifetime. It’s a learnt process that ebbs and flows in our life: some people we can forgive quickly and easily, others it is painfully hard to allow ourselves to ‘let go’.

If a friend or family member is self-harming it can be hard not to feel hurt, angry or betrayed even. You may be angry that they didn’t tell you sooner or angry that they didn’t come to you as you may feel you could have helped them before it got to self-harm; you might feel very hurt by them and their lack of trust in not being able to ask for help; you may feel betrayed that they appear not to trust you enough with their thoughts and feelings.

If you are feeling like that; forgive them. You may feel that you have outwardly but perhaps inside those feelings still bubble up from time to time. Forgiving takes a long time – it’s a choice that you have to choose each time those feelings creep up on you. Forgive your friend, their self-harm is not your fault, it’s not something you could do anything to stop and it’s not yours to carry.

Chances are, they didn’t want or mean to hurt you. Often people who are struggling with self-harm carry huge bags of guilt and they might be harming their bodies as they don’t want to hurt anyone emotionally.

It takes a great deal of maturity to be able to let go of your own hurt and put yourself in someone else’s shoes: today, on Self-harm Awareness Day, take some time to think about forgiving your friend and consider what it might be like to walk in their shoes.

As a friend your role is to support and get your friend to get some help from people trained to do so; if you want to, why don’t you and your friend sign up together to our Alumina support programme?

Whether you are self-harming, or are friends with someone who is - you are never alone.

ALUMINA

Alumina is a free, online 7 week course for young people struggling with self-harm. Each course has up to 8 young people, all accessing the sessions from their own phones, tablets or laptops across the UK. The courses take place on different evenings of the week and are run by friendly, trained counsellors and volunteer youth workers. You don’t need an adult to refer you or sign you up, and no-one will see or hear you during the sessions – you’ll just join in via the chatbox. We want to help you to find your next steps towards recovery, wherever you are on your journey.

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