We recently launched our new emergency web page: Read this first.

The purpose of this article is to provide immediate support and distraction for people who are overwhelmed by intense feelings of emotional distress and about to hurt themselves.

We hope that people will choose to read through the interactive page *before* making the decision to self-injure. As always, we don’t tell people what to do and we certainly don’t judge. Instead we have aimed to offer virtual support, insight and empathy that may help a person during times of acute distress.

We have written this article for anyone who relies on self-injury in order to cope, and we hope that whoever you are, and whatever your background or circumstances, that you’ll be able to relate to our article and find some hope, comfort and distraction in our words.

We know from our own personal experience of self-injury that when triggered the most important thing we can give ourselves before choosing to self-injure is time. ‘Read this first‘ aims to enable a person to give themselves that time and distance between their initial need to self-injure, and their decision to do so.

So if you work with people who self-injure, or have a loved one who hurts themselves, please share our page with them. And if you rely on self-injury yourself, please give yourself a little time to read through our article before you hurt yourself.