Ask Sam letter

Hi there,

Many people who are recovering from self-harm have a “relapse”. A relapse is when you do something after managing not to do it for a while. This doesn’t mean that you are back to where you started. It’s important to remember the huge amount of progress you’ve already made getting this far. And the effort you made not to hurt yourself for so long. 

Noticing a problem sooner means that you can get help to make things better sooner too and it’s really great that you’re thinking of telling your social worker. You deserve support with this. You seem good at expressing yourself through writing, so perhaps you could think about writing it down for your social worker. 

You could also make a list of the things you’d like to say so that you can refer to it if you’d rather talk face to face or over the phone. I can tell that you’re wondering what would be the best way to let your social worker know. It’s okay to choose whichever way feels right for you. Perhaps you could have a think about which ways have felt best for you to talk to your social worker in the past. Sometimes you have to try a few things before you find the right one.

If you’d like to talk about it more, remember that you can always talk to a counsellor. You might also find it useful to take a look at our coping techniques for self-harm.

You’ve done really well to get in touch to let me know about this and I really hope that you can get the support you need.

Take care,
Sam