Every aspect of her self-harming episodes has been very stressful for the family on the whole. Her younger sister witnessed her self-harming and rushed downstairs and told me once, Mummy Mummy, my sister is hurting herself. And for me as a mum, that was difficult but I, you know, and I felt it was even more difficult for my younger daughter witnessing her sister hurting herself. So I had to say to the younger daughter, you know, Whatever you do, don’t get no ideas. You know, your sister’s hurting. That’s why shes doing what shes doing and it’s her way of coping. It’s not the right thing to do but whatever you do, if you’re going through anything, make sure you talk to Mummy about it, don’t hurt yourself.

I suppose they both, if they were being critical, they would have thought, and they did feel, that she was being selfish. They did think that she could stop it. They had less of an understanding than I managed to get by reading up on the subject and listening to my daughter. They didn’t have that opportunity, if you like, or they didn’t take that opportunity. So they just did what many a parent, I suppose, does and I did in the early days which was just to expect that somebody could sort of snap out of it or pull themselves together or whatever one says about any kind of mental health problem, sadly. That the onus was on the person to stop it and that it was selfish of them to be so self-absorbed and doing this that had an effect, clear effect on everybody. So, they would sometimes be very protective of me and say to her, you know, Can’t you see what this is doing to Mum?’ which I didn’t want them to say, because I thought it was unfair, but also because I was petrified that it might lead her then to go off and self-harm which, of course, it did in the earlier days.

So, it’s a bit of, if you’re not careful it’s a family battlefield, really of the other children, you know, her siblings feeling a bit, maybe, neglected and left out sometimes. You have to work doubly hard to you know, keep everyone happy and it’s exhausting, it really is, absolutely exhausting.

I think it’s I think it’s had a really big impact. It’s thrown us all. It’s I’m really conscious of the other children. Shes got an older brother and a younger sister and they’re all chalk and cheese. They’re so different from each other but it’s been horrible for them, particularly for her younger sister, who is completely different and really sensitive and hates any kind of attention or fuss.

And, obviously, this kind of behaviour brings attention and fuss and also, you know, it’s very difficult because despite the fact that they have all the normal sibling kind of squabbles and everything, they’re quite close in age and, obviously, they’re fond of each other and it’s horrible, really horrible to see somebody hurting themselves and have no idea why they’re doing it or, you know, why we can’t stop her doing it and why, you know, why shes that unhappy in an apparently, perfectly normal family, you know, but with nothing really to make her that unhappy that they can see. So it’s very confusing for the children the other children and also for my husband and I because we don’t know anything about it, you know. We don’t know how to deal with it. We don’t know how to cope with it. We, even more so my husband actually, it just doesn’t, understand it at all so and when you don’t understand something that much, it makes it almost impossible to do anything to help really.

So you tend to sort of ignore it as much as you can, which is really unhelpful. Doesn’t work, so and it’s had a big impact because all the children go to the same school and theres no hiding that that kind of self-harm. It’s on, you know, it’s on [my daughter], on her arms and and it was on her legs as well. She did she did do it on her legs too. So shed still be doing sport and shed be doing, playing in, she was quite sporty, shed be playing in netball matches or whatever in her sports short skirt, and with her short sleeves on and, you know, shes covered in in cuts and so people know that, you know, you can’t hide it. And it’s that’s difficult for her brother and sister too, you know, because children being children will ask, generally they’re nice, but they’ll ask questions. They’ll want to know what’s happening and, you know, they don’t really know how to answer so it puts them in the spotlight a bit too at school.

What impact has it had on her younger sister?

[Sighs] I would say it’s impacted on my younger daughter adversely as well because my daughter went through a period where she became quite angry, sullen, you know, would just get into rages and fits of anger. Shed direct some of that anger at her older sister and shed just attack her and hit her and say, I hate you. I hate you. So then I would say to her, No, you don’t hate your sister. You’re angry. You’re angry because shes, you’ve witnessed things that you shouldn’t have seen. Shes exposed you to things that you shouldn’t have been exposed to but by virtue of being a member of the family, you’ve seen them, you’ve witnessed them and you’ve been party to it but, I said to her, It’s all right to be angry.

So what I did, I bought my younger daughter a punching bag so if shes angry I say, You get that bag and just punch at it, you know, release some of that anger. You know, so she said, Well, thanks Mum. And I got her gloves as well, you know, [laughs] so I said, Rather than hurting your sister, punch at the punching bag but release the anger, release the aggression, don’t keep it inside. If you feel like you want to cry, cry. So shes if shes having a temper tantrum, I just let her cry and I said, you know, Just let it out, release it but don’t keep it inside because if you do it will make you ill.

So, you know, I said to her, But, at the same time, don’t cry for anything, you know. Cry because you’ve got a reason. Cry because you’re not, you’re not happy or you’re feeling sad about something or your sister has said something to you and shes hurt you, you know, but don’t just cry for the sake of crying because. I said, After a while, you’ll become like the crying wolf. The boy who always cried and then, when he was seriously in trouble, no one paid no attention because they got used to him making those noises, you know. So I think she got the message [laughs]. Yeah.

So, I think it must be very, very easy in this situation for siblings to get lost for, for parental sort of, attention, to be absolutely on, and weve had angry spells with my eldest daughter, who doesn’t get angry at all, and where it’s, she feels very guilty, feeling like it, but it’s, What about me? You know, all this attention on, you know, everything youngest daughter wants, she gets, you know, whereas.

Yes.

Look at me. What am I going to have? you know, this sort of thing, and she knows why, and she understands why and she never says it, never blames, you know, but you can see, theres a sort of, Come on, I’m seventeen.

Yes.

[Laughs] And she is, and she, she deserves everything in the world, and so she is putting things on hold, and she is, obviously, struggling and, she doesn’t want to worry us with her problems, and, you know, so you’ve got to keep an eye on all of the children.

Can you say a bit about the impact that this has had on the family sort of both emotionally and practically and socially?

The first point I’d make is it has been explained to me how completely selfish people are in this sort of mental state that the patient has absolutely no apparent concern for the effect his behaviour has on his younger siblings, who are at a very impressionable age, fourteen and twelve. And there has been a very deep effect. I mean it is particularly, well, on both of them, the twelve year old says things like, Well. We try to say to them, Please don’t, try not to annoy him because we don’t know what’s happened. He suffers from something called depression and anything might happen. And so this poor girl has to bite her tongue and feels very constrained about what she can say or do with her brother and so it’s a great worry for her, and I think possibly shes more grumpy and bad tempered than perhaps a twelve year old girl would normally be as a result of this stress.

So the effect of the self-harm, [sighs] it’s very difficult to say. Certainly, it’s made her younger sister, shes had periods of extreme anger, extreme anger both with how her sister was and why she felt that it was okay to behave that way.

And periods of extreme insecurity when she first moved away to London, the one that was left at home was saying, How do you know shes okay? How do you know shes going, is she going to be okay and shouldn’t you be ringing her every day? And a completely over the top reaction. Normally, I’m sure, when a sister, one goes to university it’s like, Yes, I I’m at home on my own and how great is that. But very insecure. I think, if there are any positives to come out of it, which I think you have to look for some kind of positive, we all communicate very much better than I think perhaps we would have done, considering were only, weve still got a teenager and were only just moving through the teenage years, which are notoriously difficult and notoriously turbulent, particularly, I think, I only know about girls, but particularly with girls very turbulent. And I think, coming through all of it theres, there has emerged a closeness, particularly oddly between the three siblings. They and maybe it would have happened anyway. How do you know? How do you know how they’d have ended up but they are very, very close now.

Yes, and what about her younger siblings?

Yeah, my youngest daughter is quite the opposite to her really. Shes outgoing and confident. She doesn’t seem to be fazed by it and she can talk openly about it. Shes not they, we all know, obviously. Weve never kept it from them. They know that she self-harms and my youngest daughter will talk to her and say, Have you self-harmed? Are you feeling down today? But my son, on the other hand, he is very much like his dad and closed up and he doesn’t like talking about it and hes got an issue because they both went to schools nextdoor to each other and theres only two years between them. So a lot of their friends are brothers and sisters as well.

Right. Yes.

And that’s caused an issue because my son won’t say to any of his friends what his sister, where his sister’s been, when shes been in hospital for six months, and theres been a big issue because hes just kept the whole thing secret so none of his friends know. He doesn’t talk about it because he thinks that people will bully him if they say, Oh your sister self-harms. Or anything. They’ve been swimming a few times but he won’t go swimming with them and my daughter thinks it’s because hes embarrassed of the scars because if his friends were about, they might ask him what’s gone on. So that’s quite difficult between them two.