And, you know, when they’re fifteen, sixteen you actually don’t see them undressing so I hadn’t seen the marks on the top of her thighs or just underneath the pant line, where shed been hiding it, when shed been at the unit. I obviously didn’t see that but, when I had noticed them on her arms, I was able to talk to her about it and not kind of by then, not fly off the handle and get too emotional or angry. Of course, you just you just want to beg somebody to stop it but I was able to have a really nice chat with her and she did explain a little bit, well, she explained a lot to me about how she felt and why she did it.

I wasn’t able perhaps, to understand and I was also able to tell her how it felt from my perspective, actually, as a mum who cared for her, for her skin, if you like, ever since she was a baby that, you know, the mother’s instinct and the mother’s heart is to protect their child from harm. And shes suitably sensitive and intelligent enough to and caring enough to be able to see it from my side as well.

I try to get her to talk to me and, actually, about two or three weeks ago she actually yelled back at me and she was crying and we were, you know, I was holding her and I was just telling her, you know, I love you and I’m not sending you back [to live with her father in America] and you’re staying here and so, you know, if you’re doing this to try to, you know, whatever, get us not to love you or something. Because she, a lot of the times when I find out about it, she says, I don’t want to worry you. I don’t want to tell you because I don’t want to worry you and I don’t want you worrying again.

So I try to tell her, Well, were your parents and that’s our job is to worry [laughs]. When we have, when you have a child, you decide you’re going to worry for the rest of your life about these people. And so I try to tell her that, just tell her, you know, Doesn’t matter what you do, I’m still going to love you and so, you know, I. But I, what I try to tell her is that it makes me angry she does it because shes a wonderful person and she shouldn’t be hurting herself. So, because I think her dad treated it more like it’s an embarrassment to him.

So I don’t treat it like that because it’s not an embarrassment to me but I try to tell her, you know, You’re beautiful and eventually, you’re not going to like these marks. And, you know, it’s going to cause scars for the rest of your life and so you’re going to have to live with these and in ten years, you know, when you’re an adult, you’re really aren’t going to be happy with this, you know. So just to try to get her to understand shes she, you know, shes beautiful and that shes like defacing, you know, this beautiful body.

But after she yelled at me I noticed on her Facebook that she had put, she yelled at someone for the first time in her life and that was her response on there and it was a positive thing and I liked it [laughs] and I thought, well, good because I think her whole life shes been the youngest of four and I think shes always been very introverted. Shes been very introverted and I think it’s very hard.

And has your daughter said why she does it?

No.

No.

No. It’s almost a closed subject.

And maybe in the fullness of time, in a year or two, when she, hopefully, will be over it completely, she might be able to talk about it but no, shes never, she just clams up completely. The, the recent incident I referred to, I, you know, we ask her in a very non-confrontational way, just to try and open up the conversation about it.

But it, it’s complete clamming up.

She, as a teenager, refused point blank to discuss it with me, partly it was the BPD [borderline personality disorder], partly it was also the I think the very normal teenage, You’re really old. You’re a parent. You couldn’t possibly understand. I’m not going to waste my breath talking to you about it, attitude that that comes with those hormones and that age. So we spent a lot of time not talking about it and kind of skirting round the issue and I suspect that’s fairly common as well for lots of us.

Theres no forum for it. Theres, theres no forum, at, at school they’re not allowed to, I’m not saying they should be out of control at school, but kids don’t run round the playground and let rip like they used to, you know, or a bit of banter or a bit of play fighting or just kicking a football around. They don’t do it. Theres nothing to get their aggression out and to get their feelings out. It’s not encouraged to have somewhere at school to go and talk about these things, without fear of, People are going to think I’m weird. People are going to think I’m nuts. People are going to think, this that and the other, you know, and what are my friends going to think. Theres, theres no forum easily for them to, to tell someone how they’re feeling. And just try and speak to somebody, I think, because with the best will in the world, parents aren’t always the first people children turn to. Quite often it will be a friend but when you’re in a situation like my daughter was in, she only had a few close friends and the majority of those had issues as well, she wouldn’t turn to them because she was, she was supporting them. She wouldn’t turn to me because she knew I had issues myself and didn’t want to make them worse. It’s, it’s trying to find somewhere that she could go to and she could have talked to other than internet forums that aren’t always very helpful places.

I think it being female it helps me to talk. Men are not so good at talking on the whole. That’s a generalisation but and I think that’s one of the things that’s so difficult for my son because his father was very much, you know, men don’t cry, you know, men don’t this, whereas I’ve always enforced in them or reinforced, whatever the word is, actually, it takes more of a man to cry and he does at times.

But hes again, this is part of his battle, sort of, you know, I’m obviously pathetic. I’m a bloke and I can’t handle it. So let’s just end it because people would laugh if they knew I can’t handle it. And it’s like, No, they wouldn’t. You know, Don’t think like that. But it’s very hard because he is male and you know, this is some of the conversations, Well, you’re a woman. You can go and talk to a friend and feel better. Who can I talk to? I can’t talk to my mates because they’ll go, oh come on. You talk to psychiatrists and they’re ticking boxes half. This is his conversation.

They’re ticking boxes half the time. They’re not really listening to what you’re trying to say. A lot of them, their answer is, take this tablet, take that tablet and it’ll numb the pain and you’ll get through it and be strong enough to live. and that’s what is very hard with it is there is no answer.

But she can’t she can’t talk about it. Oh, I mean we did, we had, over the year, come up with a number of ways to try and get communication between us going because she is oh, well, shes a lovely, easy girl really and weve always had a really good relationship so that’s been very difficult, not speaking about it. But we, so we set up a diary system and, which we call secret squirrel, and if she was feeling unhappy or feeling like she might self-harm or anything really, she wrote it down and shed leave it on my pillow.

And then I’d reply so wed be having a conversation effectively, but she obviously found it much easier to do it that way. She writes really well so she enjoys writing so I think it was much easier than talking.

Are there any positive things that you think come out of your professional world?

Yeah, I think I think theres lots of lots of positive things that that do come out of it. Were always talking about mind set. Were always talking about the fact of, you know, if you think you can do something or if you think you can’t do something, either way you’re right. These kind of things, which are about how keeping positive thoughts in your head can actually make life so much easier and negative spirals are also very, very easy to slip into.

Even when were talking round the dinner table and somebody’s said they’ve had a crap day, it’s like, Okay. Let’s talk about that but also what’s the best thing that’s happened to you today? And we, you know, we do try and get everyone, it sounds a bit cheesy sometimes doesn’t it, stuff like that, but we just try and get everyone to focus on good stuff and to have good goals to reach for and be very aware that the media and TV programmes and newspapers and magazines are full of a lot of sensationalised rubbish and you can actually start to believe that this is a reality. Whereas in fact the reality is what you make inside your own head and you can choose to become part of a negative mind set and you can choose to be a positive person. And I’m hoping that this this drip feed shes had of all this positivity will actually help her in the future to understand how she can think her way towards helping herself.