Overcoming Self-harm
How to reduce and prevent self-harming behaviours
With the right help and support most people who self-harm can, and do, fully recover over time – this inspiring course shows you how…
Course Factfile
Overcoming Self-harm
Length: 1 day (9.30am - 4.00pm)
Tutor: Emily Gajewski
CPD Certificate: 6 hours
Suitable for: see below
- Price: £192 per person
Price includes lunch, refreshments and course notes
£192.00
Self-harming and self-injury behaviours are increasing at an alarming rate – particularly among children and young people. It’s common to feel powerless when faced with such distressing behaviour, but with the essential information and skills you will learn on this course, you needn’t feel that way again.
Invaluable - it was like lifting a veil on the reasons for self-harm
Teacher
Why take this course
Emily Gajewski has decades of hands-on experience helping children and adults successfully overcome or significantly reduce their self-harming behaviour. Her insightful training day demystifies the self-harming cycle, clarifies its causes and shows why we should not give up on anyone, even in the most apparently hopeless situations.
You will gain a wealth of new information, proven techniques and useful tips which combined will ensure you give sufferers the best chance of recovering their mental health and moving on in their lives – you will also hear from people who have been able to completely stop self-harming (or dramatically reduced it) and are now living fulfilled lives as a result of this approach.
If you would like to make sense of all the fragments of information you have about self-harming and pull them all together into a cohesive and effective treatment strategy, this workshop is for you.
The fact that Emily was speaking from extensive practical experience of helping people who self-harm was immensely helpful
Health Practitioner
What will you learn
- A greater understanding of self-injury and why it occurs
- Warning signs that indicate someone may be self-harming
- What to do when someone discloses their self-harming behaviour to you
- The essential Dos and Don’ts for teams and individuals working with people who self-harm
- The latest guidelines around working with self-harm, including positive risk management and harm minimisation
- The importance of differentiating between self-harming and a suicide attempt – and how to treat them both
- The self-harm continuum – what tips us into self-harming behaviours
- What to do if someone is threatening to self-harm
- The common myths and stereotypes surrounding self-injury
- Powerful techniques that will transform your effectiveness and a ‘tried-and-tested’ framework for improving wellbeing, drawn from profound knowledge about what people need to avoid mental and emotional distress and increase wellbeing
- How chemical changes in the brain from self-harming behaviours can bring temporary relief from difficult emotions
- Why there is often an addictive element to self-injury (insights from neuroscience)
- How to approach the subject of self-injury with someone
- A cohesive and effective treatment strategy for treating self-injury and breaking the destructive cycle of behaviour
- Important skills needed for working with people who self-harm – and the opportunity to practise some of the them
- Enlightening filmed interviews and case histories which show how it is possible to help people, even in a very desperate situation, to live fulfilling lives again
- The chance to work with and ask questions of a highly experienced tutor who has extensive hands-on experience of helping people successfully overcome self-harming
- Ways to help people build resilience to future stressful circumstances
- Tips on finding the most helpful coping strategies
- How to help people create an alternative ‘safe place’ for themselves
- Practical ways to reduce your own anxiety when working in this area
- How to create an effective self-management plan and increase the individual’s engagement with it
- Important new information that will help you prevent self-harm
- New confidence when making interventions with people who once seemed unreachable
Good to know
Guided imagery and visualisation are key skills to have for implementing the strategies taught on this workshop.
The information and skills you will learn on Brief therapy for stopping addictions workshop can also be useful for working with people who self-harm.
Course Programme
The ‘Overcoming Self-harm’ course starts at 9.30am and runs until 4.00pm.
Who is this course suitable for?
This course is designed for health and welfare professionals, including: psychologists, counsellors, psychotherapists, mental health nurses, psychiatrists, school counsellors, student wellbeing officers, doctors, nurses, OTs, social workers, health visitors, youth workers, outreach and support workers.
It is also suitable for anyone who has a friend or relative who is self-harming, or who works with vulnerable men and women in the voluntary sector.
This course covers a range of self-harming behaviours including:
- Self-injury
- cutting, ripping or carving skin
- burning skin
- punching or hitting themselves
- scratching or pinching (including dermatillomania)
- poisoning themselves with tablets or liquids (to similar)
- Over-eating and under-eating (anorexia or bulimia)
- Biting yourself (dermatophagia)
- Inserting objects into your body
- overdosing, exercising excessively
- pulling your hair (trichotillomania)
- getting into flights where you know you will get hurt
The whole course was invaluable. It was well organised and the information presented was of great help and interest.
Support Worker
The whole day was very interesting with lots of material and time to try out ideas – gave me confidence I didn’t have before.
Project worker
A really well paced day with lots of relevant practical information and advice. I loved the films - they really helped me to get an overview of the subject and clearly demonstrated the effectiveness of the approach – what amazing women. I’m very grateful to them.
GP
A really helpful, caring approach – today has clarified so much for me and I can now see a sensible way forward.
All of the content was really useful. The film was an excellent way of bringing the ideas to life. I think that the course has put self-harm into context for me and reduced my anxiety about how to work with someone who self-harms.
Very relevant to my workplace and profession.
Excellent work-based knowledge of trainer – helpful that real-life experiences were used as examples.
I understand so much more about self-harm reasons and treatment now. Films were a very powerful experience.
I liked the practical and well structured techniques for working with self-harmers. I come across this regularly in my job. The HG approach and reframing of self-harm gives me a framework for talking differently about this issue with school professionals. An approach I can really use.
Emily’s introduction describing how she came into this field immediately engaged me with the importance of the topic and the structure of the day – very helpful start.
Thank you so much for a really informative and thought-provoking day. So well put together.
Lovely teaching, very real and human.
Good quality information well presented. Excellent content and presenter.
Excellent course – a mix of information and methods: film, discussion and activity.
Emily very elegantly presented HG principles in ways that encouraged new thoughts and ideas and offered a wide range of very useful and accessible, practical techniques. Her experience in working in this field was very apparent. An excellent example of ‘creating an effective environment for learning’ that was useful and enjoyable. A really worthwhile investment of time – CPD of the highest quality.
Yet again your training is highly relevant and current. This will be passed on to the staff I work with to inform/improve our work with young people.
Fantastic day with excellent information to help me increase my understanding and empathy. Films particularly powerful.
I definitely feel more confident now in working with people who self-harm. I also think I need to look at our policies in the organisation I work for in the light of this.
The whole day has been an invaluable experience and helped me to re-evaluate what I have termed ‘self-harm’. It has alerted me to behaviours in the children I work with which I might otherwise have overlooked.