Spoke to the nurse that was on the rota for the night shift as the above post by myself was very much on my mind and I wanted some clarification.... will speak to my named nurse about it tomorrow in more detail of course.

Anyway, this nurse was a bit concerned and at first misconstrued that my T had said it was 'ok' to cut... I reiterated that she was neither here nor there about it and was staying neutral on the issue... that we're dealing with other more pressing matters and that she just wants me to be careful with it.

Well the nurse said that from his view point, self harm is an addiction that can get out of hand. Whereas my cutting is just superficial at the moment, from experience, staff have often seen cuts starting to get deeper and deeper as the cutter becomes more confident and less afraid and this can lead to serious damage such as massive loss of blood or even severing of nerve endings.

As such it is going to be the stance of the nurses that I reduce the cutting... he personally wasn't expecting it to be an over night thing (much like trying to give up smoking or alcohol) but it would be far better to try and nip it in the bud while in hospital if I can and try to use healthier methods of coping (such as writing the letters as expressed above).

Was a helpful chat. Not saying it is something I'm going to find easy, but was good to have it laid out in that way other than 'don't do it' or 'we're disappointed you're still cutting'.