Looking Forward

Mail on Sunday 'You Magazine' article from May 30th 2004:

"The real therapeutic breakthrough, however, is made by moving from the virtual community of the website into a real relationship with another human being, believes Natasha Harvey who has heard too many stories of self-harmers rescued by the arrival of a boyfriend on the scene to believe them coincidental. ‘A lot of entrenched self-harmers are very reclusive. They cut themselves off from others, plotting and planning their next session, convinced there is nothing about them that could ever be treated in a loving and caring way. If a person can move from the claustrophobia of self-loathing to a relationship with someone who loves and cherishes them it can help them to experience themselves in a different way and start to accept themselves. That’s the moment of change.’"

Natasha Harvey is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, who specialises in treating adolescents with eating disorders combined, increasingly, with a tendency to self-harm.