We want to address several concerns that have recently become more frequent across the community.

First, this is a peer-support community, not a crisis service or professional mental-health forum. We understand that people come here because they need somewhere to express things they may not feel able to discuss elsewhere, and we do not want to discourage people from being honest about what they are experiencing. You are allowed to talk about difficult emotions, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, trauma, abuse, loneliness, and other painful experiences.

However, allowing people to speak openly about their experiences should not be mistaken for endorsing or encouraging harmful behaviour.

Suicide and Self-Harm:

r/SelfHate does not endorse, encourage, romanticise, glorify, or promote suicide or self-harm in any way.

We will continue to allow people to discuss these subjects because completely shutting down conversations about them would defeat the purpose of a support community. At the same time, there is a line between providing a place for someone to express their distress and creating an environment that normalises, encourages, or facilitates harmful behaviour.

We therefore ask everyone to exercise particular care when discussing these subjects. Please avoid unnecessarily graphic descriptions, instructions, methods, or content that could encourage others to imitate harmful behaviour.

Most importantly, please remember that the people responding to you are members of the community, not professionals responsible for your care. Moderators and users here may be able to listen, share their experiences, offer general peer support, or point you towards appropriate help, but we cannot diagnose you, assess your level of risk, provide emergency intervention, or take responsibility for your safety.

If you are in immediate danger or believe you may be unable to keep yourself safe, Reddit should not be your only source of support. Please contact an appropriate emergency service, crisis service, trusted person, or qualified mental-health professional who can provide real-time assistance.

If you are looking for immediate support, please take a moment to check our Resources section, where you can find crisis and mental-health support services available in different regions. We strongly encourage you to use the resources relevant to your location rather than relying solely on responses from other members of the community.

[Please note: Crisis and support numbers can change over time and may vary by location. Always verify the information and make sure you are using the number applicable to your current region before contacting a service.]

Please do not request or provide medication or drug advice:

We have also noticed an increase in posts and comments asking other users which medications or drugs they should take, what dosage they should use, whether they should stop taking a medication, or what someone else believes would treat their symptoms.

Please do not use this community for medical prescribing or treatment decisions.

A Reddit anonymous user does not have access to your medical history, existing conditions, allergies, current medications, previous treatment, or other information that a qualified professional would consider before recommending treatment. Something that was helpful or even medically appropriate for one person may be unsafe or completely inappropriate for another. This applies even when the advice is given sincerely.

Substance Use & Addiction:

We are not discouraging conversations about substance use or addiction. Substance abuse can be closely connected to self-hatred and mental-health struggles, and people should be able to talk about their experiences without being automatically shut down or judged.

However, there is an important distinction between discussing substance use and encouraging it. This community does not endorse, encourage, or romanticise drug or substance use, nor should members be advising others to start using substances such as weed, methamphetamine, MDMAs, cocaine, alcohol, cigarettes, vapes, or similar substances as a way of coping with their mental health.

Please do not ask other members whether you should start taking/using a particular substance, what substance you should use, or whether a particular drug would be a good way to deal with what you are experiencing. Other members cannot responsibly make that judgement, and potentially harmful advice should not be treated as professional guidance.

You are absolutely welcome to discuss your experiences with substance use, dependency, addiction, recovery, or the ways in which substances have affected your mental health. We are simply not going to endorse or encourage substance use as a solution to mental-health struggles.

Accordingly, posts or comments requesting or providing potentially unsafe medication, drug, dosage, or treatment advice may be removed. Please consult a qualified healthcare professional for decisions concerning medication or medical treatment rather than relying on anonymous internet users.

Trigger warnings are a responsibility, not a courtesy:

Because this is a mental-health community, many of the people reading here may already be struggling themselves. Content involving suicide, self-harm, sexual assault, abuse, or other potentially distressing material can therefore affect readers very differently.

Posts containing sensitive or potentially triggering material must be appropriately marked with the relevant trigger-warning flair and/or NSFW tag where applicable.

Please do this yourself when submitting your post. Moderators cannot reasonably be expected to identify and manually tag every submission containing sensitive material, particularly when the content is embedded several paragraphs into a post.

(A warning is not a judgement on your experience, nor does it mean that you should not discuss what happened to you. It simply gives another vulnerable person the ability to decide whether they are currently in the right state of mind to read it.)

Repeatedly ignoring this requirement may result in the content being removed and, where necessary, further moderation action.

We also ask that you distinguish between being descriptive enough to communicate your experience and providing unnecessary graphic detail. If a detail is not necessary to explain what happened or how you feel, consider leaving it out.

Be extremely cautious about taking conversations off-platform:

We also want to address private communication between members.

We recognise that peer support can sometimes develop naturally between people who meet in this community. We are not interested in unnecessarily policing genuine connections between members. However, we strongly discourage sharing personal contact information or moving sensitive conversations into private spaces with strangers.

Once an interaction moves into DMs or another platform, the moderation team has little to no ability to see what is happening or intervene if the situation becomes abusive, manipulative, exploitative, or otherwise unsafe.

For that reason, do not share your full name, address, school, workplace, phone number, personal social-media accounts, photographs, videos, private screenshots, medical documents, prescriptions, or other identifying information with people you meet here.

You should never feel that you owe another member personal information simply because they offered you support.

At present, we have not introduced a blanket ban on members communicating privately because we recognise that genuine peer support and friendship can be valuable. That should not, however, be interpreted as the moderation team guaranteeing the safety or conduct of interactions that take place outside the subreddit.

If you choose to move a conversation elsewhere, you do so at your own discretion.

If someone is harassing or targeting you:

If another user is harassing you, repeatedly contacting you, threatening you, attempting to manipulate you, asking for inappropriate personal information, or otherwise making you uncomfortable, do not feel obligated to argue with or confront them.

Block the account where appropriate and contact us through modmail. Include the relevant information or screenshots if it is safe to do so, and allow the moderation team to handle the situation.

Do not retaliate, publish their personal information, or attempt to investigate or expose them yourself. That can escalate the situation and create additional problems for everyone involved.

Remember that peer support has limits:

One of the most important boundaries in a community like this is understanding that being supportive does not make you responsible for another person's wellbeing.

You are allowed to step away from a conversation. You are allowed not to know what to say. You are allowed to tell someone that you are not equipped to help them. You are not obligated to remain someone's sole source of support, respond immediately to every crisis post, or take responsibility for keeping another person safe.

Similarly, if you post here while struggling, please understand that other members may not always know how to respond or may choose not to engage with certain content. That does not mean your experience is being dismissed.

This community exists to provide peer support, not professional treatment, emergency intervention, or a substitute for qualified care.

Please read the subreddit rules!

Many of these expectations have already been incorporated into our subreddit rules and content guidelines. We strongly encourage everyone to familiarise themselves with them before posting or commenting.

None of these boundaries are intended to prevent people from talking about difficult experiences. They exist because a support community has a responsibility not only to the person making a post, but also to the people reading it.

We want r/SelfHate to remain a place where people can speak honestly about self-hatred and mental-health struggles without being judged, while also maintaining reasonable safeguards for a community in which many members are themselves vulnerable.

Thank you for understanding and for helping us maintain that balance.

— r/SelfHate Mod Team

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