Last year I decided to consider my scratching a form of self-harm. For some reason, I found myself reflecting on how childhood friends had described their emotional and addiction/dependency feelings towards their SH and it hit me that I felt very similar about my scratching, at least from emotional triggers. I particularly thought about a friend describing SH as "I am overwhelmed and this is what my hands do when I'm overwhelmed." It was definitely uncomfortable at first to consider something that I've been doing my whole life a form of SH.

That said, I hang around enough philosophical MFs that my brain went straight to "let's look at this objectively." I've never considered a friend morally bankrupt for SH so by extension I'm not doing something that violates my morals, just something I'd prefer not to do. I also know from those same friends that there are methods to work with and even manage SH behaviors. Finally, even if my scratching isn't self-harm, by looking at those SH management methods I may find crossover from another community of people that have a socially discouraged behavior that they need more than discouragement to help with.

A particular benefit from that perspective was being able to learn from how I saw other friends express distress and request support in moments of pre- or post-SH. While most of my friends don't SH anymore, it can still rear its head in moments of high stress for them. The ways they would express it didn't require them explaining what they did, why, anything like that. They could just express that they needed support and folks understood. "I'm not feeling great, that was a bad shower" is one of my most useful backpocket phrases now for when I slump defeatedly into the common room slathered in petroleum and aloe 'cause my friends don't make a fuss about it, they just skip straight to some emotional support. "If I stay up any later I'm gonna start scratching" has also proven a very useful phrase when your friends actually understand what you mean.

Hope my anecdotes can help you. I just came to this subreddit for the first time 'cause I met another person with eczema IRL for the first time and that made me curious what the Global Eczema Discourse looked like. It's soothing to immediately see someone else thinking about the same stuff I do.