Emo Scene Community

I am by No means a professional in this but i am writing from my own personal experience with Self harm and my long battle with it. I thought some of this maybe useful for those struggling with Self Harm or Self Injury and maybe for the people who want to help/support someone going through it. For those struggling with it and from personal experience, I found knowing what triggers you and how to deal with urges along with finding that someone or something you trust enough to turn to for help/support are the most important things in the journey to recovery. I'm NOT going to say recovery is easy because it isn't, but i will say, it is worth every step of the journey to achieve it. Harming your self achieves nothing but pain and darkness. it will not solve the problems although it may seem help you in the short term, it will do the opposite in the long run. ^ Those of you who have recovered/are almost recovered will know what i mean by the statement above. Triggers: Not everyone has a set trigger for self harm, but there is always either emotions or a trail of events leading upto the action that builds up over time that can result in the harm occurring. To find my triggers, i wrote down in a obvious place (to me) what i found commonly happened before a urge to cut/harm and then slowly learned when urges were about to occur and was able to try and prevent one happening. urges/temptations I personally found Distracting myself was the best technique, as my mind couldn't focus on harming and something else that required alot of thought at the same time. ie reading a long book, doing a crossword or even doing that dreaded coursework you have left form school can take your mind of a urge. simply Procrastinate as much as you can. Over the years, I've found/heard that most successful methods of distraction involve keeping your hands occupied ie Drawing ,writing ,journals etc or replacing the action with another ie instead of cutting, tear up a phone book or thick card into tiny pieces to release the stress, draw lines in coloured pen on paper or your skin till the urge passes, sing and danced to Upbeat music or maybe go for a simple walk or jog outside.. (fresh air oddly helps clear the mind epically when in a nosey/heated situation ) Methods to reduce the amount you harm Although recovery can be a daunting prospect and can be scary, there are afew things that will make it alittle easier for you. firstly, don't just go "i will stop tonight and be clean onwards" because self harm, especially after you've been doing it for afew years can become incredibility addictive and impulsive and sometimes it can feel like the only thing around that help... So it's best to gradually reduce the amount you harm over a period of time to prevent that "cold turkey"/ desperate need feeling. ie. set a goal by saying to yourself, you won't harm for so many days per week, when you get the urge too. Then as you achieve this goal gradually increasing the number of days you don't harm for/resits the urge too. This also lowers the chance of serious relapses, as your not completely withdrawn from your comfort/coping habits straight away. Basically you teach yourself gradually to become less and less dependant on Harming to feel alive,emotions or what ever your reasoning to harm/self injure. Another method of reducing how much you harm is a technique called Positive Word reinforcement. It is a method i frequently used in my darker phases to much success. All you need to do is find a word of something you like, that is 5-7 letters long ( a letter/symbol for each day of the week) and for every you don't cut/harm you write one letter of this word on you, in a place you can easily look at in times of urges ie your arm (no cheating if you do slip up or else it won't work properly) once you have spelt this word (all 5-7 letters) you reward yourself with something small ie a chocolate bar or something that you like. You keep doing this letter by day thing till you can easily spell word ie it takes the excat number of letters and days to spell, lets say 5, rather than 6 or 7 days to spell it. then once you are confident, you can either increase the word length or try doing a week without the word at all and so on, till you no longer feel the need to use the technique. This technique re-enforces your brains signal of happiness with not harming and the reward is a visual way of seeing this. Of course, there are many projects out there on the web such as the well known Butterfly project,bracelets and colour line project etc but not all those work for everybody and it's about finding what methods work best for you and your situation. Relapses will probably occur along the way and this can be scary especially when you thought you had stopped and become 'clean' but they are perfectly normal part of recovery. When these occur , don't panic or feel ashamed at yourself, just take a step back from things and think about why you harmed, what lead up up to the relapse(emotions,actions etc) and what in the future you can do to prevent it occurring again. Writing your answers down to the questions that you ask yourself and displaying/having it close to hand, when you next have the urge to relapse during a 'clean' period, is always handy to keep yourself on track and remind you of your end goal. Also remember you are not alone and shouldn't have to feel ashamed of self harm/injury. Talking to someone you trust or writing down how you feel in a journal can help relive some of the stress and bottled feelings inside, along with going outside and just screaming/cursing into the air. (daft as it sounds it worked, or for me anyway) On a general note for those going through a hard/dark time.. Life is worth so much more than harming and has so many good things in it, if you fight towards them. Hope is always possible and can be found anywhere if you look hard enough for it. Show those who hate/doubt you why you are the better person and stand upto the bullies/hate and tell them who you are and what you stand for. Most importantly be you and be proud of yourself and what you can achieve :) If anyone wants any support or more advice on how to stop or just wants a chat/vent about anything feel free to PM me and i'll do my best to listen and to help you. =) Thanks for reading this post and Sorry for it's length but i hope it helps some of you out there and good luck with recovery and stay strong <3 xx