Coping With Urges to Self-Harm (Part 1)
Please note that this post discusses self-harm. While no details of specific behaviors are mentioned, the general topic may be triggering. If this is the case for you, please move on to another post and feel free to return to this one when you are not feeling triggered. If you do become triggered while reading, please consider contacting someone who can help you. You can find resources of this in this blog post.
Self-harm is when someone deliberately causes physical harm to their body without the intent to commit suicide. While hurting oneself can seem counterintuitive, it is often an attempt to cope with emotions that are overwhelming and difficult to feel. When a person self-harms, endorphins are released, which momentarily help a person feel better. The downside is that it can lead to physical damage to the body, an intense feeling of shame, and a continuation of the pattern of self-harming when the person experiences an emotion that is difficult to cope with. Over time, self-harm can become an addiction with urges that are difficult to resist.
“The idea is to find several things that work for you at least sometimes, so that when the urges and difficult feelings come up, you have a few things to choose from.”
When trying to recover from self-harm, it can be most helpful to work with a therapist who can help you to understand your specific triggers, what helps with the urges, and what emotions are underneath the thoughts to self-harm. However, there are a few more general suggestions that it might be helpful for you to consider. These suggestions can be divided into a few categories: expressing emotions, distraction, and support from others. Like anything else in life, different skills might work at different times. The idea is to find several things that work for you at least sometimes, so that when the urges and difficult feelings come up, you have a few things to choose from.
Sometimes people self-harm because there is an emotion that they need to express. In these moments, it may be helpful to find other ways to express the emotions, such as through writing, art, finding memes that you relate to, or listening to music. Some people also like to draw on paper what they would have “drawn” on their skin. Crying can also be a great way to express emotion. While you might feel worse while crying, often you might find that you feel better afterward and that your thinking is more clear.
Other times the emotions might be too intense, and a better way to manage them might be to distract yourself from them until you are calm and prepared enough to choose another strategy. You can distract yourself by doing something you have to get done, like homework or chores, or by something you enjoy doing, like finding funny videos on Youtube or playing a video game. You may not be able to have the thoughts completely leave your mind, but the goal is to help them to move further into the background so that they aren’t completely overwhelming, even if they are not completely gone.
[Image of person reaching out for support via phone]
Sometimes support from others can be really helpful. If you are needing this, you could try texting or calling a friend, or even calling a hotline or posting in an online group. If connection with others feels like a good idea but you don’t want to talk about what is troubling you, just spending time with someone doing something fun can be helpful. Even something like watching a movie together can help you to feel less alone and more cared about without needing to go into what is bothering you.
Those are a couple of general categories, but there might be things that work for you that don’t seem to fall into any of them, and that’s okay too. The more possible ideas you have, the more likely it is that you will find something that will work for you in the moment.
It is likely that you already do some of these things, so start by thinking about the kinds of activities you do in each category. You might have more skills than you realize!
Next time, we’ll go into more detail about creating a plan for when you have urges to self-harm or are experiencing difficult emotions in general.
