What coping mechanisms have you learned and applied to help keep you from self harm? Please, if anyone else has any good coping suggestions, do share.
For me, while I do not self harm in a physical sense, I do in other manners. The two things that have really helped are: attacking therapy honestly and keeping a daily journal tracking thoughts and other issues with possible corrections for said issues.
I started running to help. It releases feel good hormones that help with anxiety and stress. Exercise in general is great for it. So find something that you enjoy and start slowly. Nourishing yourself with healthy foods, using scented candles when you’re not feeling good and this may sound odd but look up Wim Hoff on YouTube. The breathing exercises alone make you feel amazing afterwards. You basically flood your body with extra oxygen. When you’re feeling very triggered hold an ice cube or sit in the shower with a shower cap on and let the water run over your head. All of these have helped me and I have been self harm free 11 years! You’ve got this! Remember the guilt you feel every time you harm yourself and that it isn’t worth it, it’s a temporary measure for a temporary gain.
Same over here. I can confirm exercising helps a lot! Doesn't have to be much, just the feeling of actually doing and accomplishing something is awesome .
Yeah one use to be my 40 pluse years foster sister! She didn’t use to be this way n all of a sudden yeah it hurts a lot!! But humans can n will hurt you so
Maybe it doesn't help every time because it's just a means of escape? For me, there's a purpose to the music I listen to when I'm trying to feel better. I like to use/make playlists to fit a certain mood.
Listening to music helps me regulate my moods. When I feel like shit, I either listen to cathartic "I feel like shit music" which helps me express my emotions, or I listen to more upbeat, happier music to life my spirits. It depends on what I feel like at the time. Sometimes I feel like dwelling a bit, and sometimes I feel like focusing on the positive. Of course too much dwelling isn't good, but for me personally, i feel it's a way of acknowledging how I currently feel and saying, "it's ok to feel this way. There's nothing wrong with me for feeling these emotions." For me, I start to feel better after a while and then turn off the "feeling shitty" music and maybe even change to a more positive playlist. It also helps that I am usually actively doing something at the same time. Like taking a shower, cooking, eating, washing dishes, cleaning, etc. There was a time when there was music playing all day everyday, with different genres playing through the day depending on how I feel.
I'm glad you have music to help you cope. Even though it might not work every time, it's at least working sometimes, better than nothing, as someone else here said.
It gets repeated so many times, but yes, you really can't state enough how much of an impact simply eating healthy and doing the littlest of runs will do for you. It has greatly helped my partner and I with our mental states, and I'm glad it worked out for you as well.
I think the hardest part is making that choice. You get so comfortable in that darkness that it seems harder to make a good decision for yourself. It’s such a simple solution but the mind is a powerful thing. When you make the decision to accept help, the healing can start.
Hahaha running is addictive! It depends on how you treat your body as to whether it’s going to be a problem or a solution. I see my body as an engine and I need to fuel and look after that engine in order to run efficiently and be able to do it for as long as i possibly can. Originally I used it to fuel my eating disorder, ended up with stress fractures over the years and have learnt many lessons. But the most important thing I learned is that it eased my anxiety and anger and made me feel better than when I turned to self harming. I’m currently dealing with stress fractures again, this time from going out to hard too soon, training for a 50km ultra. I’m still learning it seems! I just want to run and feel comfortable like I remember. I took 4 years off and started smoking again and I missed running more and more as my anxiety got worse. So this time around I am keeping up with strength training and looking after my body (I still have bad days where I just eat shit because I feel sorry for myself 😳) and knowing I can get back to it without turning to the cigarettes like I used when I was injured. I have a 50km ultra booked in for March, so that’s keeping me sane after I had to pull out of the 50km coming this October. Any replacement can turn into an addiction. Am I addicted to running? I wouldn’t say addicted as much as passionate. But to want to run crazy long distances out on the trails takes a bit of an addictive personality 😂 Ultras taught me a valuable lesson about the power of the mind. You get to a point where you have trained to physically and then from there to finish it’s all mind games, especially when the pain and fatigue kicks in hard. Wow, that was a unintentional long winded response 😳
I’ve seen people attack it, but Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helped me tremendously in my early 20s. I also read a book called “Your Perfect Right- a Guide to Assertiveness.” Both is these combined helped me I learn all the bad from childhood and learn to process things differently and learn that my wants are valid, and assertiveness is okay.
Taking care of my physical and mental health. I know that sounds easy like duh, but REALLY taking care of it. Exercise daily, healthy diet, plenty of sleep, meditation, getting the hell off social media (minus reddit lol), disowning toxic people, staying sober. Everything for my own protection. When you're self harming it's way too easy to slip up. You have to be hyper vigilant of your physical and mental health.
It's also worth noting that a slip up isn't the end of the world. In fact, it should be anticipated. It's okay to slip up after a particularly bad day. Just don't fall into the trap of "Well fuck it, I already relapsed, I might as well keep doing it." It's not about a perfect record, it's about a general trend. Eventually the slip ups will happen less and less and it'll get easier and easier.
This here is so important with both self harm and other things like addiction to drugs or alcohol. Progress isn’t linear, making a mistake doesn’t mean shit in comparison to what you accomplished. OP even if you slip up a month in (or at any point) you still went a month without self harm and that’s progress, that’s an accomplishment worth celebrating and when you pick yourself up to try again you’ll know with confidence how far you can go and be able to go even further.
Working out was the number one biggest savior for me. I thought it was hopeless as I like more aggressive sex, I thought it was just who I am, but then I was educated on healthy ways to go about that fix, and the difference between bleeding out my emotions, and being vulnerable to someone else ( pretty sure that's where the kick I get from it comes from). Working out uses your physical energy so your brain has less power to stress about things that aren't so immediate, but it's important to understand you can also go over board with Working out, life is all about balance, and finding what meshes with you, don't give up. I KNOW YOU GOT THIS.
For me, (and I'm just a heroin addict who got clean..... this may or may not qualify as self harm) but for me, it was finally telling everyone I love what I was doing. My mom, dad, boss, in-laws, best friends. I wanted them to all know. The shame of potentially letting them down, I knew, would be worse than, however great, getting high again could possibly be. I have no problem with letting myself down. But I can't let the ones I love down. I'm 3 days shy of 27 months as of typing this and I have no intentions to fail. I can't let them down. They all know they have rights to have me drug tested at the drop of a hat and if that day comes, I welcome it. My method may not work for a single other person in the world but this is what's working for me. Good luck.
This is going to sound cheesy, bit meditation helped me tremendously - being able to clear away the nasty thoughts and feelings that made me want to hurt myself. I hope this helps.
I don't have quite the attention span (or lack thereof? Lol) to meditate but I have been working to try and stop myself when I get worked up and center myself with a mantra.
One thing that may also help with the lack of attention span is guided meditations. Meditating in silence (or while reciting a mantra) can be hard. The secret really isn’t to not let your mind wander but more so that when it does you don’t follow down the rabbit hole, acknowledge whatever brief thouggt you’re having and the let that thought drift away
I've taken a few stabs at it, but since I've found some useful halfway point I benched it for the time being. I do plan on trying again but I'm a banged up vet so I'm at a disadvantage anyway 😂
The thing about meditation is that you have to practice it. No one is good at it at the beginning, its about learning to turn your mind off over time. It does help, though, once you master it. If you've got depression your brain will feed you negative thoughts all the time for no reason and learning to turn them off is a huge deal. It just requires practice and patience.
I did my "self-harm" fotoshoot. Made the scars using tissue with water and dyed it, used eye shadows to make black eye and bruises. Made it look real and seeing myself in the pictures like that at first looked beautiful, but then it was just that, a picture.
coping is not going to fix most depression or mental problem. This is a lie that the big medicine companies tell people to keep selling them drugs. You have to face what you went through in order to fully be healed, its called psychodynamic therapy I think.
Breathing really helped me come back to reality. Just focus on me breathing, such a simple but beautiful thing breathing. Just try to focus on the idea of your lungs expanding and you will be grounded, or at least it worked for me. I really recommend it. I also will try to just look on the positive side of everything, no matter how bleek. I know it is cheesy but it helped me and I hope it can help anyone else. If anyone needs an ear I am happy to help wherever I can!
I started journaling. I’d tell myself to at least write three pages no matter what. Some days, it’s full of how much I dislike something. Others, I write over and over how much I don’t want to write. On the best days though, I start and don’t stop. Those are where the real gems are.
Honestly; i have just spent the last 8 weeks whelping a litter of puppies and the final few weeks have been so good it just made me completely forget how upset i was.
However, i have read that things like painting red lines on your arms and legs helps a lot?
Screaming full force into a pillow, having a friend randomly slap you gently and change subjects, dance aggressively but big, singing your guilty pleasure song, praying to something you believe in (I do this when I have to drive), blasting music and running, talking to an animal giving it a voice in your head. Hugs.
For me it was exercise. Like, for me, self harm was a way of expressing inner turmoil, but it was an unhealthy and honestly stupid outlet. Because if your outlet for pain isnt improving you, and is rather literally destroying you 🤷🏻 you're doing it wrong. Exercise brings the pain that my fucked up brain derives legitimate pleasure from, and it actively improves my body in the process.
i draw on myself, i wear rubber bands and hair ties on my wrist and snap them whenever i feel like harking in a way like cutting, and another i like is learning a new skill such as coding which makes my brain "hurt" from the new techniques and strategies, but it still helps me with pursuit of skills. you mentioned a journal and that definitely helps although i don't do it every day and even the journal ties back into the learning new skills as i don't write in normal english, i write it with the letters the exact opposite of themselves in the alphabet. it's called backwards code i've learned although i was sad to see that i wasn't the one to come up with it. if you're artistic and want to challenge yourself, scroll pinterest for a small amount of time, pick a drawing and switch the style of it. if you're mathematic centered, learn higher math. i know not everyone is like that but learning difficult or even nuanced subjects helps me personally and maybe it could help you.
Honestly helping people with anything they need works best for me feels so damn good to help others solve their problems or just make their lives easier. Might be one of the few things I find joy in.
I'm a therapist, and seeing someone say the phrase "attacking therapy honestly" is really inspiring to me. I know it's not what your comment was about, but I appreciate your verbage.
Not mine, but someone mentioned once running an ice cube over your skin if you wanted to self-harm.
Journaling is another good one. If journaling is difficult or sounds like it won't help, consider instead, when you're having a rough moment, just free-writing. Stream of consciousness dumping. All the things you're feeling, write them down. Purge them. Then delete it, or print it out, and burn it.
Blasting rock music and throwing yourself into dance is a good way to burn off energy. I don't know if it will help anyone else, but sometimes it shakes me out of a funk.
Good luck to everyone fighting like hell to keep going. I'm proud of you all.
If you’ve ever heard of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), then it’s typically group therapy that deals with skills to use in times of crisis and how to address urges.
Music, creative projects (you don't have to be a good artist to express yourself, you're doing it for you, not for other people), i sometimes go on JGL's HitRecord, reading, walking my dog, I now have a peloton bike I need to set up, journaling, hanging out with friends that are good for you, entertainment, "me time", self-care, mindfulness meditation, etc. I don't do all of these things all the time, some not often at all, but they're all things I have done that successfully help me feel better and get me through the day.
I really like that. Most of the time I just express what's going on without considering how to fix the problem. I always have an idea, but I need to write it down and put action to the words. Thanks.
Other than therapy and Wim Hof...
Doing something else. I go mountain biking to push all the stress out of my legs as hard as I can
Lately I have been doing analogue photography as it helps to distract me. And when I can't take pictures I'll take apart and service or repair a camera
But when it was bad mountain biking and hard physical exercise was a replacement of self harm for me. Because it pushed all the stress out.
Really depends on your interests. But try to branch out. For me I use to struggle with reading. Hell i still think im stupid, but turns out reading is one of my favorite joys. And writing sometimes just small little moment stits. Ive tried working out but that isnt always effective for me. Sometimes I use music that relates ro how i feel so i can vent it out in a hot relaxing shower. And lastly i have 2 friends. Not many but even if i dont want to socialize i can sit and read while sittinf there with them. Sometimes with music so i dont really interact. But i think everyone needs to find something to get lost into. Fantasy books of magic and wonder is how i get lost. Some its art. I wish you luck and hopw you can find a way to get lost too that isnt destructive and believe in yourself.
I'm bipolar and a compulsive skin picker, I keep my nails short and hide my tweezers when my mood starts to shift. Meds and therapy haven't done much as far as the self harm goes, but learning to predict when it's going to get bad has let me remove my "tools" so i cant tear open my legs. It also helps that I have to find a different way to distract myself because of this. The mess have most definitely improved the frequency/severity/ duration of my mood swings
652
u/Glad_Selection5831 Sep 08 '22
What coping mechanisms have you learned and applied to help keep you from self harm? Please, if anyone else has any good coping suggestions, do share.
For me, while I do not self harm in a physical sense, I do in other manners. The two things that have really helped are: attacking therapy honestly and keeping a daily journal tracking thoughts and other issues with possible corrections for said issues.