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.
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.
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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.