Helpful Tips to Stop Harm Yourself

Change Your Environment

Your environment has a direct effect on how you feel and can be the cause of overwhelmed feeling that leads you to self-harm. Analyze how your environment could be negatively affecting your mental well-being. Ask yourself:

• What time of day do you tend to self-harm?

• Where do you typical self-harm?

• What do you use to self-harm?

• What else do you tend to do when you are about to self-harm?

The answers to these questions can help you identify what triggers the self-harming behaviors and will allow you to begin avoiding them. While it is not easy, it is possible to change your environment once the urge to self-harm comes about.
Some things you can do to avoid self-harm include:

• Ensure you are busy during the time of day you tend to self-harm and always have someone around during this time.

• Distance yourself from places where you would typically harm yourself.

• Get rid of any tools you would use to cause yourself harm or at least ensure you can not get access to them. 

• Change what you use to do that would lead you up to self-harm. Be mindful of the rituals you would perform and avoid doing them. This may make you uncomfortable at first, but when you continuously make the effort to change your behavior, you will eventually feel more comfortable not performing these self-harming rituals.
  

Reach Out for Help and Support

How to stop self-harm? Well, it is a process better accomplished when you have a support system. You are not the only one who suffers from this behavior and you may be surprised to find many more individuals like you. By getting support from others, you will feel less alone and find comfort in knowing you have others to lean on when the thoughts of harming yourself come up. Reach out to self-harm treatment centers, therapists or even friends and family. Surrounding yourself with people who love and care about you will give you someone to call. Talk with them when those destructive thoughts come about.

Rethink How You Think

One of the most difficult tasks in the recovery process is changing your thoughts. Those who do self-harm tend to have a number of negative thoughts which lead them to this behavior. By becoming aware of these negative thoughts and changing them into more positive ones, you can begin to resist the urge to harm yourself. To help you analyze and better understand your thought process, ask yourself these questions:

• Are these negative thoughts reasonable?

• Am I thinking accurately about what is making me want to self-harm?

• What was I thinking before the negative self-harming feeling came about?

They are not easy questions to answer, but taking the time to ask these question before harm yourself interrupts the negative thought pattern. Some techniques you can also use to help stop and alter your negative thoughts include:

• Challenge the thoughts and realize they are not true.

• If the negative thoughts begin to be overwhelming, tell yourself to stop thinking. Whether you just think other things or actual scream it out loud, you can interrupt your thought process and begin to think of something more positive.

• Change the way you talk to yourself. Instead of using negative comments like calling yourself dumb, forgive yourself and tell yourself you will do better next time.

As mentioned before, how to stop self-harm is a process and while these techniques will help, it will take a lot of practice and work to make them effective.

Alternatives to Self Harm

If you feel yourself unable to resist the urge to self harm, try an alternative behavior. These alternatives can replace the self injury and still allow you to release the negativity. Some alternatives can be:

• Punching a pillow. 

• Splashing cold water on your face. 

• Eating something spicy. 

• Standing in a cold shower. 

• Use a pen to draw on your body instead of using something to cut yourself.

• Exercise. 

Distractions

This may be a trial and error process to see what will work best for you, but identifying ways to prevent yourself from causing self-harm can be a way to avoid the behavior most effectively. Each person will have different triggers and urges when it comes to self-harm and different situation or emotion can be triggers for self-harming behavior. It is important to be able to identify these triggers as soon as possible. Some ways you can distract yourself from self-harm once you identify a trigger include:

• Making a cup of tea.

• Counting.

• Put a puzzle together.

• Play a mind stimulating game.

• Play some music.

• Watch a movie.

• Do your nails or hair.

• Organize something.

• Go for a walk.

• Dance.

• Do something creative.
  

How to stop self-harming can be done once you find a healthier alternative for dealing with the overwhelming feelings and negative thoughts. Distractions are a great way to avoid the self-harming behavior and do something more positive.