Hi!
I'm Anxiety Sugar and I've just made it to 9 months self harm free! I have borderline personality disorder and severe depression and anxiety. I wanted to share my tips to lowering self harming thoughts and alternatives to help those who are currently self harming or know others who are.
• Have a hairband on you so that when you feel the urge to hurt yourself you can ping it against your skin.
• If you are starting to have harmful thought, draw something pretty on the place you usually harm yourself as it can be a way of stopping you from wanting to ruin it.
• Allow yourself to feel your emotions. Cry. Have a tantrum. Get angry. Mad. Sad. Whatever it may be that you are feeling. Self harm usually happens when we aren't allowing ourselves to open up so let your emotions break free!
• Draw red lines on your arm, to give the illusion that you've harmed yourself. The imagery might put you off from going further.
• Talk to someone. Even if it's a suicide or mental health hotline. It always helps to talk about how you are feeling.
• Rip up paper. Grab some paper or basically anything you can destroy other than your body and rip/break it. It may help to relieve the negative energy.
• Have a safety plan. There are quite a few templates online to help.
• Hold an IceCube. Not only does it give a little bit of pain to your nerves, the cold sensation actually sends signals to your muscles to relax. The same thing happens when you drink a lot of water so do that too.
And lastly...
Love yourself. Love the skin you are in. Take care of it. Nourish it.
I hope this helps someone out there 🤍