The self-help strategies offered in this chapter are aimed at distracting your thoughts away from self-injury, reducing the intensity of your emotional arousal to a more manageable level, and coping with internal critical voices that may trigger the urge to self-injure. Changing deeply ingrained behaviour patterns is not easy – imagine how you would manage if you were asked to write a letter or essay with your left hand when you are naturally right-handed or vice versa?

Any changes, no matter how small, can feel strange or uncomfortable at first, and it’s not unusual to slip back into old familiar ways, especially in the early stages of attempting to modify established behaviour patterns, or at times of stress. Moreover, because we are all different, strategies that prove helpful to one person, might not work for another. Often, it’s a case of having a go and finding out what works for you, and discarding what doesn’t. The important thing is not to give yourself a hard time if a particular technique doesn’t work, or if you stumble at the first hurdle – just go back to the drawing board and try another strategy.

Keep in mind too that ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’; also that ‘success often breeds success’.The collection of helping hints included here come from people who are at various stages in their recovery – they are not a substitute for professional help. If the suggestions or exercises feel too daunting, perhaps it might be worth considering seeking the support of a friend to help you with them, or asking your therapist, if you have one, to support you while you test some out. The final helping hint comes from members of a survivor-run group – they might be useful to anyone thinking about joining a support group.

Healing Hint 1

The first healing activity comes from Cheryl Rainfield,¹ a survivor of incest and ritual abuse, who used self-harm to cope for many years. Cheryl lives in Toronto, Canada. A commitment to healing has been a very important part of her life, and one of the key things that helped her to stop self-harming was to begin to care about herself enough to realise that she didn’t deserve to be hurt. Other things that helped were discovering the reasons why she hurt herself; therapy; and creating positive messages for herself. ‘Eventually, with enough repetition, the positive messages actually sink in,’ she says.

Cheryl runs a popular website offering hope, healing, and compassion to others, especially women, survivors, and people who self-harm (for further information see references at the end of the chapter). In this article, the first of two contributed by Cheryl, she provides guidance on things to do when you experience the urge to hurt yourself.

What To Do When You Feel Like Hurting Yourselfby Cheryl Rainfield

Self-harm is something that usually happens alone, and in secret. Those of us who hurt ourselves or used to hurt ourselves may do so for one or more of the following reasons:

• To relieve great emotional pain and distress
• To avoid, distract from, or suppress overwhelming emotion
• To try to feel better
• To stop a painful memory or thought
• To punish ourselves
• To re-enact childhood abuse or the messages our abusers taught us
• To try to connect to ourselves
• To keep from committing suicide
• To release or express anger that we’re afraid to express to others
• To silently cry out for help
• To show ourselves how bad the pain is that we feel inside.

 

There may be other reasons that cause people to hurt themselves, but ultimately, whatever the motivation, hurting ourselves does just that – it hurts us. Self-harm may bring a temporary relief, but it ends up traumatising us, even if we think it doesn’t at the time.

As a survivor of abuse, I used to cut for most of the reasons I’ve mentioned above – and also because I was taught to use cutting to keep myself silent and to keep from remembering. Within ritual abuse, my abusers also encouraged me to hurt myself because they thought it would help discredit me in the event that I began to talk about the abuse I was remembering, and because they wanted to keep me in emotional turmoil so that I would be less able to heal. Self-harm helped me survive during the abuse and for some years later; it kept me alive. But it also hurt me.

Parts of me felt traumatised when I hurt myself, as if those parts were re-experiencing the abuse I endured. And while I haven’t cut for many years, I know that method of coping is still something parts of me think they can fall back on if things get too bad and I really ‘need’ it. I have scars on my body that I can’t erase, and when I wear short-sleeved shirts, I often experience negative reactions, condescension, intrusive and judgmental comments, blatant curiosity, and rudeness from people who see my arm. This can be painful to deal with and can also bring up old shame. Sometimes I wish I could just erase the scars – but they are a part of my history.

Self-harm is hard to go through. There is the emotional overload before the self-harm, and then the shame, self-hatred, and anger at ourselves afterward, and sometimes added depression or despair. And there is always the secrecy, the triggers, and the loaded emotions that SI can bring up for survivors of abuse. Then there’s the actual physical pain that results from self-harm, and the emotional pain that comes from having cared so little about ourselves that we could hurt ourselves so badly. Self-harm hurts . . . on every level.

So, what can you do if you want to stop hurting yourself?

First, realise that this is a process. If you’ve been hurting yourself for a while, most likely you won’t be able to stop overnight. It takes time to stop self-harming. It’s important to see each little victory you make along the way, no matter how small it may seem, and to recognise the skills you’re building that will eventually help you to stop self-harming.

Second – and this was key in helping me to stop hurting myself – you have to care enough about yourself to stop self-harming. You have to be able to love yourself – even just a little bit. You have to see yourself as valuable, to truly know that you don’t deserve to be hurt, not by anyone.

It can also really help to have a therapist who can help you explore the reasons you self-harm and support you as you try to find new ways to cope. A good therapist can be invaluable, and can help you get where you want to go faster than you might on your own.

It can be healing to talk to someone about your self-harm – when you are ready and able to. This is especially important for survivors of abuse; many survivors were forced to keep the abuse a secret, and to feel shame about it. Self-harm shouldn’t have to carry the same emotional weight. Talking about your self-harm with someone you trust can break the silence, shame, and guilt around self-harm, and prevent those feelings from reinforcing the self-harm. It’s a good idea to start slowly and to choose someone you trust to tell. You may also want to prepare what you have to say ahead of time.

Discovering what triggers your self-harm is one of the most effective and important parts of learning to stop hurting yourself. Try to see the pattern. There may be a number of patterns. For instance, do you feel like hurting yourself every time you’ve gotten into an argument with your parents or your lover? Do you feel like self-harming when you think you’ve messed something up? Do you self-harm when you’re feeling really hurt, angry, or depressed? Do you self-harm to try to punish yourself, silence yourself, or distract from your feelings? Do you self-harm when a memory of abuse comes up that you don’t feel like you can deal with? Write a separate list for each trigger.

Next, ask yourself how you felt when you got triggered, and how you felt just before you hurt yourself. Were you feeling furious? Threatened? Incredibly sad? Were you feeling unlovable, unworthy, like you didn’t deserve anything good? Were you feeling overwhelmed, depressed, or self-hating? Write down what you were feeling on your list. If you hear words or phrases that go along with the feeling, write them down too.

If you can, take this even deeper. Try to remember the first time you felt this way. When was it? What was happening then? Does it relate to something that happened a long time ago? Making that connection may help you to understand why you hurt yourself.

You may want to figure out what you really need or what you were trying to get by self-harming. For example, did you need to receive comfort, to express emotion, or to gain relief from emotional pain? Write any identified needs down and then write out as many things as you can think of that will help you to:

• Get out the emotion
• Distract yourself
• Soothe or calm yourself
• Reach out to someone
• Do something fun
• Give yourself positive messages.

 

Those of us who self-harm often hold a lot of self-hate, self-criticism, and anger turned inwards. We also often have low self-esteem. For those reasons, it is especially important to give yourself as many real, positive messages and reassurances as you can – and to receive them. You may want to write a list of positive messages that you need to hear and keep that list close by for when you need it. Or you may just want to list things in the ‘give yourself positive messages section’ of your trigger list.

Sometimes the list will work and sometimes it won’t. If you get through the whole list and still feel like hurting yourself, go back to the beginning and start again. Below are two examples (Figure 10.1 Example 1: Self-injury trigger and alternatives monitoring chart) and (Figure 10.2 Example 2: Self-injury trigger and alternatives monitoring chart).

Remember that learning not to self-harm is a process; it takes time. Maybe the first time you try not to hurt yourself, it will only work for ten minutes. That’s okay; that’s progress! You postponed hurting yourself for ten minutes. Give yourself praise for that. It really is something; you’re building your skills. Next time, maybe it will work for thirty minutes, and then forty, and then an hour. Soon it will be days, then weeks, and eventually you won’t need to self-harm at all. Every bit of progress is important, and it helps to recognise the progress you’re making. It all counts!

All these techniques are tools that can help you stop self-harming. But don’t expect yourself to stop self-harming overnight – that’s pretty impossible. Rather, you’re looking to gradually reduce the self-harm by:

• Bringing in alternative methods of recognising your feelings and triggers, and of dealing with them
• Building up your options
• Increasing your ability to recognise when you’re feeling triggered
• Learning to treat yourself with caring and compassion, and to respond to yourself in healing ways when you are feeling distressed.

 

 

 

Eventually, these tools should help you to no longer need to self-harm.

It can also help to give yourself positive reinforcement every time you want to self-harm but don’t, or every time you stave off self-harm just a little bit longer. You may want to give yourself a little treat, allow yourself to have some fun, or do something that feels good – and really notice the steps you’re making. It all counts!

Know that you are not alone. Many other people have gone through what you’re going through – and many people are, right now. Sometimes it helps just to know that.

And please know that you deserve not to be hurt. You deserve to be happy, to have fun, and to feel all your feelings. And you deserve to love yourself.

(See Appendix 4 for a blank sample of a self-injury trigger and alternatives monitoring chart).

Text copyright © Cheryl Rainfield.

Used with permission

Chart design copyright © Jan Sutton