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Why is it so hard to stop?
Printer-friendly versionI've been cutting since I was 11, so 6 years now. I was in therapy for a lot of that, but self harm never came up. I am in therapy again, and my self harm and purging is the reason why. I've tried to stop on my own, and all the things my therapist come up with (painting, drawing, poetry) don't help me control my feelings as well as a blade does. I really don't know what to do at this point. Any tips on ways to stop? And to prevent relapsing?
It's hard to stop because it is a psychological addiction. If you're looking for something that helps you do -- put x here -- that self-injury does for you then you're looking at it completely the wrong way. Painting, drawing, poetry, etc. is not going to act as a stand-in for self-injury. There is little chance it will be able to help you control your feelings as neatly and completely as self-injury because with self-injury you're flooding your body with endorphins, which you're not going to get with any of the activities you mentioned.
To stop you need to want to stop. Not half-heartedly. You have to want to to stop for you. You also have to be willing to be uncomfortable, to feel uncomfortable emotions without turning to self-injury or other forms of self-destruction.
It's never going to be as simple as painting something when you're triggered and finding that it fills the hole self-injury left behind in your coping skills. You need to build new coping skills, you need to feel that triggered feeling and deliberately turn elsewhere.
Maybe reach out to others instead of such passive things (writing, drawing, painting), those are mainly alone activities. I'm not just talking about through the Internet either.
Good luck. :)
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