If you feel like harming yourself
Alternatives to Self Harming
Sometimes an alternative activity can act as a
substitute for self harming behaviour; at the very
least some of the following activities can act
as a distraction.
This can be very useful if you are feeling particularly
self destructive and possibly could end up hurting
yourself more than you may have originally wanted
to.
Depending on the type of emotions you are feeling
different types of activities will help:
Frustrated, angry, restless
- Make something that represents what you are
angry at. Then rip, tear or cut it
- Punch or kick a pillow or something similar
- Using an old shirt or plastic bottle or heavy
card and slash this with the instrument that
you would normally use on yourself
- Go for some physical activity – run,
walk, jog, tennis
- Hit a punch bag
- Rip up an old phone book, newspaper or unwanted
book
- Yell, Scream, Swear with
or without other activities - good release of
emotions
- Draw a picture of yourself and draw
on what you want to do to yourself with red pen,
rip up the picture afterwards if you want
- Put
on loud music and dance about
- Clean your house
/ room
Depressed, sad, unhappy, soft, melancholy
- Take a warm bath use bubbles / bath oil / candles
- Listen to relaxation tapes or soothing music
- Call, or go and see a friend
- Make yourself a warm drink and curl up under
a blanket, watch T.V. or read a magazine/book
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Feeling unreal, dissociating, craving
sensation, feeling depersonalized
- Put a rubber band on your wrist and snap it
- Put ice against parts of your body you want to
burn
- Squeeze ice very hard
- Hold ice against your teeth
- Take a cold shower
- Bite into a hot pepper
- Put fingers into frozen food
- Focus on the feeling of breathing – chest
and stomach movements
Wanting Focus
- Do a task that requires concentration
- Eat a piece of fruit / raisin slowly, thinking
about the food that you’re eating, the whole
process from picking it up through to having swallowed
it – touch, taste, smell, size, shape, colour,
uses
- Pick a subject on the internet and research everything
you can about it
- Look at an object and think of all the different
uses it could have
Wanting to see scars or pick scabs
- Get a henna tattoo kit, leave the paste overnight
and you can pick it off the next day it will leave
a stain.
With any desire to harm yourself it is sometimes
helpful to play a game with yourself that you are
not going to harm yourself for 15 minutes, and
then you can, and then once that 15 minutes is
up see if you can go do another 15 minutes and
see how long you can do this. |
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