Learning to break the self-harm cycle

As a girl, I couldn’t believe that self-harm was something people did to themselves. That is until I found myself in, what felt like such a helpless cycle that I thought I’d never escape. I hope that reading this piece will allow you to see there is hope.

There are so many stereotypes and taboos surrounding self-harm even I, as someone advocating for awareness around it, get an uncomfortable feeling in my chest writing those two words. However, it’s important to talk about self-harm, not to normalise it but to make people feel less alone, less ashamed and less hopeless in their feelings about it.

“We do it as a means of control, which is ironic as for many of us it then becomes an uncontrollable form of control.”

There are so many reasons that I, along with many others self-harm. Doing it as a means of control is a common reason, which is ironic as for many of us, it then becomes uncontrollable. For me, after a while, it got past the point where it was a choice and more something I ‘had’ to do.

But learning to manage urges, sit with feelings of upset, hurt or anger and ‘ride the wave’ was a big thing in recovery for me. Distraction techniques such as having a cold shower is a common way that people refocus their attention. This method is a useful way of physically and mentally overcoming the urges.

“The fact I could overcome something that felt so strong made me realise the power I could have over my life.”

But if this doesn’t work for you, don’t despair. It doesn’t mean there is no hope. Sitting with urges and the bad feelings, and I mean literally just sitting, whether on the floor, on a chair or wherever, can be a powerful way of overcoming them. I genuinely felt a massive sense of achievement for just riding out the urge. The fact I could overcome something that felt so strong, almost physically dragging me towards self-harming, made me realise the power I could have over my life and the control I could gain from not self-harming.

I spent 7 years of my life controlled by self-harm. This is a concept that many people struggle to get their head around because it is a natural human instinct to avoid harm. At my darkest points, I genuinely believed there was no way I would ever stop being controlled by self-harm.

"I found things to do that I enjoy to keep myself busy, and with that I found the urges started to subside."

But I realised that starting recovery was a choice only I could make. I began by just sitting out the urges, and slowly, as I got better and better I found things to do that I enjoy to keep myself busy, and with that I found the urges started to subside.

It went from feeling like I wanted to self-harm nearly every day, to maybe a few times a week, to being so minimal that I can get through most days without feeling the need to do it at all. Sometimes I am caught out of the blue by an urge but my ability to manage these urges has got so much better.

Self-harming is a desperately hard thing to deal with. Many people think it’s a choice or even selfish but they often don’t account for the fact that it’s really scary and isolating for the person who is self-harming.

If you are in the recovery stage of self-harm and you feel sad that it’s something you went through then you are not alone. But remember it’s ok to feel sad about it. It’s hard, but you are doing so well to even take those steps into recovery.

I was once a girl who thought ‘how could anyone ever do that to themselves?’ Then I turned into a girl who ‘can’t live without self-harm’ And now I’m a girl who is finding healthier ways of coping and learning to take one day at a time, live in the moment and focus on recovery.

It takes practice and it’s a process, not a click of the fingers overnight thing and to many people in a dark place that’s super daunting.

Understanding self-harm, even for the person self-harming, is really difficult. There are so many helpful resources available for self-harm recovery, but there is no guide to your own journey of recovery. Find your people, let them help, talk about your thoughts and feelings, take it one day at a time and believe that no matter how bad it gets, there is always hope. I never thought I’d be where I am today but here I am, telling you my story and showing that there is light at the end of the tunnel. You can do this.