Hi PhyscoTori. Welcome to the youthspace forum.

I’m glad that you posted here, and asked about self-harm. It’s something that a fair amount of people struggle with, but is still hard to talk about. It sounds like for you, it has been something that helps you deal with emotional pain from depression or from other people, but now it feels like it’s getting out of your control. I get the sense that the physical pain has helped to mask emotional pain in the past, and you like the feeling – but you’re afraid of what it means that you’re now having trouble stopping yourself. That loss of control must seem very frightening when you know that the wounds have the potential to keep getting worse. I can hear that you’re scared for yourself.

I get the sense that you really want some guidance on how you might be able to grapple with the urges you’re having before self-harm becomes dangerous to you. While we don’t give direct advice here, I can offer up some possible resources that you can take a look at (and obviously feel free to come back and talk about whether they were helpful). I *will* go so far as to say that if you find that you have harmed badly enough to need medical attention, that you should reach out to someone who can help you get the attention you need.

If you are interested in the resources I mentioned, you can take a look at this page: http://self-injury.net/information-recovery/recovery – it has some ideas about how to stop (or minimize) self-harming, and some suggestions for distractions. The whole site has a lot of info and support, actually. You can also check out this sheet for some ideas about how to distract yourself when you want to harm but don’t want to harm: http://www.nshn.co.uk/downloads/Distractions.pdf

Let us know how you’re doing, PhyscoTori, and whether those links are helpful. We’re here for you.

-The Support Team