I am basically wondering if can share advice on resisting the urge to self-harm.

I've been dealing with my abuse issues for years, and have come a long way with some great help from outstanding people.
For the most part, I am functioning as I would like to in life.

But whenever I get the urge to hurt myself it is very hard to resist. I manage, but it is hard, and sometimes it seems like the urge itself if painful.

I don't fully understand the urge, but I'm not too worried about that. I just want to be able to resist, and more, to free myself from it.

I wish I had some advice for you on this. I been dealing with that urge for years myself. I know it's hard to explain. I relate it to a coke addict needing their fix, or an alcoholic needing that drink. I've been successful at steering myself away from that urge by re-focusing my attention on other things and eventually it goes away for the time being. But it always comes back and sometimes with a vengeance! Through therapy I know why it's there in relation to the abuse. But as far as how to combat it and why it remains... your guess is as good as mine.

I have been dealing with this too, for longer than I can remember. I don't remember not doing, so that's why it's so hard since it's been a copying mechanism all my life. Like JBells said, refocusing the attention is always the best way to try to forget the urge, but sometimes it doesn't help or you don't have anything to refocus to.

I remember the first time I got here I made a topic about this and got some good responses, but the best was from a pm. I'll share it with you, maybe it'll help you, it does help me sometimes:


"Try drawing a red line on your skin when you get the urge to cut. Quite often the view of red on your skin will satisfy your optical nerve.

If you still need to cut, push the blunt-side of the knife into your skin and hold for 30 seconds to a minute, this creates a bit of an indented line in your skin that will remain for a few minutes. Then if you still absolutely need to, instead of doing a full cut, try piercing the skin very lightly at one end of the indented line and allow the blood to trickle and fill the indent in. This produces you with a cut but doing little or no damage to your body.

Always make sure to disinfect any cuts you've done. Keep it safe. Trying to stop cutting won't help you. Trying to heal from what makes you cut is the only thing that will help."

All good stuff.
Another thing I wanted to mention, and I don't know if it depends on the kind of self-harm we're talking about here. I started simply asking myself the question "How far is this going to go?" when I got the urge or found myself in a situation where I knew I was going to get hurt. That seemed to help because my answer was always the same... it'll go far enough to kill me. Personally, I don't want to die just yet so.... it's just something that helped me (and helps me).
It's not for everyone.

THanks for the responses. They help, but mostly knowing others go through the same thing is what helps.

Actually, in my case we're not talking about cutting.

For me, if I self harm, I'm hitting my testicles with my fist or on a rare occasion with something else. I never wanted anyone else to see that I was hurting myself, so after thinking about it, I decided this was a way to cause a lot of pain without others seeing the consequences.

I'm sure the kind of limited measures you describe help some, but would not work for me. I've got to resist totally, if I start trying to compromise, it just makes me want to go one step further. Even when I submit (and it HAS been a while, just the urge has come back lately), there is always a part of me that wants to hit again and/or hit harder.

Thanks again for the replies so far though.