First there is the issues of wanting to stop or needing to stop. Some people want to stop self injuring themselves because they know it’s unhealthy and they are ready to try healthy. Other people may not want to stop self injuring, but they know they need to. Perhaps because someone close to them has asked them to, or a hospital has asked or therapist. Or they know they are in a downward spiral and can’t stop. So they know they need to stop self injuring if they want to get anywhere.

You need to be willing to work. That means you’ll actively try various preventative or intervention methods that will aide you in stopping. And you need to do this full on and not half assing it. Somewhere along your journey you found that pain equals security so you turn to it when you feel unsafe, when you hurt and when you feel low. It will take work to first unlearn those premises and to learn something new.

The first work you need to try is learning alternatives to self injury. This site has about sixty five different things to do other than self injury. If for only a couple times you are able to use some of those alternatives, then you are on the right track. A good way to test your readiness or if you wonder if you can actually stop, first feel an urge come on and see if you can choose to do something else. After you know you can do that, you can work from there, building up the alternatives and building up not hurting yourself, but building up to something healthy.

Next, if you are able, you need to go see a psychiatrist and a counselor. Go see the psychiatrist to see if you have a diagnosable disorder and get on medication (if you need it) and see a counselor to find out what drove you to cutting in the first place. Cutting is not a disorder by itself, merely a coping mechanisms for something else. If you conquer the pain behind the cutting, you conquer cutting itself.

Thus, you also need to be able to face the reasons that drove you to cutting. This can be especially painful. I know because I had to face my abusive past and honestly that took a couple years for me. I’m pretty stubborn. Something drove you to cutting and to have pain equal safety. It’s time to find out what.

Finally there is untwisting your negative thoughts. Click on this link: Cognitive Distortions. Here you will learn about the negative thoughts that keep us imprisoned in our own minds. Not only does pain drive us, but a constant barrage of negative thoughts keeps up cutting up our bodies. For example, we use words like always, never, everything and nothing. I could say that I tried everything to get better and nothing’s worked. Well, I haven’t really tried everything because I haven’t been on every single medication.  That’s a negative thought. Instead, I should say, Well, I’ve tried a lot of treatments and they haven’t worked, maybe I need to search for something I haven’t tried. Now that is a rational, healthy statement. The other part of that sentence, and nothing’s worked, is also irrational. I ought to say something more like, they haven’t worked like I wanted them too, I wonder what is going on so that these treatments don’t work. Or, they have worked a little, but not enough to get better. Do you see the differences between the two statements? A lot of people haven’t understood their dark thoughts and how they can change them. Now you know you can. You’ll be hard pressed to want to cut yourself when you are thinking rationally.

 So those are just a few things:

1. Want or need to stop

2. Willing to work hard to get better

3. Able to use alternatives to cutting

4. Go see a psychiatrist and counselor

5. Face the reasons that drove you to cutting

6. Untwist your negative thinking