bus

Before:

Before You Self-Harm
write down the shadow that's hiding behind the urge. look at it. ask yourself:

• how will this situation or feeling change if I hurt myself?
  Urges will subside, I'll just feel "better"
• what will hurting myself bring to the situation? what will it take away from the situation?
  It'll help me to clear my head and shift feelings. It'll take away all the progress I've made.
• how do i want to feel about this in the long run? is hurting myself likely to get me closer to or farther from feeling that way?
  I want to be able to not have urges for no apparent reason. SIing will get me farther from that.
• if hurting myself seems like my best option right now, how long will the relief it brings last? what will i do then?
  It'll last a while. At least until I go to sleep, and probably into tomorrow.
• what is something i could do now instead of hurting myself? how will it change the situation i'm in? how long will that change last, and what will i do then?
  I could try and go to bed right now and try to sleep. I could email my counsellor, although no idea what I'd say. I could read something, either for uni or other stuff.
• how will i feel tomorrow if i hurt myself? how will i feel tomorrow if i do the other thing i came up with?
  If I SIed I'll feel guilty, stupid, worse in general. If I did the other things I'm not sure. It'll just be another day.
• what do i really want to do right now? how can i best honor the self-protective instinct that has me wanting to self-injure right now?
  I don't know what I want to do. I can try to sleep, and then start trying to put it off using 15 minute game/deals with myself

urges aren't necessarily the enemy. they happen for reasons, and they're an expression of a desire to stay alive and stay sane and keep coping. remember that.