Putting it off

[LisaF]

I've posted this to a few people, here and on another board I go to, and I thought I'd post it here since it is a good way to cope. I'm in AA and my sponsor and I are working on relating the SI to the alcoholism and using AA to help me stop the SI too and it really does work. This is what's been working for me...

You know the whole AA "One day at a time" thing? They told me it's not just one day, it's one hour at a time, 5 minutes at a time... when you get that urge say I'm not going to SI for the next 5 minutes, call someone and talk to them for that 5 minutes or find something to distract yourself. When that 5 minutes is up tell yourself again "I'm not going to SI for the next 5 minutes." I know if I can control it for 5 minutes so can all of you, don't look at the big picture of I'm not going to SI anymore or anything like that, just look at one day, one hour, 5 minutes, 1 minute if you have to. Just keep putting it off for those 5 minutes and eventually the urge will pass. And you'll feel a lot better knowing you beat that urge too!

I've made it 9 days so far by doing this, I call my sponsor and talk to her for that 5 minutes, and another 5 minutes, and longer if I have to and eventually it DOES pass.

[mallie]

I'm glad you've found something that is working for you

[Oceanic]

i used to use a similar idea. i would tell myself - you can get through the next hour (half hour, ten minutes, five minutes, one minute, etc...) without cutting. once i'd done that, i'd tell myself that hey, i'd just made it through one minute, i could do the same thing again. and once i did that, i'd tell myself, hey, you just made it through twice as much as your original goal, and you could do that again....and so on exponentially.

sarah