Depression – Recovering From Self-Harm

Transcript

If you’ve already hurt yourself many times – the best thing to do is to come up with a plan of what you’re gonna do instead next time when you’re calm. So right now maybe you’re calm, you need to come up with a plan of what you’re going to do next time when you get really, really upset and you feel like there’s way too much pain going on and you don’t really know what to do. You could plan to go exercise, you could plan to call a friend, you could plan to draw, you can plan to lay there and listen to music and sit on your hands. You can plan anything. But you need to come up with a plan when you’re calm. What I would recommend is that you play this sort of game with yourself – this is cognitive behavioral therapy: for every week that you don’t hurt yourself, you get a little gift or a prize or whatever encourages you. For every month that you go without hurting yourself, you get something else. The longer you go, the more rewards you get. Also, you have to think of it in your mind as I’ve been clean for a month, clean for two months, clean for three months from hurting myself so that you don’t think to yourself, I’ll just do it once and it doesn’t really matter. I don’t care. Also, if you’re already hurting yourself, you do need to go talk to your parents. You need to go talk to an adult. Especially depending on the severity – sometimes it’s very easy to cut too deep and need stitches. Also, we’re just talking about superficial hurting yourself. If you’re suicidal or you’re cutting your wrist to die, then you absolutely need to call 9-1-1 or go talk to your parents or go get help from anybody you can find.