1) Set An Intention – take a moment right to stop and make a commitment to do your best as you are right now (you are enough to overcome this, even right now this very moment!) to become more aware of urges to cut and immediately do another activity as those urges come. In the midst of high intensity or stressful emotions are not the best time to try to make a commitment. NOW is!
2) Identify Your Triggers – what situations drive your urge to cut? What do you notice about that? What time, where, with whom, and what aggravates it?
3) Prepare Your Coping Strategies – Make a list of activities that you can save in your cell phone’s Notes section or keep as a little Post-It note in your wallet for positive, healthy and interesting activities that you can do for when the urge arises. These activities you list have to be both POSITIVE and ENGAGING to you, they can’t just be boring or equally not interesting that you won’t follow through. Think of your best, best songs, or play your favorite online game (even if you think you weren’t into online games, popular ones like Cut The Rope are a much better choice than the cutting you had in mind initially! no pun intended 🙂
4) Go Do Something Else IN RECORD SPEED – Just as you set your intention earlier (in Step 1!) Remember this moment when you do identify those urges coming up- try to see in how many seconds it takes you to drop whatever you have in your hands, grab your smart phone, check your Notes section, read and decide on a coping activity as FAST as you can. Who cares if someone sees, this is your competition to do it as quickly as possible.
Practice makes perfect. You may not be excited to stop what you’re doing (or thinking about doing) and go do these activities right away and stop cutting, but more reason to ensure you think of fun and interesting divergent activities as well as remember that practice makes perfect. It takes time to develop new habits but sooner than you know it, it will become second nature to resort to healthy activities instead.
5) GO MAKE YOUR LIST NOW – you may have liked my article. Maybe you were even a little motivated by it. But nothing changes if you don’t take ACTION. Just like in your competition for changing activities in Step 4, once you finish reading this post: stop what you’re doing, grab your phone or pen and note card, and start jotting ideas down r-i-g-h-t n-o-w. You don’t want to be in a situation a week from now where you are tempted to cut but remembered this article and thought, “I should’ve done that little exercise, it was so simple! And I could really have used it right now.” Why do that? Just grab your phone and think of some ideas that: uplift you, encourage you, calm you, remember that this too shall pass, connect you with others who care, distract you to more interesting endeavors, remind you of all else there is in the world for you to experience and learn, and thing that make you happy. Ready… Set. GO.