You'll often hear recommended as a strategy for coping with painful or distressing thoughts. Still, meditation doesn't help everyone all the time. If you're already feeling pretty distressed, you might find that it even includes the urge to self-harm.
Guided imagery offers an alternative approach that.
This helps you create a mental "happy place" by creating pleasant scenes in your mind. Adding vivid, specific sensory details to your mental image can help you release stress, take your mind off the urge to self-harm, and promote feelings of peace and calm
Try it now
Sit or lie down comfortably and close your eyes.
Take a few deep breaths.
Continue breathing slowly until you feel your body begin to relax.
Picture a place that makes you feel calm, content, happy, or relaxed, whether that's a place you've already visited or one you want to visit someday.
Begin adding details to the scene.
Use all of your senses to make your imagined setting come alive.
Maybe you hear birds, water rushing, or the sound of leaves under your feet.
You might smell grass, wildflowers, bread baking.
Perhaps you feel warm earth below your feet or the wind on your face.
Mentally carry yourself through the scene.
You might imagine yourself walking along a trail or path or simply looking at all there is to see.
Focus on each detail, breathing slowly, and letting your visualized space occupy your thoughts.
Imagine yourself absorbing the calm and peace of your image each time you breathe in.
When you breathe out, imagine distress and pain exiting your body with your breath.
Remind yourself you can revisit this scene whenever you like.
You can even "uncover" new areas of your mental scene and add more details.
Perhaps you jump into the lake and take a swim, feeling the cool water refresh you.
Or the bread comes out of the oven, and you bite into the crunchy, butter-soaked crust.
When communicating through words feels impossible, art offers another way to express yourself and redirect the urge to self-harm.
Art can also offer you may not get with other coping techniques:
Creative work can offer a sense of control, since you choose what to express and how. Art allows you to express distress with your hands, in a real, physical way. When you're finished, you have a record of your feelings you can then destroy.
Art doesn't just help you process painful emotions. When you devote your attention to a creative project that utilizes all of your skills, you might find yourself completely engaged in what's called a flow state.
In a state of flow, other feelings — hunger, exhaustion, pain, fear, emotional distress — tend to dwindle and fade into the background. Flow states can also boost motivation, satisfaction, and other positive feelings.
Any kind of creative activity can help you get your feelings out in the open: , painting, doodling, even molding clay.
It might feel tough to get started when you're in a place of pain and distress, but here, too, there's no harm in starting small. Just pick up a pencil and paper, or any medium you prefer, and start by scribbling. Even this simple, not-very-artistic approach can offer some distraction and relief.
Other ideas to try:
Give your pain a shape and illustrate it.
Draw or sculpt something that provides a sense of safety or protection.
Picture a place that makes you happy and put it on paper.
Mental health professionals and other care providers often recommend harm minimization strategies and as alternatives to self-harm.
These tactics do work for some people, but suggests others find them mostly unhelpful.
When these strategies don't relieve the urge, you might be more inclined to believe that other coping methods will also fail. As a result, you might feel less willing to try coping methods that really might help when you want to self-harm.
Again, harm minimization techniques do help some people, especially as short-term solutions, so it's often worth trying them out. Just keep in mind that other strategies, like the ones discussed above, may help even more.
Harm minimization strategies include:
snapping rubber bands on your wrist.
Pinching yourself.
Drawing or painting red lines on your skin.
Holding ice.
Running your hands under warm or cold water.
Eating sour or spicy candies.
Squeezing a stress ball.
Punching a pillow or cushion.
Screaming into a pillow.
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