What To Do If You Relapse And Self-Harm

By The Depression Project

On your journey to breaking out of a pattern of self-harming, it's likely that you'll relapse on one or more occasions - for example, because:

You get triggered in a way that's extremely overwhelming;
You're still learning how to practice and implement alternative behaviours to self-harm.

And, if you do experience a relapse, then if you're like many people, you might find that you shame yourself for it - and criticise yourself as being "weak", a "loser" or a "failure", for example.

However, if you do relapse and self-harm, then it's really, REALLY important that you don't beat yourself up for it!

Instead, we'd now like to share with you a few helpful suggestions for what you can do instead - each of which are taken directly from our Self-Sabotaging Habits Bootcamp.

The Self-Sabotaging Habits Bootcamp - What to do when you experience a relapse and self-harm

What To Do If You Relapse And Self-Harm Suggestion #1: Be Self-Compassionate, And Offer Yourself Forgiveness

When it comes to breaking out of a pattern of self-harming, never relapsing is not the sole definition of success, and relapsing does not mean that you've failed.

Why?

Because when it comes to breaking out of a self-sabotaging habit such as self-harming, while your ultimate goal is to of course stop engaging in this self-sabotaging habit altogether, positive progress should be thought of as decreasing your dependency on this self-sabotaging habit over time.

After all, breaking out of a pattern of self-harming can be very challenging, and it can take time. Consequently, a person's “recovery”, so to speak, may not be linear - in the sense that it's common for people to relapse a few times (or many times) on the way to doing so. And, for this reason, rather than viewing instantly snapping out of this self-sabotaging habit as a success and anything less than this as a failure, we really encourage you to instead view decreasing your dependency on this self-sabotaging habit as the success that it is - and remind yourself that this can still be achieved even though you've relapsed.

Consequently, if you do go through a relapse, then please don't beat yourself up and call yourself a "failure". Instead, we really encourage you to be self-compassionate, and to forgive yourself, and to realise that it's just a part of your healing journey.

What To Do If You Relapse And Self-Harm Suggestion #2: Try To Limit The Damage That Engaging In Self-Harm Will Cause You

Secondly, if you do relapse and self-harm, then rather than beating yourself up for it like we said, we encourage you to instead direct that energy towards trying to reduce the damage that self-harming will cause you.

Now, in terms of how to actually do this, we have a few simple yet effective suggestions for you.

A) Try To Delay Engaging In Self-Harming

Delaying your engagement in self-harming is the first strategy we want to share with you to help limit the damage that it will ultimately cause you - even though it might seem pointless.

After all, you might be thinking, if I'm going to resort to self-harming anyway, then what difference will it make if I put off doing so for a while? Not only that, but wouldn't it actually be better if I turned to it straight away, so that I can at least get the immediate relief I'm after?

We understand if this is how you feel, however, we still really encourage you to delay engaging in self-harming for as long as possible - because the longer you're able to delay engaging in self-harming:

The more control you're gaining over your self-harm urges;
The more will power you are building;
The more you're getting used to tolerating discomfort.

And, these benefits are extremely valuable, because:

The more you're able to gain control over your urges, build up your will power and learn how to tolerate discomfort, then the easier it will become for you to break out of your pattern of self-harming.
Additionally, not only can delaying engaging in self-harm help you break out of this pattern in the long-run, but it can also mitigate the damage that engaging in self-harm will cause in the short-run as well. This is because delaying engagement in self-harm is a form of positive progress (when you compare it to instantly engaging in self-harm), and consequently, the resulting negative thoughts, shame, etcetera, which can arise from engaging in self-harm may not be as strong.

Now, in terms of how to actually delay engaging in self-harm, a couple of methods you could try include:

Telling yourself that rather than engaging in this self-sabotaging habit right now, you will do so in, say, 15 minutes' time - and then setting a timer for 15 minutes to make sure you wait that long. NOTE: If you really wanted to challenge yourself, once the timer runs out, you could then set yourself the same challenge again.
Secondly, you could do something "healthy" before engaging in self-harm. This could include, for example, one of these healthy alternatives to self-harm.

B) Try To Replace Self-Harming With A "Less Unhealthy" Behaviour

This is another technique you could utilise to mitigate the damage of self-harm. Now, while replacing self-harm with a "less unhealthy" behaviour isn't as beneficial as replacing it with a "healthy" behaviour, doing so is still a positive step in the right direction, since it won't lead to as many negative impacts as engaging in the "more unhealthy" habit would. For example, rather than cutting, you could instead:

Rub an ice cube back and forth over the skin that you would otherwise cut;
Snap a rubber band against it;
Scratch it instead.

While these actions will also be a bit uncomfortable / painful, they're much less destructive than cutting is.

C) Try To Reduce The Amount You Self-Harm

Lastly, if you're able to reduce the amount that you self-harm, then it's also a positive step in the right direction.

Final Reminders When It Comes To What To Do If You Relapse And Self-Harm

Like we've said in this blog post, while your ultimate goal is to stop engaging in self-harm, positive progress should be thought of as decreasing your dependency on this self-sabotaging habit over time. And, for this reason:

If you do relapse and self-harm, please don't beat yourself up and call yourself a "failure". Instead, try to be self-compassionate, and forgive yourself, and realise that it's just a part of your healing journey.
In addition to offering yourself compassion and forgiveness, try your best to reduce the damage that self-harming will cause you.

We really hope you've found this blog post helpful, and we wish you the very, very best on your healing journey ❤️

All our love,

The Depression Project Team.

P.S. If you found this blog post helpful, then some other blog posts that you may also find helpful include:

P.P.S. If you found this blog post helpful, then we also think you'll find our Self-Sabotaging Habits Bootcamp helpful as well, in which we'll cover, among other things, the exact steps you need to follow in order to break out of a pattern of self-harm (and other self-sabotaging habits like binge eating, overspending on "retail therapy" and substance abuse, for example).

Access to this Bootcamp and lots of others are included as part of our Depression Bootcamps Membership Platform - which you can learn more about by clicking the button below.

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