Self harm procrastination

*This post is about stopping self harm, so it does make mention of it. There are no details, and what I have to say may even be helpful, but please be safe.

Many people keep track of how long it has been since they self harmed. Some people thrive on this, enjoying the feeling of achievement they get from seeing the numbers. But for some people, this just piles on added pressure and feelings of shame and guilt when they have to start again from the beginning. I am one of those people.

In my life, I have had more than my fair share of ‘last times’. When my self harm had moved from coping strategy to (extremely) bad habit, I tried to stop. A lot. I’d tell myself that this would be the ‘last time’. That I was never, ever, ever going to hurt myself, ever again. Two or three days later, the resolve would be gone, and I would be craving the feeling of release that it gave me. So I’d hurt myself. And feel even more of a failure than I had to begin with.

It wasn’t until I changed the way I thought about stopping that I successfully managed to stop habitually self harming. They say you should play to your strengths, and at that time, if there was one thing I was good at, it was procrastinating. I was always putting things off. So, instead of the idea of a ‘last time’, I began thinking more in terms of ‘not now’. This self harm procrastination meant that whenever I had the urge to harm myself, I pushed it away, crucially not thinking that I would never do it ever again, but that I wouldn’t do it in the next 5, 10 or 15 minutes. When that time was over, I’d repeat the process.

‘Not now’ lasted a long time. Making the conscious decision to postpone harming myself after years of relying on self harm to cope was tough. And there were many times that I did harm myself. But I would always go back to procrastinating. Eventually I could think ‘not today’. And if you can get through one day, why not another? It was always a struggle, and the feeling never went away completely, but I have managed to change my relationship with self harm.

Because I didn’t have a ‘last time’, I have no idea how long it’s been, but I know it has been a while. Learning new ways to release tension and self soothe has been a happy consequence of my self harm procrastination. That said, in times of high stress I do sometimes long for the relief it could bring. But I think the good thing for me is, by thinking ‘not now’, and ‘not today’, I don’t have a last time, not as such. So there’s no pressure. It’s an ongoing project. I’m an ongoing project. We all are.