If you have certain rituals surrounding your self-injurious behaviour, this idea can help

Basically, with your Ritual, you do everything but self injure. That means that you go through the motions of preparing to self injure, you unpack your tools, your bandages, you get the right music, or whatever it is you find yourself doing while you hurt yourself, and then, at the moment when you would normally start self injuring, you pack it all away.

You can do this again and again until the Urge leaves you.

You may not have Rituals, many people don’t, perhaps the 15 Minute rule would help you more.

The idea behind the Everything But rule is that you will satisfy your need for control, and your intention to self injure, while choosing not to hurt yourself.

Over time, you can change your Ritual so that in time, you don’t have to go through so much ritual to satisfy your need for control.

It’s not an easy rule to follow, but there have been some reported successes, people who have been addicted to Heroin have used this rule, unpacking their instruments, and then packing them away.

Let us know if this rule helps you at all.

• The 15 minute rule,
• or reflect on Surfing the urge.