Recognising that our self-injury / self-harm isn’t as ‘helpful’ as we’d like to believe is a big step. Everyone needs ways of coping, ways of dealing with the stress and distress, but we can learn other ways of managing our emotions.

While getting support from others and from professional services is often really helpful (if also quite stressing) self-help is the first idea to consider when you’re ready to reduce your reliance on self-injury.

LifeSIGNS is led and managed by people with personal experience of self-harm – everything you read here has been written by someone who struggles with the urge to hurt:

• if on the edge of hurting yourself now, read this first;
• consider distraction techniques like masturbation (yes, really) and our 15 minute rule;
• learn how to manage your emotions by surfing the urge, knowing when you’re hungry, angry, lonely, tired, and recognising that self-injury is a choice – a choice to cope in a certain way;
• find out how scars work, how to reduce scars and how to hide them – and when to show scars;
• surf through the links on the left – see what works for you.

Everyone at LifeSIGNS wants to support you along the recovery journey – join us on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.