I self harmed today

@goldenNest3797

honestly, the best thing that I do is to try to avoid what causes it in the first place. In other words, try to keep your stress level down. Avoid things that make you feel an intense amount of pain, which would then cause you to self harm. I know that I can get a panic attack when seeing grades, so whenever possible I try not to see my grades. I think it’s helped with my mental health. Sadly though, when I’m having a panic attack. There’s not much I can do. I just try to mitigate as many side effects. So you can try wrapping yourself in a blanket if it helps.

I self harmed as a side effect of a panic attack. I’m barely conscious during these panic attacks. I am in so much pain, that I can’t think straight and I’m just trying to do anything to get it to stop. I don’t say I really have a will to do it, it just sort of happens as a side effect. So I have found some weird but helpful methods. Weirdly enough, just having people around, talking in a soft voice helps me the most. But that emotionally drains people, as they’ve already said. So as to not be a burden, I don’t really have anything that’s entirely fool proof.

However, I think for your case you still might be able to. If you’re not physically having the urge to self harm, then maybe just being around people you like and trust would be helpful. If you talk about any random thing that’s off the subject of self harm, then you can’t really emotionally draining them just by having a casual conversation.

My standard alternatives would’ve been Breathing exercises, observing what you feel and the room around you, etc. Sadly for me these don’t really work for me, but I suggest you try them before you make any assumptions. If it isn’t working for you, you know yourself best. Don’t be me, and think that you’re morally doing something wrong for listening to yourself. but for me they don’t work, and so therefore I have some more weird methods for how I deal with panic attacks. It doesn’t stop it, it just helps.

Although this will definitely alert people to your panic attack, it’s better than alerting them via me screaming. If that’s what happens during a panic attack for you. So what do I do instead is to try to find a sensory stagnant place as soon as I can. find a place where it is nearly or completely silent, and that there is no people around. I don’t know if you have PTSD, but for me it helps with not getting flashback triggered well already having a panic attack. That can make the panic attack much worse.

if I know that I may have a panic attack. I make sure to go to the stagnant place to before the panic attack starts. For example, if I have to take an online test, I’ll take it in that stagnant place. So when the panic attack happens, I am already at the place where I want to be.

to block out any lingering sensory information, also bring something that produces white noise. This has the awful side effect of not being able to think straight because all of your thoughts are just clouded by useless noise. But at that point I don’t really have much thinking power to begin with, so in this particular case the pros outweigh the cons.

This doesn’t help during the panic attack, but taking something I would like afterwards is helpful for aftercare as it’s very strenuous on my body even without the accidental self harm. So, I’ll bring my blanket so I can wrap myself in that when it’s all over. I also try to do it during the panic attack, although it doesn’t really do much when I’m in that much pain.

I hope this helps, or at least the next post will.