How can I distract myself from wanting to self-harm?

Find other coping methods. Paint, draw, or scribble on a big piece of paper with red ink or paint. Express your feelings in a journal, listen to music, take a bath or hot shower, rub ice across your skin where you might usually cut, exercise, talk to someone, write down negative feelings...

write poetry, listen to music, watch tv shows or anime or anything, read books manga or anything basically. do whatever you enjoy

Music helps, also from personal knowledge, writing down what you are feeling,thinking, and what you want to say can help a lot. Hope this helps

Put the blades away. Don't be tempted. Avoid triggering things, and try talking to a friend. It really helps.

Find something you like to do walking,running,going to parks,hanging out with friends etc etc. keep your mind busy

You gotta focus on things you really like, like drawing. I'm used to do some drawings when I feel bad, and also you have us the listeners if you need to talk to someone :D

There are a variety of ways to do this. Sometimes putting your attention fully onto something else can help, especially if it is something you enjoy. Sometimes talking to someone and letting them know that there is a problem can help. For some people, creating art that expresses the harmful desire helps them avoid harming themselves.

The urge to self harm can be incredibly hard to stop, it's like a wave that comes over you - trust me, I've been there. However one way to distract yourself from this could be to download an app called 'Calmharm' - this is an app designed for people who struggle with self harm. They have many different techniques on there help to reduce the risk of people self harming. If you're reading this and you struggle with self harm, feel free to drop me a message any time.

I personally grab my tennis shoes and go on a run. Music is an amazing tool for releasing emotion, as is reading and writing. If that doesn't help, you can grab a marker (marker, not pen) and draw lines on your skin. Or, you can join in with project butterfly. Simply draw a butterfly in marker wherever you self harm, and a long as it's there you are not allowed to self harm. Name the butterfly after someone you love or care about if you think it'll help. As long as that butterfly is there, you cannot hurt it. If none of that helps, holding an ice cube on your skin is pretty damn painful, but doesn't harm your body. Stay strong, and I'm proud you're on the path to recovery.

I don't believe that there's a specific method that could help you to distract yourself because what may work for others may not work for you but there are a lot of things you could do in order to distract yourself and it's a wonderful thing that you are looking for distractions, that's the first step towards being kind to yourself. Expressing yourself can be a good option, suppressing your feelings can make it even hard for you, writing your emotions down in a diary can be of some help, sometimes all we want to do is to let those feelings out. Some people chose to talk with someone and it doesn't necessarily has to be about your emotions, it can be about anything. Another way could be engaging yourself in something productive, something that you like to do or you think you could do for example playing a game, watching a movie, listening to some music, writing down the lyrics to the songs you like, cooking, cleaning, planting, drawing or anything that you like. Some people prefer to do something mindful like focusing on the positive things that have happened or meditating or thinking about the things that they are grateful for or simply by acknowledging the little things around or even giving out some affirmations. You don't necessarily have to bottle up the frustration, if you feel like releasing it, you could choose to scream inside a pillow, write all the things that you find frustrating on a paper and destroy the paper, take cotton out of the cushions, try to squeeze ice, have a pillow-fight with the wall, pop balloons or bubble-wrap. You could also draw on your body with a marker or a felt-tipped pen or even ice cubes. And finally, it's a real task to try to distract yourself from those urges, it can be extremely hard to do so, if none of the above distractions work for you, take a deep breath and know it's okay and not everything works effectively for everyone and there are a lot of other ways to distract yourself and I hope you'll find the effective one soon and there's nothing wrong with exploring other ways because how will you even know what will work for you until you try things out! Keep going and keep trying, you'll get through this!