some painting. Not only will these things help in keeping you physically, mentally and emotionally fit and active, they're great to store up if you do find yourself needing to beat the urge again. Dealing with slip ups Slip ups, unfortunately, are one of those things - the majority of people who decide to stop self harming will slip up at some point. It sounds depressing, I know, especially when you've put all that effort into stopping in the first place - it makes you wonder why bother. And that's where you need to stop and think about what you're feeling. Self harm isn't a nice thing to deal with. We've already found out that self harm is linked closely to your self esteem, confidence and feelings of self worth. One of the reasons people self harm is to try and gain control when it feels like everything's going wrong, and that feeds into slipping up, making you feel like you can't even control yourself and making yourself feel even worse. The most important thing to remember while reducing and stopping self harm is that it is a coping mechanism. It's what you've used for what ever length of time to help you deal with feelings and situations, and deciding to go cold turkey without having new ways of coping in place is going to lead to one hell of a roller coaster ride of emotions. Slip ups are there to help you realise when something's not working. Self harm