Recovering from self-harm is hard for reasons too numerous to list. The process of self-harm recovery is often lonely, confusing, messy, and dark. Feelings of hopelessness, feeling trapped, and feeling flooded with whatever emotions led us to self-harm in the first place are not uncommon, nor are the urges that cloud our thoughts and tempt us toward relapse in our self-harm recovery.

My name is Kayla Chang, and I’m thrilled and honored to be a part of the Speaking Out About Self-Injury blog at HealthyPlace. I hope that by sharing my thoughts and experiences in a way that is informative, vulnerable and — most importantly — honest with you, we can build an ongoing network of support and have meaningful, productive conversations around the issue of self-injury (also known as self-harm) together.

I have been in self-harm recovery for about 10 years now, often dealing with what triggers my self-harm urges. During that time, it has always been difficult for me to identify what exactly is triggering my self-harm urges. It wasn't until I went to my last therapist that I got the tools to figure out my underlying patterns of self-injuring. In this post, I want to go over the three main reasons behind why I started self-harming. Maybe your triggers for self-harm urges are similar.

My name is Kristen Schou and I am delighted to join the Speaking Out About Self-Injury blog on HealthyPlace. I am so excited to have a platform to share my experiences with self-injury and give advice to help others. Self-injury is a condition that is very stigmatized which causes people not to reach out for the help that they need. My goal for this blog is to help others who are going through the same thing that I went through.

This weekend, I fell on my face. I literally fell onto the sidewalk and currently have the ugliest scab and bruise covering the right side of my face. After I fell onto the cement, pain filled my body. Obviously this is normal when it comes to any accidental scrape or cut or bruise. However, for some reason, memories from my self-harming past popped into my mind. I started thinking to myself, "Why would I have caused so much physical pain to myself just for distraction and escape? Pain hurts."

This week's topic coincides with last week's topic - safe self-injury alternatives. In this vlog, I talk about managing self-injury urges in a healthy way, by using impulse control logs specially designed by S.A.F.E. ALTERNATIVES®, the world-renowned self-injury treatment program.