Mine isn't a part of the poll so I will put it here. My cutting and self injury behavior did not and does not run on a schedule of daily and so on. it was just random when I needed to release pent up emotions I did it., sometimes I would do it many times a day for days in a row and other times I could go for months without cutting. It just depended on how my life was running and what I was running away from kind of thing.

On working on my controling and stopping my self injury stuff I try to knock out one thing at a time not focus on it all completely. kind of like cutting out smoking from someone life when that person has been smoking for over 30 years, going cold turkey ends up in the person adopting other unhealthy and or annoying habits of over eating, lip smacking and lip licking.

over the years of trying to go cold turkey on not cutting have adopted other ways - the illogical thinking that its not cutting so Im not really hurting myself when in actuality doing things like taking baths or other things that turn the skin red or blistered and so on IS self injury.

So now I have quite a list of self injury behaviours. So when SKR and I started trying to figure out what to do about it we decided to try picking only one to work on controling. I chose cutting and the way I work on it is that I started setting goals. First I went one day without cutting, then two days, then three. Each time I cut I would challenge myself to go one day past my previous record. by choosing one day more I was never setting an unreachable goal. I also was not setting myself up for a major fall and dissappointment in myself and feeling like I let anyone down if I slid back into cutting because there was no goal of NEVER cutting again. I cut fine no one not even myself was saying I could not cut. All I was doing was saying I want to cut ok write it down and I can still cut if I want to about this on this day when I have met my goal of waiting one more day then the last time I cut.

On the day I met my goal I would do something to celebrate it - go to a movie or buy something I normally would not splurge my money on and so on.

As for right now - I have not cut for the past one year and 4 months. I have already met my goal this time for it was one year and one day. I know that I can cut at any point and know that I am not letting myself down, my therapist down and so on, But at this moment there are no urges to do so.