impulse s/i-ing

is there a way to stop it. i understand using distractions when you have urges. and they work sometimes. or hold it off abit. but when its impulsive. there is no reasoning. are there things that might help then.

I don't know. I feel the urge to cut almost always. It's like my arms itch and it's all I can focus on. I just try to distract myself, even if it's very temporary, and as soon as I'm not thinking about something else, I think about si.

I si pretty often- like a couple of times a day. Though i do hold it of and try to prevent it- i was never succesful. You can prevent it but not indefinitely. .

Get out of the house, get around people, go to the bookstore, go anywhere...

and if you can't get out, pick up the phone, call a friend, call a crisis line, call anyone...

and if you can't call get on the computer... chat with someone, do something..

Maybe there are some people that can't prevent it indefinitely but I personally believe you CAN, one day at a time, and sometimes it's 5 minutes at a time, but every time you don't SI it makes it easier to stop the next time.

Like 5 min. Helps? - mike
It like totally makes it easier not to si when you prevent it for 5 nin, right?

There have been a lot of times where 5 minutes has made a huge difference for me. At one of my lowest points I would count to two seconds and then say "okay you made it two seconds, you can do that again," eventually I slowly made it up to a few minutes. I personally don't believe you can prevent the cravings indefinitely, si has helped before and I thikn in times of stress our brains will instantly think of si as an option to help, but the impulses do lessen some in intensity and frequency. When I first quit I would usually schedule myself in 10 minute increments. I will watch tv for 10min, if I still feel the need to si I will journal for 10, if I still want to I'll paint for 10, then do homework for 10, then chat for 10, until it got so late I couldn't keep my eyes open. I spent a lot of late nights here on support chat. One great thing about here is that there's so many people in different time zones you can almost always find someone on.A few times I've called crisis hotlines to get me through when no one was on and it was the middle of the night and too late to call most of my friends.

And yes 17, 5 minutes helps. It helps because 5 minutes usually seems like a reasonable/possible goal. When you start thinking longer terms the harder it gets to stay on track and it bgins to feel completely hopeless (which is what I'm struggling with right now). So tonight, I can make i through tonight, things won't nevessarily be better tomorrow, but tomorrow I'll set new goals, for now, I just have to make it through tonight (or in this case, about 5 minutes, until my sleeping pills kick in, lol).

Yes sometimes I live my life 5 minutes at a time, I don't try to think how will I possibly get through the next week, or the next day or even the next hour, I just focus on getting through the next few minutes. Then then next few, and so on...