Reward System

So, I think a lot of us are just really hard on ourselves. We keep trying to stop and we are successful, and instead of rewarding ourselves we push even harder because the next day is still an unknown, we can't let down our guard and celebrate yet.

I think that giving ourselves a treat every now and again is perfectly healthy and perhaps inspiring though. It gives us a tangible goal to work towards. In Alcoholics Anonymous they have sobriety chips for one day and one week one month sixty days and so on and so forth. My mom used to be an alcoholic, but joined AA when I was very young. After I stopped hurting myself, she would bring home sobriety chips for me. It always touched me to know that she was proud of me in my own "sobriety."

Anyhow, I have a proposal for all of us on here. How bout we reward ourselves every once in a while? Or give ourselves something to look forward to? You should always have something in your own life that you can use as a reward: ice-cream, those pair of shoes you'd been wanting, a day at the beach, a nice dinner, some time with a masseuse/spa... any number of things. I was wondering if any one liked the idea of having some sort of stamp or banner for different time frames without self injury. I can't make them until after May, but I think it might be nice to have something like that.

Let me know and I'll get it organized.

As always, good luck to those of you on the road to recovery and be safe to those who are not quite ready yet

BxD

Sounds like a good idea - maybe we could attach them to our signatures here?

I really like this idea.
Thanks BxD for coming up with it and if you need any help organizing it, I'd be more than happy to help in any way I can!!! *nods*

That's a wonderful idea =]
We rarely are able to be like "Man, I am SI Free 20 days" irl. We might as well say things like that proudly in here :-)

I guess any ideas for a theme would be good. We could maybe start polling people about what kind of image they want as a reward. Different ones for different stages? How many... like a one day one, a one week one, a month, and then where to go from there? I always thought red orange and yellow were the theme colours of healing from SI. Yellow being hope and red being our past of self-injury; it will always be there. We have to learn to accept it and forgive ourselves. We hide it too much in shame as it is. And then orange for healing... for the journey... forgiveness.

Any words of encouragement that should be on them? Sobriety chips have the serenity prayer on them: "God grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference." Do you think something like that on the banner would be nice?

I guess brainstorming for ideas would be good for now =]

I'm glad there is some interest in this ^_^