I don’t want to do it but I don’t know what else to do instead

Lisa (from her diary) There is a great deal of evidence that self-harm is part of a learned pattern of coping and that it can become addictive.1 You can become used to always feeling keyed up, waiting for something to happen. You can become resigned to self-harm going on endlessly. Learning to change how you cope with overwhelming feelings is not easy. Like any other form of change, the motivation has to come from you. This motivation can sometimes be very hard to sustain, because giving up a coping strategy takes a long time. Unfortunately there is no magical ‘cure’.