Breaking the Cycle of Self Damaging Behavior in 5 Ways

Breaking the Cycle of Self Damaging Behavior in 5 Ways

Individuals who have gone through a lot of bad things in their life often take part in a vicious cycle of self-damaging behaviors. These behaviors may either involve engaging in behaviors which are addictive and detrimental to ones health, being unproductive during his everyday life and engaging in relationships which are harmful to themselves or to other people.

1. Know What Triggers You
If you are one of these individuals who have this kind of trait and you wish to break free from it, then here are some tips to help you get started. The first thing which you must do is identify the feelings which trigger you to turn into this kind of behavior. You can create a short list of the possible feelings which may lead to this kind of behavior.

2. Create a short list
Creating a short list will surely help you sort out what emotion causes you to behave this way. List at least ten feelings. Good examples are feelings of rejection, manipulation, embarrassment and even getting hurt physically or emotionally. These are far better than writing general ones such as anger.

3. Write What You Think
Right after creating a short list, you need to write down the things that you commonly think of every time feelings such as these are triggered. This time, you can be as general as possible. For example, if you feel rejected, you can write a general statement related to what you may be thinking such as nobody cares about you and that you will never find someone who you can rely on.

4. Pay Close Attention to Your Thoughts
After listing all the thoughts associated with each trigger feeling, the next step is to focus on these thoughts. Try to think of pleasurable situations and think how you felt during that day. That situation which you are going to think about must be the direct opposite of one thought related to one trigger feeling. This will help you realize that if you are in a good mood and state of mind, you will be seeing this in a different way.

5. Seek some help
Getting rid of this kind of behavior is never easy and it cannot be done overnight. Thinking of good things whenever you feel bad will help. Aside from that, it will also be a lot better if you have a support person who can help you go through the entire process of getting rid of this kind of behavior. Lastly, you can engage in physical and fun filled activities. This will help you realize that there’s more to life than being alone, sad, frustrated and other negative feelings.

You will only be able to break this cycle if you have the will and you are committed to successfully doing it.