 Today we're going to be talking about why people with borderline personality disorder self-harm, but we're also going to talk about a solution. So stay tuned. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And welcome back to another video about the symptoms of borderline personality disorder. And today is a topic that I haven't really touched on yet, and that's self-harm. So first off, I hope you stay tuned and watch this entire video and please share it because the practice I'm going to teach you is to help you out with any urges to do something that is going to have some negative consequences. So whether or not you know somebody who's self- harms, this is also going to help you fight urges, cravings and things like that. But anyways, why do people with borderline personality disorder self-harm? Well, there's a wide range of reasons, okay? Some of them are because of feelings of numbness or emptiness and the act of self-harming can make this person feel something. And we also talk a lot about how people with BPD have disassociation, they cannot feel real and things like that. And this kind of brings them back. And that's one of the reasons that people self-harm. But another one is, is because of such strong emotions that we get and feel. And unfortunately, what happens is when you self-harm to take your mind off those emotions, you are rewiring your brain to think that that is the solution to the issue. But most people who do self-harm don't want to, but they don't know another way to deal with these emotions and these difficult situations. So today, I'm going to be teaching you a very short, simple meditation to work with these urges, work with these heavy emotions and things like that. Now, what I want to say is, is that this is something that I've worked on myself with urges. I am a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. I'm extremely impulsive. I've been working on my weight. So I got to deal with food cravings. So that's why this is such a wide range of things that it can help when you do this meditation practice. All right. So what I'm going to do, I will link in the description below. I've been trying to put together a library of meditation so you can take this and download it on your phone and listen to it whenever you want. The SoundCloud app is free. So you can use it whenever. All right. So if you need to, go ahead and pause this video, get somewhere where you can be nice and comfy, quiet if you need to. All right. But anyways, let's get started. So today, we're going to be working with urges. So typically, these urges come as a result of very strong and powerful emotions. Now, one thing that we need to remember about emotions is that they always pass. So in this meditation, we're going to simply get curious about these emotions and the way they feel in our body and notice how they rise and fall. So go ahead and start off by taking a few deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. In through the nose and out through the mouth. And just get a sense of what your body feels like right now. Try not to latch on to any thoughts, but noticing if you have any tension or tightness, maybe in your chest or belly or in your forehead or shoulders. Just noticing what it feels like to be you right now. So what we're going to do is we're going to investigate these emotions and we're going to ride them like a wave. So if it helps you, just picture these emotions as a wave and you're on a surfboard and no matter how big these waves get, you're just riding with them. So notice how these urges come up and they rise and see how closely you can notice them. Are you noticing any heat, any coolness, any tightness? One of the biggest parts about surfing the wave of these urges and emotions is acceptance. Just let them run their course. And as you sit here and bring awareness to the way you're feeling right now, you'll watch as they increase and as they decrease. If you notice your mind saying any kind of judgments like I don't want to feel this way right now or I shouldn't feel this way, just note those as judgments and bring your awareness just back to the way that your body feels right now. And now let's bring our awareness to our breath and just notice the rise and fall of your chest or your stomach as you inhale and exhale and this with a deep inhale through the nose and gently open your eyes as you exhale. So notice how you feel right now. Do you feel relaxed? Do you feel the same? Do you feel better? Do you feel worse? Right? But this meditation really, really helps me out and it's gotten me out of a lot of trouble because when we get strong emotions, we feel like they're going to last forever, but that's never the case. They have their highs, they have their lows and sometimes these negative thoughts and emotions and urges they're not even there at all. And what mindfulness meditation does, it helps us bring awareness to this. And what we're doing is we're actually working on a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex which brings us back to logical decision making. Because the consequences of self-harm, we realize that when we're in logical thinking space but when our emotional brain is taking over, we can't get into that space. So regularly practicing meditation helps you strengthen the part of our brain that says, this is something bad for me. So this is a little bit of dialectical behavioral therapy, but let me mention something about cognitive behavioral therapy. What you're doing is if you practice this every time you get the urge to self-harm, you are retraining your brain to do this rather than do self-harming behaviors. And this is all about rewiring our brain and our habits and our behaviors, so it does get easier over time. So if this short meditation wasn't enough, feel free to listen to it again, all right? Sometimes these urges and these emotions they take, you know, 10, maybe 15 minutes, but I guarantee you they will always pass, okay? But again, like I said, please do me a favor and share this video because that meditation right there that I'm going to link in the description to my SoundCloud, like it can help a lot of people who deal with any other kind of strong emotions or urges to do toxic behaviors, all right? But if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. And if you are new here, I'm always making videos to help you out with your mental health. Make sure you click that little round subscribe button. And what I'm going to link right here is the whole borderline personality disorder playlist. So check that out, all right? So thanks so much for watching. Try not to self-harm today. And I'll see you next time.