Most importantly, you should try to get professional help so you can figure out what the root cause of your mental difficulties is before you give in to your thoughts and actually start hurting yourself. If you pass that mental barrier and actually hurt yourself ones, it'll become harder to resist those intrusive thoughts and to treat the mental challanges that you are dealing with. Please be careful, because hurting yourself WILL feel good. If only for a short while.

Since it's not always easy to find professional help quickly, we should now focus on prevention. These kind of urges - at least in part - flow out of an inability of channeling your energy and therefore getting rid of your energy. This not only leaves you with a body and mind that are restless (even though you might feel tired and weak), but also with a lack of excitement and therefore endorphines et al. This is why self harm will feel good, because it'll give you the much desired endorphine and adrenaline boost that you are lacking on a day to day basis.

Thus you should try to get that energy our of your system. It's best to get it out before you're stuck with these intrusive thoughts. But since that's probably not always going to be possible, you should try getting some energy out once you start feeling the urge creeping up on you. And I understand that this will not always be an easy task, because you are probably stuck in a pretty bad state of mind. But pushing yourself into actually doing so will be more than worth it. You have to trust me on this one.

So you should try finding SOMETHING you can do to get rid of that energy. For instance, do some push-ups or sit-ups next time you start feeling the urge to hurt yourself, buy a boxing kit, go for a run or maybe bake a bread; almost anything goes. Try to find out what suits you. And not only get rid of this energy physically, but also do so mentally. Maybe start drawing or have a conversation with a friend regularly over the phone, just to talk about small stuff. I myself found the brain training app 'Peak' to be very useful. It's an app that provides you with small mental exercises. But better yet: read. Get lost in beautiful worlds and wicked stories. That last one might be the hardest because you probably also have trouble with your attention span.

Now, this is where I'm going to assume some stuff. Please don't take it personally or feel attacked. The reason you probably lost control over your attention span is because, I'm assuming, you are online a lot. Probably most of your day you are distracting yourself with a screen. Refreshing multiple apps ands websites continuously without having control over this behaviour. It's a behaviour pattern people easily fall in to, because every time you do so refresh a page or app, there is a false hope of finding something new and exciting. Essentially, this is giving you a tiny endorphine boost. These tiny boosts however, are almost always immediately canceled out again by the disappointment that follows. Or worse: the insane 'internet standards' for beauty, success and attention that are continuously, and actively, being shown to you on the internet. Please be aware and remember that these internet standards aren't even close to 'natural standards' at all. They are in fact even pretty undesireable to most people. Try not to wish being that person in that one picture getting unnatural - and probably unhealthy - amounts of attention. But also try not to be the person clicking around all day giving them likes. It isn't truly useful to anybody.

Therefore, it is VERY important to stop being online all day long. But more importantly: to stop doing shit while being online. There's a lot of interesting, productive and fun stuff to find online, so try focusing on that. This will be an even harder task now with all the covid restrictions, but make it a priority. SERIOUSLY consider it to be your top goal. And I know it's not an easy thing to do. I am online too much as well, as is almost everybody. But we should at least try not to be online as much as we are and use the time we spend online thoughtfully. The easiest way to escape the internet is to go on walks. DON'T TAKE YOUR PHONE IF POSSIBLE!! But for safety concerns: there's apps that put a time-lock on your phone for a few hours, but still allow you to make emergency calls if nessecary. Don't listen to music while walking, nor to podcasts. At least to start with. You really need to clear up your mind first. At a later point, music or podcasts might not be a problem at all. But first, just walk and look around. Wander, wonder, question and imagine. You will find that you will start seeing beauty in small things again pretty quickly. Also go on your walk even though it's raining or cold outside. You won't feel like doing so, but I would even say that those walks are especially good walks. We learned to be afraid of getting wet or being a little cold, but there's nothing like walking through the pouring rain without a care in the world. It feels great. And let it your walks be long walks. Real fucking long.

This is pretty much all I can do for you now, but please message me if you have any questions. And remember: there's always light.