How do you learn to turn to things other than self harm? And what things can you go to instead?

The most important thing to do is to talk immediately with an adult you trust. Keeping these sort of behaviour to yourself wouldn’t help you at all, in fact it can get worse.

If you don’t know an adult who would be helpful, call this hotline number 1–800-273-TALK and ask them to help you figure out what to do.

exercise

You really need professional help to deal with this problem. It is not something you can tackle on your own.

Lacking that, you can check out this chat room for people who struggle with self harm.

Good luck! You are worth more than hurting yourself!

ice cubes

You definitely need to see a therapist.
Are you in school? If so, see your school counselor immediately.
You need to find things that are going to distract you from harming yourself.
Exercising, writing in a journal, playing an instrument. If you’re in school, join some after school clubs.
Some alternatives to self-harm are things like snapping a rubber band on your wrist or drawing on your wrist with a red pen. They don’t work for everyone, but you could try.
Most importantly, get yourself some therapy and build a support group of friends and family members so you don’t have to deal with this by yourself.
Good luck, hun.

Ice cubes are great for just breaking the addiction. Hold them in your hand until they melt, and then go get some more, and keep doing that till the craving goes away. It gives you the same pain without inflicting any damage, and the sensation is a slightly different pain so that you don’t just change addictions.
Beyond that, you need to work on whatever is driving you to cut, whatever is making you feel like crap. Talk to a professional for that.

Been there, done that.

I agree with @papayalily you need to get another positive action/activity to substitute for this not right behavior. Also seek help and join a support group!

I’ve been throught this. Initially, when I was a teen and I decided to get help. I started out by talking about it to a professional. Through that, I learned different coping mechanisms, etc.
I used to distract myself when the feeling started to come over me. Writing, talking, phoning a friend, watching a fav movie, talking myself out of it.
I’m left with scars that I’m really ashamed of – it’s not worth it, not to mention you’re worth far more than this. You deserve to give yourself more tlc. (that sounds cheesy, but you know what I mean)
If going to talk to someone is too much at the moment, maybe search online for some forums.
Just be careful.
A lot of the forums out there can be rather triggering.
I wish you the best of luck.
You can overcome this.

write poetry. that’s what i used to do when i wanted to cut myself.

I haven’t had any personal experience, but I found a lot great ideas and tips on the wikihow site by searching for self harm. This is a list of articles written by users, similar to Fluther.