Forms and PHP_SELF

I'm currently working on a project and I've come across a problem which I'm sure has been discussed several times before but I still need some assistance on it. I have a page with a form whose action is $PHP_SELF so the form and the form action are all in the same page....this works fine but in the form action a message is displayed stating success or failure of the insertion of data into a database and the user is redirected by means of a meta refersh....during this time if the user refreshes the page the data is resubmitted again....the user can do this repeatedly.... Some people have suggested that I use headers but I cannot do this at this point because I've already sent the header... others have suggested I use some variable $script_ran_count = 1 then run and after increment so a test of it would be false...this had no effect others have suggested javascript... I'm really baffled...how can I have a self-submitting form page that has a display message and a meta redirect but if the user refreshes the page stop the resumission of data? Regards, Chad Guilette