coping in bad ways

[LoverlyLaurie]

what if you start different harmful ways of coping besides SI. like you start restricting and doing ED behaviors and start taking pills to get high? what if your coping skills are so f'd up you don't know what to do???

anything you'd like to reply with is fine.

[vin]

I hear you! I was doing SI since I was 14, then when I was about 24, I freaked out and started really criticizing myself....how imperfect I was with everything. I became bulimic (with what little I did manage to eat) and taking tons of OTC meds to knock myself out all the time. Then I found that I just got confused with the SI, ED, etc and it made everything more difficult. It took me 2 years to get off the bulimia and I still think about it....especially now that I've gained back 10 lbs.

So instead I've tried focusing on other coping skills that wear me out and keep my mind occupied. I went back to school for a master's...so now I have tons of homework....and I run every night. By the time I'm done with running and homework, I have no energy to move from the couch, much less SI or anything else. Its kept me sane for the past 8 months or so at least!

I think once you already do something like SI, its probably easier to pick other unhealthy options...you just have to be strong enough to choose something better.

[NobodyToYou]

It is really easy to trade one negative way of coping for another... I know a lot of us have done that. But you also sound really frustrated and upset with yourself, so I am guessing that this isn't really what you want.

When that happens, you go back to reminding yourself that how you cope is your choice. Yes, it is often easier to reach for something negative... I don't know why, but it always seems that way. Maybe it is just what we know, or maybe the negative options work faster with the least amount of effort, or maybe it is something else entirely.
But you always have choices, and you can choose something different if you want to. The healthy coping options are available too...

For me, there were 2 big parts that helped me in learning how to use healthier coping skills. The first one was to practice tolerating the feelings a bit more. I had gotten so used to turning them off with SI that ANY feeling seemed like too much, and like I needed to make it stop. They weren't as dangerous as I thought they were, but I needed to get used to feeling them without running away from them. Distraction can help with this, since it can keep things from feeling as intense... I might know I am feeling bad and still feel bad, but by focusing somewhere else, I don't get overwhelmed as easily.
Once I got a bit better at tolerating the feelings, the second thing that really helped me was being able to identify what specific feelings were happening. I was really bad at this for a while...everything was "fine" or "bad", and I couldn't pick out individual feelings beyond that. But learning how to tell different feelings apart helped me learn to identify coping skills that might actually help. When I am feeling angry, coping skills that help when I am scared will often make things worse instead of making them better... it doesn't mean that the coping skill is a bad one or that nothing is going to help, it just means that it isn't the right tool for the job and I need to find one that fits what I need a bit better.

I don't know if that is helpful or not, but I hope it is...