Post
by Skye » Wed Apr 14, 2004 4:31 pm
SI is a coping strategy. I think for many people SI is about survival, sheer just getting through getting by and it is often a way of reducing otherwise unbearable stress.
But SI is survival, not living. It is about reducing stress, not being whole.
Although SI may well help you cope in the short term with overwelming tesnions/stresses/thoughts/feelings, in the long-term it will not solve those situations. It will not help you speak your anger to those who hurt you. It will not help you learn to love yourself or treat yourself as a valuable human being.
Stopping is not an overnight thing. It is a process, it's a journey and that's all right. I think it starts with wanting the things that SI cannot give. More than jsut short-term calmness, or numbness, or tangible, fixable pain you can feel and control. More than just mere survival. When you start to want to see yourself as more than just abuse, or hurt, or a disorder, or damage/wounds/scars. When you want to be whole, when you want to be healthy , when you want to be able to speak out your grief/anger/frustration instead of turning it in on yourself. When you want to be more than someone who just reacts as they get tossed about by circumstance. When you want to start treating yourself with the care and respect other people might not have afforded you.
SI is functional but long-term it doesn't really solve anything. It's a stress-coping strategy not a life strategy.
SI does not make you a bad person, or a worthless one. But stopping SI doing this in your own time, at your own pace, and replacing the space that SI leaves with something that in the long-term may be more functional for you can help you establish boundaries, start working on your self-worth and being more than someone who has been hurt, more than someone who merely reacts and survives.
I think that's the essence of why to stop. Realising you want more out of life for yourself, feeling that and working towards it. It's about getting new skills, new ways of approaching things and solving the problems/conflicts in your life.
Recovery is a process. There are slips usually and that's ok. You fall down, you get up you carry on best you can with the skills and resources you have available at the time.
I don't really count SI free time (mostly because when I'm counting it I feel pressured), but I will go for months and months without feeling the need to cut- and these are good months.I don't think SI is evil or that one is a bad person if they cut- SI has served a purpose and I can recognise that and not feel guilt over it. BUT Nowadays SI is the last thing I resort to, not the first, and my life has been a lot better for it. I can have healthy relationships, I can set boundaries, I can tell someone when they've hurt me or made me angry- and these are all really really good things. Things I feel proud of and happy about.
I can start to love my body, to understand my own self-worth, to not want to hurt myself, I've made a good start on accepting myself the way I am and feeling comfortable in my skin, thinking long-terms about how to get my needs met, what my goals are, to feel most days that I'm living, that I can even sometimes celebrate that fact as opposed to just getting through one moment to the next, scraping by and surviving.
Judge not, but teach
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**~~** My religion is tolerance, my nationality is mankind.**~~**
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Despite the ever-increasing costs of living it remains very popular.