before.

[herebedragons]

how will this situation or feeling change if i hurt myself?

It should tame the urge to hurt myself, at least for a bit. May shake me out of this mood, give me something new to concentrate on.


what will hurting myself bring to the situation? what will it take away from the situation?

I'm not sure. I'm not sure what I want from it other than the act of injuring itself.


how do i want to feel about this in the long run? is hurting myself likely to get me closer to or farther from feeling that way?

I'm not sure how I want to feel about this, I suppose I want to feel in control and like a decent person, s.i.ing might take away from that, might just give me more evidence against myself ie being a decent worthwhile person.


if hurting myself seems like my best option right now, how long will the relief it brings last? what will i do then?

I'm not sure hurting myself does seem like my best option right now it just seems like the easiest with the least long lasting results. Better than suicide, not as good as just dealing with my emotions in a healthy way whatever that might be.


what is something i could do now instead of hurting myself? how will it change the situation i'm in? how long will that change last, and what will i do then?

Sleep, I wish I could sleep for a good long time, that would be better than hurting myself. How will it change my situation? Well if I could just sleep and sleep and sleep I could avoid everything for a while, plus I'm just damned tired.

how will i feel tomorrow if i hurt myself? how will i feel tomorrow if i do the other thing i came up with?

tomorow..no way of knowing. I can't predict how I will feel from day to day lately. I don't know.


what do i really want to do right now? how can i best honor the self-protective instinct that has me wanting to self-injure right now?

I really want to escape. I want to sleep for a month or six monthes or a year maybe. I want to just fall asleep and not have to deal with anything. I want to wake up and feel like I have a bit more choice in my life. I want to stop feeling trapped. I want out.


Why do I feel I need to hurt myself? What has brought me to this point?

I don't know. Just day after day of nothing changing and feeling trapped and tired and useless and depressed off and on. Not getting any time to myself or enough time alone with my husband. Just being tired of always dealing with something and having nearly every waking moment taken up with things I have to do or deal with.

Have I been here before? What did I do to deal with it? How did I feel then?

Oh yeah. Often.


What I have done to ease this discomfort so far? What else can I do that won't hurt me?

read, washed dishes, hung out with my family, messed around on the internet a bit, done laundry, picked up the house a bit

How do I feel right now?

tired, trapped, depressed


How will I feel when I am hurting myself?

focused

How will I feel after hurting myself? How will I feel tomorrow morning?
more focused. don't know.


Can I avoid this stressor, or deal with it better in the future?

can't avoid it.


Do I need to hurt myself?



I think that part of what brought this mood on is that a friend of a friend killed himself this week and while of course I feel bad for him and his family and loved ones and my friend in particular part of me feels jealous. Which is twisted and wrong and makes me feel like crap.

[herebedragons]

Slept a bit which helped some.

[mallie]

I'm glad the sleep helped a bit. Rest and just time out can make a difference.

Having a part of you feel jealous that someone else killed themselves isn't twisted or wrong. Whether suicide is all that we think it is, that doesn't change that sometimes it will feel like the most appealing thing in the world. If you're struggling with suicidal thoughts that you have to fight against, and everyone around you is pushing you not to, being a bit envious of someone else managing that doesn't sound wrong to me. That you're hurting so much to desire that is an issue, but more of a 'you deserve to be feeling better than that' rather than you being wrong for wanting it.

The main thing I got as I read through your answers was the feeling of being trapped. Then reading the things you'd already tried, it looked to me as though they were probably some of the same things that are so pressing on your time. Is there any way you can take some time out from your responsibilities? Time off work, or have someone watch the kids or whatever it will take so that you get some time just for you? Things like laundry or picking up the house aren't urgent, they can be delayed so that you get a hour or something just to do whatever you feel like. What would you most like to do, and what do you need to do so it can happen?

[herebedragons]

I don't know what I want to do anymore. I'd like some more time to spend with my husband but that would require a sitter. My SIL is supposed to watch the kiddos for a couple of hours tomorow so that will be good. I really hope it happens. But then we will probably be running errands to get stuff done for my son's birthday, still the time by ourselves will be good whatever we are doing.

I'm just tired and overwhelmed lately. I feel trapped because..well basically I am. My daughter will most certainly need my care for the rest of my life and then need someone else to care for her after that. The older she gets, the more this weighs heavily on me. And on days when taking care of her is difficult (because she is having a lot of OCD behaviours or just plain having a really autistic day like she was yesterday) it's really hard not to feel like "This is what the rest of my life is going to be." Because it is really and I never get more than a couple hours away. During the school year she's at school of course but then I'm working with little kids during the day and I've got my son a lot of the time because the private school he goes to has a shortened school day.

Summer is kind of overwhelming just in the sheer never-having-a-breakness of it. They've cut our respite in half from what it was last year because they no longer consider behaviours and extra supervision that a child needs when figuring how many hours a month you get. This isn't a big problem because we never use up the hours we get even with them cut in half because while we have, in theory, two people who can do the respite care only one of them ever does (my SIL) and she works full time so can't give us many hours. We get about four hours a week which is better than nothing but when you have a child who requires complete supervision and is awake for 16 hours+ a day it takes it out of you. Even as I am typing this I've had to stop three or four times to deal with my daughter.

My son because he is more high functioning will almost certainly be able to live on his own and have a job and the whole deal. In the meantime he also takes a lot to deal with partly because of his non-verbal learning disability which causes him to process EVERYTHING verbally. If he's not talking it's probably because he's asleep. And he's constantly asking questions.

I'm not saying these things because I resent my kiddos or don't enjoy them, just trying to explain why I feel the way I do. It's not the kids fault of course and I love my kids. It's just draining.

My husband is off of work this week and I could leave the kiddos with him for an hour or two but if I did I have no idea what I would do with myself. I don't really know what I like to do any more.

[herebedragons]

Also it's the anniversary of my mom's death which always screws me up a bit.

[mallie]

I'm glad you'll get some time with your H tomorrow. Where you've said that time by yourselves will be good no matter what you're doing sounds really positive, and like it is something you need rather than 'just' a want.

It sounds like you are under a lot of pressure - I'm not surprised that you feel trapped. I have no conception of what it must feel like for you to have such ongoing responsibilities.

What you said about not knowing what you'd do with yourself if you did get some time to yourself really resonated with me, because I've been talking about the same sort of thing in therapy lately. Although my life doesn't have the same level of complexity that you're dealing with, I'm still adjusting to a drastic change in my own day to day life (I'm in full time work for the first time) and am finding that there isn't nearly enough time to get everything done. I'm longing for the kind of endless empty hours that I seemed to have before. I honestly can't think of anything I could do that I would really enjoy if I did manage to find time, but the concept of free time for anything is so appealing. I can't help but think it'd be easier to find a bit of free time if I had something I really wanted to do, but I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with anything. One thing I've been meaning to do is try this again. The link is to a post Real made about trying to enjoy life more. I did this ages ago, and while I'm struggling so much with trying to think enjoying things is possible, it seems like a useful exercise. It might be a bit simplistic, but maybe worth taking a look at.

I really wish I had something useful to offer in terms of feedback, but I am reading.

[herebedragons]

I really appreciate your feedback, thank you. I will have to give that enjoyment list a try it sounds like a good idea.