After... (replies welcomed)

[myshelle]

1 have you taken care of your physical wounds? if not, go do that now. we'll wait. Yes, I have.


2 what had happened just before? My stress Built up and I just could take any more. I ran out of meds and nothing could be done about it. Before that, I had some bad things happen at work.


3 what were you thinking and feeling? I just thought to myself " I have had ENOUGH!" If there's any other time as good as any to cut, it's now or never.


4 why did you end up hurting yourself then instead of some other time? was there an event that was the final straw? what was it? All the shit that's been going on this week. I can't handle all of these things I have no control over.


5 how did the situation get to the final straw stage? trace it back through the events that led up to the last event. look for some point at which you could have made a different decision and not arrived at the final straw. There was no way around it. I can't control the uncontrollable.


6 were there outside factors like drugs, alsohol, being off your meds, lack of sleep, etc? can you address those in the future? how? No, just anxiety and being on the last straw of reason.


7 what other ways of coping did you try besides self-harm? how well did they work? Distractions, like being online, watching tv.


8 in retrospect, are there coping methods that you now realize might have helped? what were they? Drawing, writting, walking.


9 name at least two things you will do to help yourself remember those coping methods if you end up in this situation again. Stop, breath, and think.


10 how do you feel about the situation that led to self-harm now? is it resolved? if not, what are some steps you might take toward resolution? I try not to think about the situation. I'm just focusing on the cuts now. I guess in a wierd way I wanted to relive the process of cutting, watching it heal, caring for it, and creating new scars.


11 are you likely to be in that emotional place again? how will you recognize it when you're in that situation? More than likely. I feel the same anxiety again.


12 what will you try before you resort to self-harm if you're in that situation again? list three specific things you will commit to trying. Try to do my distractions again.

[Smeagol]

Hi

I'm sorry you felt the need to hurt yourself.

You say that lack of control was a big factor, in that there's lot's of things you can't control at the moment. How do you feel about that? Are you afraid of lack of control, for example? Is self-injury a way of exerting control, maybe?

I'm just wondering wehther, instead of distracting yourself, you could attack the cause of your distress, perhaps by doing something to make yourself feel in control, like tidying your room, or making a timetable of how you're going to organise your time. Becuase some things can't be contorlled, but others can, and maybe it would help you if you could focus on those that can.

I'm interested by something else you say, specifically that you thought something along the lines of "this is as a good a time as any". That sounds like you wanted to si, rather than you needed to si. I don't mean that in a critically. It's just an observation that it sounds like perhaps you wanted to si, rather than really not wanting to si but feelin gyou had no alternative right now. Like I say, that is *not* a criticism. It's just that if you're posting here then that also implies you don't want to si, so maybe if you could figure out why you also wanted to si, then that would help you not, if that makes sense.

Of course I might be totally wrong on that, in which case please ignore me. But whether I'm wrong or right, please don't think I'm getting at you by saying it sounded like you wanted to si. When I si it's usually because I want to. I don't want to distract myself, or figure it out. I want to si so I do, and if I didn't want to then I wouldn't.

Take care

[recovering4me]

may i suggest focusing on the things tha tyou can control in your life? like the positive things that you can control like what you wear how you do your hair and stuff like that....