Before

[Emma Wallace]

Before:

• how will this situation or feeling change if i hurt myself?
  It will relieve the pressure of the urge. It will make me feel grounded tonight.
• what will hurting myself bring to the situation? what will it take away from the situation?
  It would make that hanging feeling go away. But it would also be disappointing to slip, and would add extra stress for my boyfriend. He doesn't need that.
• 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 want to be able to feel grounded, and feel comortable, but I hate using SI to do that. It feels like heading in he wrong drection.
• if hurting myself seems like my best option right now, how long will the relief it brings last? what will i do then?
  It will help for the evening, probably not for tomorrow. And when it stops working... I don't know what else to do but white knuckle through.
• 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?
  I'm stuck for ideas. I don't have anyone to call at this hour. I probably need to just go to sleep, an if I can settle, then that is what I'll do. Settling is a problem when I feel like this. So, I am going to read instead until I get sleepy.
• how will i feel tomorrow if i hurt myself? how will i feel tomorrow if i do the other thing i came up with?
  I'm going to feel really guilty if I slip.
• 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?
  Sleep it off, I guess. Still, this isn't a very good plan, though I feel clear that SI is not how I want to deal with this.

[LBC]

Hi Emma

I realize that some time has passed...how did things go?

Sometimes the only thing that I can do to get through urges is to go sleep. It's not the ideal solution, but there's no shame in it, especially late at night.

You took the time to do the questions, and hopefully something useful came out of that, even it's "just": Sometimes the urges are really strong, and when there's nothing else that's working, reading will make me sleepy. That's something to use next time. So not so hard on yourself, okay?