before

[treasure]

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

i will stop being nxious or sad, i might be able to do more than what i expect i'm able to do without si (cos i'm tired and sad and si will make it easier to stay out of bed.. maybe)

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

it will give me more scars that i really don't want. it will give me a way to cope. it will take away the feeling of not having control.

* 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?

in the long run, i think it will just lead to more frequent si cos i'm giving in with less resistance recently. i don't mind that i might keep wanting / "needing" si to cope, but needing more and more si i think is a bad thing. if i keep 'letting' myself si, i'll rely on it too much?

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

si might not help for very long, but i guess i want something to help *now* and don't care what happens afterwards. well i do care or i wouldn't be answering the q's, it's maybe the urges and feelings are making me concentrate on the present.

* 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 could start playing a game online. i could play some music. i could go to the library. i could write an email to someone.
all these things could be distractions from my thoughts/feelings and a way to fill the next 20min til i have to catch a bus.

* 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 will hate myself tomorrow if i si (more than today anyway), and i will be disappointed that i am making more and more scars. not si-ing will probably not have much affect tomorrow, but i have got a chart of things i do during the day and my mood, and it has a space to tick for 'times when i stopped myself si-ing or found good ways to cope' (in different words though), and maybe a *tick* will help me think of other ways to cope next time i feel urgy.

* 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?

iwill distract myself and hopefully talk a bit about my feelings to some ppl later today.

[tattybluetrees]

Hi there. I hope you don't mind me replying to this post.

To me it sounds like you are thinking in a really good way about how to prevent yourself from SI-ing and maybe make thigs a bit easier. It might not feel that way to you, but that's the way it seems to me and I just wanted to let you know that.

Distracting and planning to talk to someone later about how you are feeling seems like a really good scheme- distraction is great, but you have to try and address the feelings as well, or they just sit there and get fat and then burst. I hope you managed to find someone to talk to. Do you have a plan about what to say? Do you find it easy or hard to tell people how you are feeling? Is there anything you could do to make it easier?

I like the sound of your chart. I have one which has a box for each day and I get gold stars if I have dealt with a difficult day in a healthy way and silver stars if I have managed to be healthy on a normal day. It really helps to be able to put the star there at the end of the day- it makes it feel like an achievement, and also like I have "marked" the emotions somehow (I don't know if this makes sense).

You say that you will hate yourself tomorrow if you SI. Recognising that in the long term it wont make you feel better is good, but it sounds like you're being a bit harsh on yourself. If you do end up hurting yourself, then you did it to cope and it's okay, you can use it to learn and do things differently next time, but forgiving yourself might help you not to get stuck in a cycle of feeling worse and worse about yourself. I wondered if that might also help with not doing it more and more frequently?

I hope you managed to get through the day, and that you are alright and maybe feel a bit better now.

Take care of yourself.

tatty