bus

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

yep... bandaids etc

what had happened just before?

really self destructive feeling had been building for about a week. then my dad said I was being selfish and rude when I wasnt and I just blew up...

what were you thinking and feeling?

I was just really pissed at my dad. I shouldnt have SIed, it wasnt that big of a deal... I've been feeling shitty for about a week and it just put me over the edge... I didnt want to try anymore and I just gave up...

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?

I was just so tired of feeling depressed and self destructive. I couldnt handle it anymore. I hung in through the holidays and it was VERY hard not to SI. I think the holidays finally caught up to me...

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.

kinda like what i already said... i dont have the energy to type it all again...

were there outside factors like drugs, alsohol, being off your meds, lack of sleep, etc? can you address those in the future? how?

I was tired and just plain overwhelmed from stress and stuff. Some of the stress is gone now. I made all the phone calls and studied for the calc test and finished the gov chapter, so i have a lot less to do now.

what other ways of coping did you try besides self-harm? how well did they work?

my ocd kinda kicked in bad and i organized some stuff and picked up my room, but that didnt help much. i should have tried the other stuff i usually do, but i just didnt care anymore.

in retrospect, are there coping methods that you now realize might have helped? what were they?

yep... the stuff on my list probably would have stopped me from SIing. I'm such an idiot

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?

its kinda resolved.... i dunno... i need to figure out what really pushed me over the edge besides all the homework and all the stuff i needed to get done...

are you likely to be in that emotional place again? how will you recognize it when you're in that situation?

yes. I'm the idiot who is taking 4 AP classes and killing herself to get into college.... now that im in, im wondering why i put myself through all of this hard work... i knew i wanted to SI, I just didnt *want* to cope... i dunno how to explain it any better than that...


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.

I will try not to do it, obviously.
I will try to listen to not depressing music in my room with my kitty and read
I will consider calling a friend or going over to someones house
I will clean the kitchen or organize something and set a goal for that. organzing helps my OCD and helps distract me from SI...
Also, I just talked to plantt for like 2 hours on MSN. I might come on bus and see if anyone is online to talk to me

I mostly regret SIing and feel like an idiot... the usual reaction after i slip..

~Megan

Hi

What you said about not wanting to cope really rang a bell for me because I often feel like that. I suspect that's true of a lot of people. Sometimes I find it empowering to cope because I feel like I have control over my life (I feel x and I'm going to do y to respond to it) and sometimes I find it invalidating (I feel x and it's shit and it sucks but I have no choice but to do y).

A couple of things come to mind:

1. Was there a specific reason that you can identify for not wanting to cope, like having coped all holidays, or feeling you're going to have to cope all term?

2. Is there something other than self-injury that you can do to "go on strike"? Sometimes I just go to bed. It's kind of a refusal to cope, for me. Other times I cry, or I don't do chores or something. I guess you could say I let myself wallow in self-pity. But actually, if I'm not in a mood to or just can't see it positively, then self-pitying is better than actually hurting myself. The point is that when I don't want to cope I find it helps to find another way of not coping, be that wailing at a friend or going to bed or whatever.

3. Are there any ways in which you can turn having to cope into an empowering situation for you, rather than a disempowering one? Can you turn it on its head and instead of saying to yourself "oh crap, now this has happened and it sucks and I'm just supposed to get on with stuff as if it hadn'thappened" you could say "geez, that really sucked arse. my dad can be a real tit sometimes. still i'm not going to let him ruin my day/make this day any worse. i've got better things to do than let him get to me".

Re number 3, i'm not saying you're bad if you can't find something empowering in a situation. I freely admit to having spent the last two days knowing that there was a good way of seeing somethign and a bad way and that I was determinedly clinging to the bad way, and it was making me unhappy. i just couldn't seem to embrace the good way. and other times "looking on the bright side" or "refusing to let someting bother me" just isn't something I can do, because it feels like ignoring how I feel. So I'm just suggesting it because sometimes it's possibloe and when it is, it can make things better.

Gwylan