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Before You Self-Harm
write down the shadow that's hiding behind the urge. look at it. ask yourself:

I feel like I'm being brutally honest with myself right now, and everything out of my mouth isn't the manipulative, victimized words of some little girl needing help because she wants to screw up over a week of no SI. It is a beautiful and sorrowful feeling all at once. And maybe even a lie.

• how will this situation or feeling change if i hurt myself?
  It will be worse. It will be detrimental to my relationship with my boyfriend and make me unhappy when I hang out with him next.
• what will hurting myself bring to the situation? what will it take away from the situation?
  It will freak him out even more. It will take away these shaky feelings of exhaustion I'm feeling. It will help me and hurt me and make me miserable and make me nothing, all pretty much at the same time.
• 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?
  Farther. So much farther. This will ruin me in the long run. It will prove to me, if I SI tonight, that even if I don't want to I have to, and that means any semblance of control I think I have is not there at all and everyone else is right.
• if hurting myself seems like my best option right now, how long will the relief it brings last? what will i do then?
  it doesn't feel like my best option, it feels like my only other option. the relief will be more short-lived than normal and much longer, because I've waited so long. Then, I will sleep. Then, I will just deal with how distant and weirded out my partner feels when I see him next. I am sick of just coping. Every stressful moment, I am sick of coping, through any method. I want to just stop, and sit down, and lay down, and not get up, and then everything will go sprinting by me and leave me alone.
• 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 have no. damn. clue. These sentences are folding in on themselves and eating each other and making no sense. Because not hurting myself won't change the situation I'm in at all.
• 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'll feel like I do now, except I'll have a shredded relationship to add to my huge pile of "JUST FUCKING COPE WITH IT." I didn't come up with anything else, so I will remain the same tomorrow, except perhaps the slightest worse for wear and with the same urge to fight as tonight.
• 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?
  Cut, duh. I can protect myself in a different way, by not cutting and therefore leaving my relationship in it's current progressing state and me in this... well, is it depression? I don't know what qualifies as depression, really...

urges aren't necessarily the enemy. they happen for reasons, and they're an expression of a desire to stay alive and stay sane and keep coping. remember that.

Yes'm.

I was going to do the More Before Questions section, but the first question sent this huge creeping wave of urge over me so I can't handle it right now.

Here's hoping I don't post an "After" tomorrow.
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i hope that writing that out helped a little and that you're feeling better now. it sounds lie your relationship means a lot to you, can you call your partner and explain how you're feeling, get some extra support with the urges?

xx

my relationship does mean a lot to me, and I'm glad you suggested calling him. I couldn't last night because he's really, really sick with the flu, but if it ever happens again it'll probably be the first thing on my list. Thankfully, I am not posting an After today. Thanks for the reply!