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

I hope I will feel less anxious. I will stop urging. I will have new cuts to hide just when the weather is warming up. I will have new scars to cover when we go back to visit my family.

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

calm, control

take- um. crap I'll come back to this one.

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 don't know if I want to be here in the long run.

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

Same old same old, the relief lasts about as long as the injury..sometimes not quite as long. Once in a while not even until the next day. It's hard to say. Some relief, any relief for any amount of time sounds good right now.

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 do what I should be doing instead of typing- school my kiddo, clean my house, wash dishes.

Or I could lay down for a nap (not very responsible but might help a bit with the pain.)

How long will that change last? As long as I keep on moving I suppose. Until I can't move anymore.

how will i feel tomorrow if i hurt myself? how will i feel tomorrow if i do the other thing i came up with?

Either way I'm not sure. My moods are kind of up in the air lately. I'm afraid that if I don't si I will just be heading towards another depression and I don't want to deal with that right now.

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?

I don't know. I keep swinging towards wanting to kill myself but there are a lot of reasons I'm not going to actually do that. I'm so tired. I don't see things getting better in the future. More pain, more being tired, more being a burden, less useful.

Why do I feel I need to hurt myself? What has brought me to this point?

Several things- anxiety which was almost always my reason to SI. It's a quick fix for anxiety. Nearly instant relief. I miss that. I want to be more in control. And I'm kind of angry at my body and I'm tired of being in pain and for some bizarre reason that makes me want to hurt myself. Plus a bit of pain somewhere else would be kind of a relief. But really that's not a good reason, I'd have to injury myself pretty significantly to get my mind off of the joint pain. And I'm not going to do that when I'm home alone with my kiddo. Also just feeling the whole dread of what the future brings and feeling broken and having a lot of issues I don't want to deal with.

My baby brother is under house arrest, I feel guilty. I should have taken him when my stepmom offered him to us (repeatedly) maybe he would have turned out differently.

And Mother's day is always a bag of fun that brings a lot of junk to the surface with regards to my mom and her death.

Have I been here before? What did I do to deal with it? How did I feel then?

Over and over and freaking over again.

What I have done to ease this discomfort so far? What else can I do that won't hurt me?

Taken my pain meds, listened to music, cleaned, typed, cleaned some more, pet the cat, spent some quality time with my husband (that helped some for a bit), read funny stuff, laughed that helped some as well. It just doesn't last none of it lasts because in the end things are the same. I'm the same.

How do I feel right now?

Anxious and depressed. Tired. Worn out. not as useful as I should be. Not as anything as I should be.

How will I feel when I am hurting myself?

better, calmer, relieved, but more pain.

How will I feel after hurting myself? How will I feel tomorrow morning?

stupid but probably calmer and more focused.

Can I avoid this stressor, or deal with it better in the future?

no. I mean clearly I could deal with it better in theory. People do all the time. I have a somewhat unusual amount of stress going on at once but lots of people have it worse and deal just fine so presumably if I worked at it more I could be one of those people. I just I'm not sure I'm those people.

Do I need to hurt myself?

I want to say yes so badly. I want an excuse, I want a freebie.

Hi herebedragons (I love your username btw!)

If the relief lasts as long as the injury, do you ever find that SI 'replacements' ever help e.g. squeezing ice-cubes, snapping elastic bands?

It sounds awful that you're in pain - does your doctor know how little your pain meds seem to help?

Take care
S x

If the relief lasts as long as the injury, do you ever find that SI 'replacements' ever help e.g. squeezing ice-cubes, snapping elastic bands?

You know I kind of forgot about those, I haven't tried them in a long time, I'll try that next time the urge is strong. Thanks for the suggestion.

It sounds awful that you're in pain - does your doctor know how little your pain meds seem to help?

I'm sort of in limbo right now because they are still trying to figure out what is causing the pain. I have to wait until it's been six months before I can see the specialist and I also need to have some blood work redone this coming month. In the meantime the meds I'm on are large doses of Ibuprophen (like Advil) and I don't want to be put on anything else because narcotics make me sleep ALL the time. (I'm a serious lightweight when it comes to meds) The medicine I'm on works fairly well as long as I don't do too much but unfortunately "too much" is barely enough for what I need to do just to get us through the day. My doctor is likely to tell me to rest more which is great advice if you can swing it. Once they know for sure what is going on I will hopefully have better treatment or meds or at least a better idea of how to handle things.