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how will this situation or feeling change if i hurt myself?
the feeling will go away for a while. But will then change into guilt.


what will hurting myself bring to the situation? what will it take away from the situation?
initially a sense of relief, followed too quickly by guilt and shame. It will take away my girlfriends respect for me.


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'll be disappointed in myself again, but it may as well be this as the hundred other things that I will be disappoined in myself for.


if hurting myself seems like my best option right now, how long will the relief it brings last? what will i do then?
It'll be better for about half an hour. Maybe an hour tops. But it will give me a holiday from these feelings. Afterward I will just pretend that everything is ok when it isn't some more. I'm good at that.


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 go and talk to gf, I could let myself cry, I could call bestfriend. All of these things will make me feel ashamed too though and I don't want to feel like that but it's inevitable. I won't do any of them for that fear.


how will i feel tomorrow if i hurt myself? how will i feel tomorrow if i do the other thing i came up with?
Ashamed and guilty for both.


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 want to scream til my voice is gone, I want to hurt on the outside so it's less important that I'm hurting on the inside. I can't answer the second question. I don't know.


More Before Questions To Answer



Why do I feel I need to hurt myself? What has brought me to this point?
I'm frustrated with myself. I'm a failure and I'm really struggling to carry on quitting smoking. I can't even manage to do that. I'm sick of being the family failure.

Have I been here before? What did I do to deal with it? How did I feel then?
I went down the same route I'm about to now. I felt pretty much the same.

What I have done to ease this discomfort so far? What else can I do that won't hurt me?
I've binge eaten, and cleaned the house. Neither helped. I can do the things I listed above, or I could indulge in one of my other destructive behavours.

How do I feel right now?
Alone. Empty. Failing.

How will I feel when I am hurting myself?
Only the physical. Not the emotional.

How will I feel after hurting myself? How will I feel tomorrow morning?
Guilty and frustrated.

Can I avoid this stressor, or deal with it better in the future?
Only by not speaking to my mother anymore. I don't know how to deal with it, which is why I always end up at this point.

Do I need to hurt myself?
I'm not sure. I think so.

zaphriel wrote:I'm frustrated with myself.

frustration is similar to anger, and for me at least, that means physical activity or similar ways of venting help best. does being frustrated with yourself really mean the following is true?

zaphriel wrote:I'm a failure and I'm really struggling to carry on quitting smoking. I can't even manage to do that. I'm sick of being the family failure.

... imo - no.
does being frustrated trigger those thoughts? is there a way to step back from family conversation or whatever is the trigger for both/either these things?
some ideas that might help - if you are on the phone, say "there's someone at the door" or "there's something i just have to get, i'll just be a sec" then ring back, or leave the phone on hold for a few mins. if you are there in person, say that you need a few mins alone, or just say you need to go to the toilet?

i hope you didn't si but even if you did, it's a good thing that you took a little time to work out your feelings and how they affect you. feeling like a failure is really hard to deal with, i think. it makes me feel self-hate/ self-disgust and i fight against myself. writing down how i feel sometimes helps me, i end up resolving the frustration/hatred into sadness that i missed an opportunity or made a mistake. it's ok to screw up

hey.
my mother isn't that easy to get away from, which is a massive shame.
She'll see me trying to avoid things like that and push it, for example 'you're an adult now, you can hold it' if I say I need to go to the toilet.
I wasn't completely honest with some of the questions on here, cause I guess I'm not completely secure in sharing the answers yet.
That makes me feel a little more of a failure.

Though you made in effort in at least trying to answer them. The fact you tried means, in my eyes at least, you're not a failure.

In that situation where you mum would say "you're an adult now, you can hold it" could you not say "yes, I'm an adult and that means it's my decision whether to hold it, or whether to hang up the phone and go"

S x

I know that you're right and that I should be harsher with my mum, but we've only really had a relationship that's worth talking about recently and I'm always scared of saying the wrong thing and f..ing it up completely.