before

[hedgepig]

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



how will this situation or feeling change if i hurt myself?
the situation wont change, but the feelings will go for a while.

what will hurting myself bring to the situation? what will it take away from the situation?
It will bring familiarity and safety. It will take away the sadness for a bit.

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 want to feel so alone and isolated. hurting myself will take me further away from that.

if hurting myself seems like my best option right now, how long will the relief it brings last? what will i do then?
there's no telling how long it will last. maybe minutes, maybe hours, maybe days.

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?
it's quarter past midnight. I could try and get some sleep, but I'm not tired. If I could sleep i would escape everything for a while, but only until i wake up.

how will i feel tomorrow if i hurt myself? how will i feel tomorrow if i do the other thing i came up with?
if i cut myself now then tomorrow i will be angry and disappointed with myself. but i've already done it once today so I'm going to feel that any way. if i go to sleep instead i fear I may still want to do it tomorrow.

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 really want to cry, but the tears don't come.

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.

More Before Questions To Answer



Why do I feel I need to hurt myself? What has brought me to this point?
lonliness. sadness. emptyness.

Have I been here before? What did I do to deal with it? How did I feel then?
i've been here before, a lot. i dealt with it by cutting if i couldn't seek company. in the past cutting has taken away the feelings temporarily. on the times i managed to find company that made me feel a whole lot better, to not be alone or isolated.

What I have done to ease this discomfort so far? What else can I do that won't hurt me?
i cut earlier. it didn't work. i've slept. i've watched tv. i've read. i've posted on bus. i've written everything i wanted to say in an email but not hit send. i hoped it would get the feelings out.

How do I feel right now?
empty. alone.

How will I feel when I am hurting myself?
centered. focused.

How will I feel after hurting myself? How will I feel tomorrow morning?
calmer, stronger.
tomorrow i will feel angry with myself.

Can I avoid this stressor, or deal with it better in the future?
I'm not sure how to avoid this. I'm not choosing to be alone all the time. plans fall through, or friends already have plans.

Do I need to hurt myself?
i want to in the hope it will help. i also know deep down it will make no difference.

[zazie]

Hi. I'm here. I'm sorry you're feeling this way right now.

Two questions. If cutting didn't provide the relief you sought before, what makes you think it will if you do it again? And, if it might not provide relief, does that change things?

I'm saying this because you say all of the stuff about how cutting will bring short-term relief, it will make you feel better. And yet you've tried that today, and it hasn't.

[hedgepig]

thanks for reading and commenting zazie. I hadn't noticed that to be honest, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I don't know why I always assume it willhelp, even though evidence does suggest otherwise. I'm always surprised when it doesn't, and yet those times are becoming more frequent.
When I do it I have this idea that I need to do it 'right', whatever that means at the time. When I do it 'wrong' it doesn't provide the relief I'm looking for. I always hope i'll get it 'right' and then i will feel better.
Of course, the next day I just feel awful whether I got it right or wrong, and whether it worked or not.

If at the time I knew it wasn't going to work and there was no hope of it working I think it may change things. I'm not sure if 'might' is enough to stop me. Somehow I need to change the mentality of it 'will' to it 'might', or preferably it 'wont' and then reassess. I think. Does that even sound worth a try? I don't know how to go about doing that sadly.

I'm not even sure any of that makes any sense.

Anyway, thank you for replying and your insight. It's given me something to think about for sure.

[zazie]

It makes sense. I can see circular thinking in the whole "SI the right way" train of thought. SI done 'right' is defined as SI that gives you relief, and SI that doesn't give you relief is assumed to be not 'right' in some unspecified way.

I read about a behavioral study on rats a while ago. They had three groups of rats: one who got a treat every time they pressed a lever, one who got a treat every third time they pressed, and one who had a lever hooked up to a random number generator, and got a treat after pressing it a completely random number of times. So one time, the rats in the last group might press the lever once and get a treat, and the next time, it might take ten tries.

When they switched the mechanism off, the rats in the first group stopped pressing after a few tries. The rats in the second group took longer, but eventually stopped. The rats in the third group wouldn't stop, but just kept trying more and more, convinced that the reward would come out eventually.

It sounds like SI's a bit like this with you. You get a 'reward' of mental relief sometimes, only it's unpredictable when, so part of you keeps thinking "Try harder, try more", in the hope you'll get what you're seeking. But you're not a rat, and you've got the more sophisticated parts of your brain that can remind you of all the times it doesn't work, remind you that there is nothing you can do to make sure it works, observe the patterns and try to break them, etc. I don't know of any quick and easy ways to do this, but having the rational side of your mind repeatedly challenge irrational beliefs and remind you of evidence to the contrary can work.

[hedgepig]

That does sound familiar certainly. The try harder, try more thing. And it is unpredictable as to whether it will help or not.

I think the 'right' and 'wrong' thing is something I do really need to address. I've spoken to my T. about it in passing and she said it sounded very controlling in a way. And the failure aspect I find so crushing when it's wrong.
I tend to get an idea of what I want to 'achieve' before I start - it's usually very calm and planned carefully, so if I don't manage what I'd set out to do it makes it worse in a way. And then there's the unpredictable nature of whether I will achieve what I meant to and then whether it will provide relief or not.
Thinking it through now, the chances of it working pale in to insignificance against all the chances it wont.

It depends on what I'm feeling as to what sort of relief I seek also. 3 different sorts of cutting, 1 other sort of SI. Although I can work these things out I am sadly lacking in alternatives, and so the almost desperate hope that this time it will work kicks in.

I need to find something else that I know for sure will work, something healthy with which to replace the SI. I'm aware this will take time and effort, so in the mean time I am going to try and keep everything you've said in mind and so when I get the urge I can really think it through and try to talk myself out of it.
In the long term I need to work out where this all stems from in the first place in the hope of resolving it altogether.

I'm not sure whether this is a good plan, but it's the only plan I've got right now.

Thank you for your help and insight zazie. It really has helped me shed some light on things.

[zazie]

It sounds like you've put a lot of time and effort into understanding the reasons behind your SI, and what would feel like relief to you in those particular states. Unfortunately, it's mostly been put into finding unhealthy coping mechanisms, but there's still a lot you can use. If you find something healthy that works as relief for some types of SI urges sometimes, you can start to build the same kind of mental connections that you currently have with SI. And the more you build a connection between things that aren't SI and relief, the more you're going to want to try these other things, because you'll know they can bring relief.

[hedgepig]

Thank you zazie - that sounds a lot more manageable than trying to find one solution to all of it. Also it makes a lot more sense as if I've developed different sorts of SI for different things then it may not be possible to find one alternative for all those triggers.

well - at least I have a place to start! Just have to do some thorough thinking and trying things out I guess. Just short on ideas, but inspiration will come I'm sure. Or I hope.