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This is a post about an urge I'm feeling now, but it's more about the way I am starting to again see SI as something that can help me. Since January, I have been SI free with 3 small slip ups. All of those slip ups happened recently, at a very stressful time, and I am worried that giving in on those few occasions is why cutting jumps into my mind as a solution when I'm feeling bad, or shaken, or confused.

Take this morning. I had a letter from a bank about an overdrawn account I had 'forgotten'. I put that in quotes because I don't think I'm being honest when I say I forgot it, I think I buried it. Anyway. It was one of those 'pay us now or we will sue' letters, and the first thing I did after reading it was stick all the long nails on my left hand into the back of my right hand and hold really, really tight. It gave me something other than panic to focus on. And whilst it kept the edge off, it's not enough. For the first time in months, I am sitting here trying to force myself not to go to Boots, buy some tools and use them to help.


how will this situation or feeling change if i hurt myself?
The situation won't change at all, but I believe I will feel calmer and more in control.

what will hurting myself bring to the situation? what will it take away from the situation?
It will bring me some feeling of control. It will let me do enough to get through today without screaming. But it will be a huge backward step, and it will make me feel guilty and weak in the long run.

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 want to feel like this is fixed, that I have control of my life, that I am a functioning adult who can deal with her problems, that I am not a useless idiot who creates crises for herself through laziness and stupidity. I don't know how hurting myself would help with that in the long run, unless I accepted that hurting myself would be how I coped for the rest of my life. I know, logically, that if I cut now, the control feeling will last all of a few days, and then I'll feel even more flawed.

if hurting myself seems like my best option right now, how long will the relief it brings last? what will i do then?
I kind of answered that question in the last paragraph. As for what I will do when the relief goes... I don't know. I want to cut because I know it will let me do today. I don't know how else to deal with feeling like this.

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?
As for changing the situation, I did that already. I called the debt team and made a payment offer, organised a standing order and asked to review in 3 months. That's not the point. The point is that I let this situation get like this in the first place. I always do. I don't identify problems in their beginning and deal with them then, I pretend they aren't there and hide them away until they're huge and I have no options left. I don't know how to change. I don't know how to be any more organised. I don't feel like an adult, and I should. I'm 23, I'm incredibly in love with my fiance, who I live with, I have a degree and an OK job with potential, etc etc etc. But I keep thinking that everyone is looking at me and laughing at the silly little girl who's trying to kid herself and everyone else that she's a grownup.

how will i feel tomorrow if i hurt myself? how will i feel tomorrow if i do the other thing i came up with?
Probably still pretty good until mid morning, at which point I will be overcome with self loathing and disappointment and have to choose whether to SI to deal with that.
It's possible that by tomorrow I will feel better because I called the bank and started to fix things there, but it is equally likely that I will panic about how to afford the repayments (even though I know I can, it's a reasonable amount), panic that other things will be left unpaid because of it, refuse to look in the postbox or open any mail for unless it's more stuff like that...

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?
It's like there are two me's answering this one. One of me really wants to go and get some tools and cut until I feel better. The other me wants to walk out of work, go and find Michal wherever he is working, and go home and lie under the duvet with him all day. Can't do the second one, shouldn't do the first one, need to do something.

I feel like everything could go wrong. I think because things went so right- graduated, got job, MICHAL, my mum got so much better- and I haven't been used to them being right, it feels temporary. I worry so much about so many things. I'm scared I will never be able to handle being an adult.

Spoof,

Wow. I can really relate to the feelings you have of worrying that you're just pretending to be an adult. The lack of control (whether percieved or actual) can be extremely scary and triggering.

I admire you for doing the responsible thing and taking care of the debt problem instead of cutting. I have a fiancé, Ed, and when I feel triggered, all I want to do is find him and have him hold me until the stress goes away, even if it's not practical or possible for him to do so.

You mentioned that you feel the point is that you let things get to such a state in the first place, instead of dealing with them before they ballooned. Have you thought about why you let things slide? In my case, I ignore things or let them slide because I forget, or because I irrationally hope that they will just go away.

The only semblance of advice that I have for that (and I'm not sure if you even wanted advice, so if this is unwanted, you can just skip this paragraph) is that you could get a To Do list of sorts. You could start out by listing everything (and I mean everything) that you feel like you have to do. Then, you could arrange the list by order of importance/timeliness, and decide to tackle one thing a day. That gives you more control over the situation, so you might be less likely to want to SI.

Personally, control is very important to me, and I always feel better if I think I'm in control, be it through a clean room, a To Do list, or something else.

I'm glad that you posted this. You've caused me to think. And I'm very proud of you for avoiding SI, and for handling the notice from the bank.

Soft hugs (if okay),
Cat

I too am proud of you for handling the notice.

You know what? That was a very adult thing to do, you dealth with the prompting issue behind the urge, and though it didn't help the urge- it was the right thing to do.

At 23 you are not excepted to be a totally independent adult yet. You are new at the whole adult thing, and it's okay if you feel worried and have difficulties.

I agree with Talia, control is a huge issue for me as well. I think the list was a good idea. The biggest thing that helped me was to take my to-do list and divide it into really small sections.

JoAnna

You mentioned that you feel the point is that you let things get to such a state in the first place, instead of dealing with them before they ballooned. Have you thought about why you let things slide?

I thought about that a lot last night. I came up with a few possible answers.
Maybe I do it because subconsciously I am trying to create big problems in my life. Maybe I am so used to living in a crisis-crash-recover-crisis cycle that I don't know how to live another way, and I manipulate things in my life so that continues.
Maybe I am just really bad at being organised. Or good at being lazy.
Maybe I never learned to accept that financial/ legal/ ect stuff is my responsibility. My dad works for a building society, so growing up I always knew that someone else would fix that kind of thing.

I don't think it's the first one, and not just because that's the least flattering explanation. Because I enjoy being happy, I love it when life just meanders along with nothing out of the ordinary happening, I feel good when I think about areas of my life where I HAVE been responsible and organised things. I don't like crises and I hate feeling like I did yesterday. The second one is a strong possibility, and in that case I either have to learn to be an organised, non lazy person, or to live with it. I think the third one has a lot to do with my behaviour, though. I'm not blaming my parents, I'm blaming my way of relying on all the support and help they gave me and not bothering to learn that sometimes you have to do it yourself.

I'm going to try the to- do list. That's a good idea. It's a little scary to think of everything I need to do being written down in black and white, but I can see how it will help.

For the record, I didn't cut.

Spoof,

That's good that you thought through the reasons why you might let things slide. It's a very good step. And I'm very proud of you for not cutting. It can be very tempting, and you're very strong to overcome the urge.

Hugs,
Cat