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1. how will this situation or feeling change if i hurt myself?
I will get a break from fighting the urge to hurt myself.
I will maybe become more numb for a little while.
I will feel less fragmented.
I will feel more honest by acting out my thoughts.

My boyfriend will become worried and upset.

2. what will hurting myself bring to the situation? what will it take away from the situation?
It will bring tangible physical pain and physical injury to focus on, something that can be seen and understood without putting words to it.
It will bring a feeling of security as I don't have to wait for it to happen if it already happened.
It will bring the risk that I find out after the fact that I did too much and should get medical care, which means strange people poking me and asking too many uncomfortable questions.
It will bring having to explain to my boyfriend and intense guilt for putting him through this when he hasn't done anything wrong.
It will bring yucky questions from my t.
It will bring a scar that I can see and touch.

It will take away some guilt about not being punished enough for being such a disgusting excuse for a human being.
It will take away some of the chaos in my mind.

3. 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 think I want to feel at peace with myself and content with my choices. But that seems way too farfetched... what I actually want right now is escape from feeling and thinking and generally existing. Or something that pushes me hard enough in some direction that I don't feel so confused and conflicted.
Hurting myself would put me closer to the short term wish, and certainly not any closer to the long term wish.

4. if hurting myself seems like my best option right now, how long will the relief it brings last? what will i do then?
Could be a few days. Although the bad effects will hit me almost immediately, too. Basically I would be trading one set of discomfort for another. Then probably gradually end up in a similar spot again, and hurt myself again.

5. 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?
Go take a shower, get dressed and go for a walk.
Do the dishes and sort the pile of papers in the kitchen.
Call a friend later (though not sure about that one as she has enough on her mind already)
Go to workout class in afternoon
Surf the net for some college info for my son
Paint
Watch sitcoms on tv
Eat for comfort
Get drunk (very likely not going to happen, I really don't feel like)

Except for the last couple of ideas, they will be neutral or constructive things to do. They will keep me busy for now and not make things worse. They are not likely to change much, except maybe make me feel ok for doing something useful (though that is a bit double-edged atm). As soon as I'm done with any of them, I will have to look for another distraction.

6. 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 hurt myself, I will feel either very numb, or guilty, relieved, sick and satisfied. If I do other stuff I will feel proud, frustrated, hopeless, anxious, responsible.

7. 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 will go do stuff that I know logically is neutral/constructive, even if it doesn't make me feel better right now.
I will make a deal with myself to not SI before my next T appointment tuesday, and try to be honest with him about the thoughts and plans I'm having, whether I decide to act on them later or not.

i'm interested to hear that self-injury helps you deal with mental chaos and feelings of fragmentation. i think i've experienced something like that, but i've never quite articulated it. do you have a sense of why it helps you with those issues? just some random thoughts from my own experience— is it the resolution to an internal battle about whether or not to go through with it? a concrete place to focus, away from mental and emotional ambiguity and uncertainty? something else entirely?

i hope the distractions are helping, and you're doing okay.

dragonfly

is it the resolution to an internal battle about whether or not to go through with it? a concrete place to focus, away from mental and emotional ambiguity and uncertainty?

I would say yes to both. My SI tends to only rarely be a spur of the moment act. More frequently, it is something that builds up for days or weeks, with a huge amount of internal conflict over it. Kind of like the classic comic strip image of an angel and a devil battling it out on your shoulders.

Then it can seem as if some particular event set the SI off. Either something upsetting happening, or something that is positive in itself but stirs up emotions (enjoyable but intense social occasions such as visiting friends or trips are big triggers). But I rarely actually do anything unless I have had the idea in my head for some time already. It is a positive thing in that it does give me some time to try to divert myself from this course of action. The downside is that getting over a momentary impulse doesn't make it noticably easier the next day, as long as the basic urge is still there.

One aspect of it is that I find it hard to totally identify with either the survival impulses or the destructive impulses within me. I can "see" a part of me arguing for how to stay safe, and another wanting me to self-destruct, but I find it hard to be in either position. Often I feel like a bystander watching a fight, and after a while I don't care who wins as long as they just shut up for a while and leave me alone.

Apart from the feelings of guilt, which are anyway mainly concerned with negative effects my actions could have on other people, what I get out of hurting myself is probably to some extent the shift of focus from internal to external. One reason it's hard for me to always keep my SI at a physically mild level is that larger injuries require more effort to care for, it's some form of distraction from thoughts. And having some nurse or pdoc make snide remarks at me is easier to take than just hearing it in my head. Even making my boyfriend upset, which is something I don't want, gives me something external to worry about.

So in theory having more real life problems to deal with should make me want to SI less. Too bad it doesn't seem to work that way in practice. Things are a lot more complex I guess.

Lately I have felt a disturbing lack of words. I think that contributes to make physical expressions seem attractive. It maybe doesn't look like it, considering how many words I'm using here right now , but all this talking is a way to try to evade some dark scary undefined area in myself that I don't understand and can't articulate, and still can't get away from. It's not really a new thing, comes and goes...

I'm still afloat. Didn't talk to friend or paint or drink, did the other things.

Thank you for responding and for questions.

Stellaria wrote:One aspect of it is that I find it hard to totally identify with either the survival impulses or the destructive impulses within me. I can "see" a part of me arguing for how to stay safe, and another wanting me to self-destruct, but I find it hard to be in either position. Often I feel like a bystander watching a fight, and after a while I don't care who wins as long as they just shut up for a while and leave me alone.

wow. you put that really well. it spoke to me. i also find myself in that situation of eternal indecision about whether i want to be healthy or destructive. and sometimes i think it would make things so much easier if i just gave up on the "healthy" side and plunged into destruction, because then at least i wouldn't be living in the middle.

i've been thinking a lot lately about the issue of living with contradictions. can i simultaneously see myself as both capable and struggling, as both gifted and flawed? i think i have a tendency to want things to be one or the other.

i'm glad you're still afloat. i'm wishing you the strength to keep going.

dragonfly

silverdragonfly wrote: i also find myself in that situation of eternal indecision about whether i want to be healthy or destructive. and sometimes i think it would make things so much easier if i just gave up on the "healthy" side and plunged into destruction, because then at least i wouldn't be living in the middle.

I have certainly entertained those thoughts, too. But somehow I don't quite feel that it's a decision I can make, as I don't experience the healthy side as completely under my control. As if some of my pro-survival choices are not really made by me. At times, I am utterly annoyed with myself for doing things like eating healthy or throwing out pills intended for an od or taking care of the relation to my b/f, as I fear that it will make the destructive side attack, but can't bring myself to not do the positive thing. And at other times, it's destructive things I feel compelled to do, even when I see there are healthier options.

And now I think I'm a freak who should go crawl under a rock.

No, it's still good to look at it, it helps me become aware of what is going on. Thank you for talking to me.

I suspect that learning how to live with contradictions is a very big step, and something that many people struggle with in some form (not just us "people with issues" )