Before

[herebedragons]

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

I'm feeling guilty and overwhelmed because I called to get help today and have set up an appointment with a therapist (in a couple of weeks) though, to be fair I've been wanting to do this for a while now I just have a different reason.

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

Well I've never been in this exact spot as I've never done therapy before. I've only rarely cut out of guilt so sort of a yes and no. Other times when I've wanted to hurt myself out of guilt or a feeling of needing to punish myself I generally did just that.

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

I've talked about it, written about it, watched Dr. Who with my husband, written about why me going to therapy will be good for my family, cleaned a bit

what else can I do? read, sleep, pet a cat if I can find one (we've got four you'd think I'd always have one at the ready)

How do I feel right now?

Right this second I feel fairly calm attending to the task at hand which is typing this out. But I feel like a bad person and I feel like it will be a waste of time and money to do therapy and a waste of the therapists time and taking away from someone who really needs therapy because I'm not even actively suicidal. Heck I haven't even cut in a year now.

How will I feel when I am hurting myself?

Not sure, it's been a while. It would be such a relief after so long of not doing it. Gads it's not getting any easier not to, that kind of pisses me off.

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

Imediately after I expect I'll feel normalized. Generally after I cut I could go about with life and act normal and be calm and handle life better. I miss that sure thing.

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

Well hopefully once I start therapy the therapy can help me deal with it better so I just have to get to that. Hmm pinning a lot on something and at the same time believing it may just be a huge waste of time/money. nothing like being of two minds about a thing.

Do I need to hurt myself?

Absolutely.



psych! yes, I'm 12. *sigh* nope. I'm not actively suicidal (throwing around the whole "I don't deserve air" thing but I'm rational enough to know that my killing myself would hurt my family greatly and the fact that they deserve better than me doesn't mean better than me will show up and ring the bell as soon as my body is cool to take my place and do a better job. Sadly, my family is stuck with me so I need to bring myself up to par.

[herebedragons]

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

It'll be easier to justify therapy.

oh holy crap I was making a dumb joke but it would, wouldn't it? If I could go in looking like I did a year ago I wouldn't wonder if I should really be there.

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

Bring to it- concrete proof that I should get help

take away- the fact that I am getting help out of a desire to improve myself and my lot and not because I am an imminant threat to myself

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?

How do I want to feel about the situation or about hurting myself? I want to stop wanting it. I want to wake up everyday and want to live and not want to hurt myself. I want my thoughts to be completely under control, I want them not to race, I want to stop obsessing. I want to be able to get things done in the kitchen without any bizarre urges. I want to be the kind of wife and mother my family should have. Normal, calm. Well in the short run I will be able to act much more normally and get more done if I hurt myself (if past exeperience is any indicator.) Maybe this is how I am able to do normal. Maybe I do need this. There's something off with me maybe this is just something that fixes it. Isn't the fact that it works kind of proof of that?

That's crap isn't it? It sounds right to me right now though.

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

I don't have a good answer for that now. Right this minute any ammount of relief sounds good.

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've done it and I end up back here. I could write a list as long as my arm of the things I've done over the last year and here I am, I'm right where I was only now I don't even have a tempary relief, I'm worse off than before I stopped cutting (though, not as bad off as when I was on anti anxiety meds so I guess I should count my blessings)

You know why I'm not suicidal any more? Because I can't be. I feel so trapped sometimes. Much of the time I'm glad that I'm not going to kill myself but sometimes I miss the feeling (even if it wasn't true) that I had a way out.

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

Not sure but I may feel defeated tomorow or like I've failed.

If I do something else? Maybe the same as I do now, maybe better, maybe worse.

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 want to go back in time and get help when I was younger so that I would be together now. Or go back in time and kill myself before I got pregnant with my daughter, before I met my husband.

But with my lack of a time travel devise I'm left with helping my daughter with her homework, which I should go do before she falls asleep.

[plantt]

I've done it and I end up back here. I could write a list as long as my arm of the things I've done over the last year and here I am

*nods* it's really frustrating... to know that coping is an ongoing thing... & that even though you can cope continuously for ages... it still gets tough sometimes.
things have changed. you feel intensely suicidal less often. you've not si'ed for ages. you made an appointment for a therapist. etc. those are all signs of progress. of coping in different ways than you have in the past.
i hear you though... it doesn't make it any easier at times for sure. at times it is a matter of coping for 'now'... even though it can feel like that's all that's happened for ages.
how 'bad' would things need to be for someone... before you'd say they 'needed' therapy?
i think... the fact that you're saying you've thought it through & have decided that therapy is something you're willing to try... is proof in & of itself that it's justified. therapy isn't fun. it's not something most people would choose to do simply as a hobby... & if they did then imo they'd definitely need to be there

Isn't the fact that it works kind of proof of that?

no.

If I do something else? Maybe the same as I do now, maybe better, maybe worse.

why not wait? think things through again tomorrow...
hope the homework gets done relatively smoothly

[herebedragons]

Homework was a breeze thanks to my soon to be patented "bribe with candy methood". Soon all schools will be using it! Works like a dream! Dentists will be driving gold plated Catilacs.

You know what makes me sad, and I don't think I am getting off topic because this is partly how I got to this place this time, in real life when I am going downhill I joke and joke that's how I cope, well more how I cover and no one sees through it. No one ever has. I would bet if you told 99% of the people I know that I had problems with depression and such they wouldn't believe it. I'm so funny, I cope so well! The other day someone said something to someone else about how I said the funniest thing and they quoted it and the trouble was it was true, I wasn't being funny. I mean I try to put a funny spin on things, mainly out of habit but it was completely true but no one takes me seriously.

I have, in the past told people point blank that I was lossing it, that I wasn't handling things well, that I was thinking of killng myself, talked openly about a plan and never been taken seriously because of the way I said it. People would just laugh because I say it in a funny way. Will that happen with the therapist?

I know you are right about the therapy, if I were someone else, hell I'd be driving myself to therapy. But I don't have the empathy for myself that I have for other people.

[herebedragons]

why not wait? think things through again tomorrow...

I will, because I'm sure you are being more logical than I am right now.

[herebedragons]

You know one thing that hurting myself would solve is my fear that I will come off as together to this therapist just like I do to other people I meet. This is my chance to finally get some professional help but what if he thinks I'm handling things well? Not to sound full of myself but I come off as very together even to people who know me well. If I go into things with serious injuries he'll know I'm not ok. That's stupid, I know it's stupid but my fears aren't stupid I think that they are fairly justified. The last time I tried to get help from a professional I told her out right in so many words "I can't handle this, I will not be able to handle this if X happens." In her notes she put that I had handled previous problems with appalm and would no doubt handle this new issue with the same level headedness I'd always shown. RIGHT AFTER I TOLD HER THAT I COULDN'T HANDLE IT. (If it matters "IT" was the diagnosis of autism in my daughter that happened dirrectly after me telling her that I knew myself and I knew I couldn't handle a diagnosis of autism.)

But I handled it. I mean outwardly. Though I did end up starting up SI after not having done it for years. And I became suicidal and stayed that way for years. But hey look how well I seem to handle things on the outside!

I don't want that to happen again. I want to be together enough that this guy takes what I say seriously and screwed up enough that he thinks I need help.

[NobodyToYou]

This may be a bit unusual, but why don't you warn the T that you tend to joke about serious things and that they need to be aware that you might mean it. You could even print the posts and leave it with them, if you don't feel up to talking about it when you first meet...
One thing I wanted to point out to you (which I am sure you already know) is that therapy isn't just for people in crisis...it is for anybody who feels they need to talk to someone about something going on in their lives. There are so many different reasons people go...I haven't heard of a bad reason yet, although I am sure some creative person could find one.
From my personal experience, I am SO glad I went to therapy when I didn't have a "real" reason. I was stressed about school, but nothing was really bad. But things got bad...and if I hadn't already known the T, I might not have gotten any help at all. And I could not have gotten through the past several months without help. So even if things are ok right now, there is nothing wrong with building your support network. If you already have a good relationship with the T, he/she will be more helpful if things fall apart. Or you may be able to help someone else, by knowing a good T to send them to if they need it.

[plantt]

*nods* i agree... one thing to do would be to simply tell the therapist upfront.
unfortunately with time my therapist knows i do that. that often... it's the days when i refuse to be serious & everything out of my mouth is sarcasm or joking... that i'm often needing to be serious most. it's now termed 'avoidance' & 'self-invalidation' & i'm not allowed to do it(be sarcastic too often)
i can very much relate to coming across as having 'nothing wrong'. as much as i do believe that often it's the most effective thing to do... rather than go around 'hi, i feel suicidal today. wanna hear why?' in public or something... i think it's also true that there needs to be places & people in my life where i feel comfortable discussing 'how things really are' because otherwise it is highly invalidating to my own experiences.
i've also had people tell me 'wow, you're always cheerful. i love working around you' once... i had written out things seriously... & let someone read them... & her reply was 'you're just joking. you don't have problems' & other such comments.
i'd be easily bribed with candy!! glad homework got done

[pretty]

I was going to say what has already been said - tell your t that you appear to be coping, but really aren't on the inside.

I tend to be very sarcastic to cover how I'm feeling. Then I'll drop in a 'I'd be better off dead' comment and mean it. I think we all probably do it, if that's any comfort.

[herebedragons]

One thing I wanted to point out to you (which I am sure you already know) is that therapy isn't just for people in crisis...it is for anybody who feels they need to talk to someone about something going on in their lives

.

I guess I knew that sort of but just about everyone I've known who has gone to therapy has done so either because they were a threat to themselves or they were court ordered to do so. Within my family therapy is looked at as being totally self indulgent and usually unnessisary. (May go a bit towards explaining our high rate of suicide.) Paying someone to listen to you talk about your problems! You aren't supposed to talk about your problems, you're supposed to suck it up!

My husband told me last night after we went to bed that he thinks therapy is a good thing so that helps me feel quite a bit better.

I still want to cut but I'm not completely consumed by it like I was last night.

Telling the T upfront that I use humour as a defense mech is a good idea. I'm not sure how therapy works, didn't occur to me to just dirrectly tell him that.

I don't want you to think I constantly go around joking about being in crisis. For the most part I do think that the ability to carry on normally when I'm off kilter is a good thing. It's when I look back at my life as a whole I can see maybe a dozen times where I've sort of reached out for help and then gotten laughed at, not to any fault of the person I'm reaching out to but my own because the only way I could express myself honestly was by joking about things....which, in it's way is dishonest because I suppose joking about killing yourself has the understood implication that you wouldn't ACTUALLY kill yourself. (Not that everytime it's been about suicide but that's just a good example.) In fact more than a few times I've joked my way out of people worrying about me when I didn't want them to. Actually that's my usual m.o. for getting people off my scent if I think they suspect something is wrong.

Hmmm...maybe the fact that I use the same methood to try to keep people from knowing any thing is wrong as I do to try and let people know something is wrong is problematic.

[Hazel W]

Just on the therapy thing, I still see one, and I'm very far from in crisis. I find it extremely helpful, I'm still working through things, but mainly for maintenance (for want of a better word) at this stage. And I don't see myself giving it up. Can relate to the family thing though, my own are similar.

Have to agree with everyone who got here before me about telling your t that you use humour as a defense mechanism is a good idea. I know it's something that I do (or did anyway) a lot. Fortunately I've been blessed with an excellent t who will call me on it the second it happens. Talk to you t, explain these things, it's what he's there for.

Take care.