bus

how will this situation or feeling change if i hurt myself?
nothing in the situation will change....I don't know what I am feeling now or what I want to feel...I just want to cut anyway.

what will hurting myself bring to the situation? what will it take away from the situation?
it will...it will...make the stupid urge go away. It will take away...nothing, really.

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 don't know. Can't figure out what I am feeling now. Can't see anything in the long run. Don't know where I am going or where I want to go.

if hurting myself seems like my best option right now, how long will the relief it brings last? what will i do then?
Have no idea. Probably cut again.

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 am posting. I have been delaying/distracting by surfing the internet. I could clean the house. Nothing changes the situation. There is no situation. Just urges...and they aren't stopping.

how will i feel tomorrow if i hurt myself? how will i feel tomorrow if i do the other thing i came up with?
I will feel...I don't know. I don't think I am doing this very well today.

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 cut. I know that doesn't mean I have to. I know it probably isn't the best choice. But I want to...and none of my reasons not to seem very important or even relevant right now.

none of my reasons not to seem very important or even relevant right now.

What are they? Sometimes if I write them out it helps. Makes the reasons more concrete, gives them more weight some how to see them listed out. So what are yours?

Wow, that was a quick reply...
SI is not a good long term coping skill. Long term, it makes things worse.
SI makes me feel weak. I hate being weak.
If I keep SIing, someone will find out.
I don't want more scars.
I don't want to scare people.
I don't want SI to mess up my chances at getting a good job.

I know there are more, but I can't think of them right now.
I know these should be relevant...especially the first couple. But right now, they don't seem to matter. None of these things is likely to get worse because of one episode of cutting today. I won't get caught, it won't be much more scarring than I already have, I already think I am a weak person, and I don't know if it will hurt anything in the long term...it may not help, but it may not hurt either.
I guess arguing with my reasons probably isn't very productive, is it? But it just delayed me a couple minutes...and I did have to think about my reasons...maybe it will help.

The thing about thinking "Just this one time" or thinking that it's just a little thing is that life is just made up of a lot of little things for the most part. It's kind of like mind the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves. I have no idea if that makes any sense.

Sure you might have one isolated episode of si today. That's possible, that you would just si today and do it again. But do you think it's likely that if you si now it will be that much easier to justify the next time? Maybe it won't, but I know for me it just gets easier and easier the more I do it.

Oh dear. In writing another post, some feelings have surfaced and now I don't want them here, but I can't get rid of them. Feeling a bit more triggered, but probably not any more likely to SI than before. But doing the other set of Before questions.

Why do I feel I need to hurt myself? What has brought me to this point?
I am ignoring too many feelings. I am pretending they don't exist, and then I really don't feel them. Until now...and I suddenly realized that I am sad and lonely and I am angry with myself for being sad and lonely. I am sure there are more feelings in there somewhere, but I am really not wanting to look. I don't want to find them or have to deal with them.

Have I been here before? What did I do to deal with it? How did I feel then?
Yes, I ignore things fairly often. I just do whatever needs to be done. If the feelings start making me too weak, I tell myself to shut up and stop whining and get on with life. And then I usually can...but SI is often helpful in doing that, and I am trying not to use it right now.

What I have done to ease this discomfort so far? What else can I do that won't hurt me?
Posting. While it is supposed to help, right now my discomfort is going way way up. I don't want to deal with feelings. I don't want to have any. I have eaten something (which isn't really a good thing as it was not something I needed and I am already fat) and I am considering trying to take a nap...if I can sleep.

How do I feel right now?
Don't want to answer that. Putting fingers in ears and closing eyes and singing to self so I can't hear the question!

How will I feel when I am hurting myself?
calm. The feelings (icky things) will go away. I will be a nice, productive, flat blah.

How will I feel after hurting myself? How will I feel tomorrow morning?
in the near future-nice, productive, flat blah. Tomorrow...tired. Grouchy. Maybe a bit more depressed, but maybe still flat.

Can I avoid this stressor, or deal with it better in the future?
Trying hard to avoid it (feelings), but I know that this is not the healthiest way to get through life. I know I can't do this forever, but I can't face them right now. They make me way too triggered.

Do I need to hurt myself?
no. yes. no. yes....no, but i WANT to. AARRRGGGGGG!

I didn't make it. Blah...
And yet, I feel so much less of the icky feelings.
Now, just feeling a headache.
I will do an after later...I think I am too close to it to try now...
I feel a bit bad for posting the Before...I wonder if I had really decided to cut before I posted anything...if I did, then I just wasted people's time. Sorry. Going away to do something else for a while.

I'm sorry you didn't make it. Don't feel bad for posting a before, you haven't wasted anyone's time.

You didn't waste anyone's time. Come back when you've calmed down from the si, when you've recovered, and look at it again. You've got a chance now to look at what caused you to slip, and to work on that. It's a chance to see what's going on and change that.

I'm sorry you're hurting. Hang in there, keep fighting.

have you taken care of your physiacl wounds? if not, go do that now. we'll wait.
well enough

what had happened just before?
I was posting stuff...I was feeling urgy for no reason. I posted a Before...then I posted something else that brought a lot of feelings to the surface and posted another before...then I SIed.

what were you thinking and feeling?
I had been urgy anyway. But by the time I SIed, I wanted the feelings to go away. I don't like them being there and I certainly don't like them interrupting my plans.

why did you end up hurting yourself then instead of some other time? was there an event that was teh final straw? what was it?
I was in the house alone, which doesn't happen too often right now. I wanted to...don't really know why then rather than a few minutes earlier or a few minutes later.

how did the situation get to the final straw stage? trace it back through the events thatled up to the last event. look for some point at which you could have made a different decisiona nd not arrived at the final straw.
I could have tried harder. I could have slowed down...I could have taken a nap first instead of taking it after SIing. I could have stayed online longer. Many different options, I just didn't use them.

were there outside factors like drugs, alsohol, being off your meds, lack of sleep, etc? can you address those in the future? how?
I was/am tired. That is all. Can't really fix it, as I can't seem to sleep good right now.

what other ways of coping did you try besides self-harm? how well did they work?
Posting, distracting myself, playing computer games, eating something. They really didn't work too well except posting. And it did too much...it started to stir things up too much and I didn't know what to do with the feelings it brought out.

in retrospect, are there coping methods that you now realize might have helped? what were they?
sleep should have come first, rather than SI. And if I had just tried harder, I could have made it. I just didn't...

name at least two things you will do to help yourself remember those coping methods if you end up in this situation again.
I will remember. I always want to sleep. As for the trying harder...I don't know how to make myself remember that at the time. I mean...I know it. It just doesn't help when I am in the middle of it.

how do you feel about the situation that led to self-harm now? is it resolved? if not, what are some steps you might take toward resolution?
I guess so...I don't know. There wasn't really a situation to start with.

are you likely to be in that emotional place again? how will you recognize it when you're in that situation?
urges without much feeling attached? Those seem to tell me I am feeling something but that it is too far under the surface for me to know what it is...other than the urge to SI.

what will you try before you resort to self-harm if you're in that situation again? list three specific things you will commit to trying.
I will take a nap.
I will try posting again (unless I end up feeling too guilty about this one, and then I won't.)
I will try to do something different...change the task I am working on or the room I am in...something to add a bit of variety.

what had happened just before?
I was posting stuff...I was feeling urgy for no reason. I posted a Before...then I posted something else that brought a lot of feelings to the surface and posted another before...then I SIed.

No reason? You talk about feelings though, and, as someone who could win a gold medal for suppression, I have to say it's sounding like there was something, but you just didn't know how to describe it except for urgey...please try:

what were you thinking and feeling?
I had been urgy anyway. But by the time I SIed, I wanted the feelings to go away. I don't like them being there and I certainly don't like them interrupting my plans.

My T always says "I asked you about your feelings, not your urge" when I try to get away with this. "But I felt urgey!" I say. Well, unfortuanely an urge is not a feeling persay, it's a desire to act. So what does urgey mean for you? As I mentioned before, I'm champion at not knowing what feelings I've got going on. So try paying attention to your body. Especially your neck and stomach. Did you chest feel tight? Were you breathing differently? Headache? How were you moving? Were you shaking or did you feel heavy?

in retrospect, are there coping methods that you now realize might have helped? what were they?
sleep should have come first, rather than SI. And if I had just tried harder, I could have made it. I just didn't...

You've hurt yourself once today, don't beat up on yourself anymore, okay? You tried hard, and you didn't make it, so it's easy to forget that, and feel like you should have tried harder. Sometimes you can't just white knuckle your way through an urge, especially when you are having a hard time figuring out why it happened. If you start to feel bad about SIing for too long, you will slip into other feelings, which will make you want to SI. then you will feel bad again. It's one of those vicious cycle things.

what will you try before you resort to self-harm if you're in that situation again? list three specific things you will commit to trying.
I will take a nap.
I will try posting again (unless I end up feeling too guilty about this one, and then I won't.)
I will try to do something different...change the task I am working on or the room I am in...something to add a bit of variety.[/quote]
Please post. You never need to feel guilty about it.

---

Okay. You don't like describing feeligs. Me too. In fact, it makes me frustrated and insecure. This particular post in sourcebook became my home for some time:

viewtopic.php?t=6769&start=0

My T spent months working me to the point that I can describe my feelings in any coherent way. For several years of my life, when I said the word "weird" I was referring to basically any emotion outside of happy or bored. So believe me, I get it. But it's worth it to work through. It's so much easier, so much more possible, to work through your urges when you know why you are experiencing them. You see, most coping mechanisms work for a specific thing. For me, when I am feeling alienated, I will post on bus because it gives me a sense of belonging. When I am angry, I will punch my bed. But if I tried to punch my bed when I was feeling alienated, it wouldn't work very well. So knowing your feelings really helps you know what you can do to work through them.

take care,
JoAnna[/url]

It sounds like you're being really hard on yourself about not trying enough.

Just looking back at your second before answers, do you think that looking at ways to experience your emotions more, might be useful? Could the sudden awareness of things when you're so used to suppressing emotion have been the 'last straw' you couldn't quite define?

Thanks to everyone for their input...
There is a lot I need to process but I can't do it right now. I don't have the energy, time, or privacy to figure out what is going on with me now. In about a week, I should be able to do more...and it won't be too much longer until I can talk to my T again, which should also help.
Thanks again.