before (si trigs)

tools to help you assess your urges before you give in to them, and to help you understand and learn from slips after they happen. by posting here, you're saying that you are serious about exploring the feelings behind your self-harm in depth, whether you're ready to stop hurting yourself or not. to request posting access, click usergroups above and join before and after.

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herebedragons
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before (si trigs)

Post by herebedragons » Fri Jul 15, 2005 7:09 pm

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


I'm hoping that the feeling will go away if I hurt myself

what will hurting myself bring to the situation? what will it take away from the situation?
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?
if hurting myself seems like my best option right now, how long will the relief it brings last? what will i do then?
I'm feeling kind of hopeless right now. Yes if I hurt myself that relief won't last forever but neither will the relief from anything else, if indeed I could find some other way to find relief. And what will I do then? Does anything I do matter in the long run?
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?
wash dishes
laundry
take the kids to the library

how long will that change last? don't know, what will I do then? probably keep plugging along but I get tired of just plugging along. I'm starting to wonder what the point of my life is if all I do is get by.
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 have no idea either way. I'm having enough trouble naming how I feel now much less trying to predict how I mgiht feel in the future.

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?
what I really want to do right now is cut my wrists and it seems like a more controled less damaging SI would be better than that. I don't want to kill myself, mind, well maybe part of me does but mostly I want to do a lot of damage and that's not a godd thing so think maybe doing something smaller and safer would be better. I think maybe if I do something small that would get it out of my system but if I don't then I'll just keep obcessing and the longer I obsess the more likely I am to do more harm to myself if I do give in to these urges.


edited to say if you reply please do not give me permission to hurt myself or suggest that maybe, in this case, it would be the best thing to do. Historically when a person has told me that "if it helps" or what have you it's ok that has not been a good thing for me.
Let me think about the people who I care about the most. And how when they fail or disappoint me, I still love them, I still give them chances, and I still see the best in them. Let me extend that generosity to myself.” — Ze Frank

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Post by herebedragons » Fri Jul 15, 2005 7:20 pm

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

I'm not really sure, well I know that I want to si in a smaller way to avoid how I really want to si but that's not an answer because there has to be a reason for why I want to do what I'm trying to avoid doing.

holy convoluted sentences batman!
Have I been here before? What did I do to deal with it? How did I feel then?
I've been here before. Often times I have sied in a way that is not the way that I want to because I felt like by employing a different methood I would do better at damage control. Generally this has been true.
What I have done to ease this discomfort so far? What else can I do that won't hurt me?
Well I've been feeling low for days and over the course of several days have done a lot of different things. read, played with the kids, done crafts with the kids, watched tv, gone online, posted in place, cleaned, tried various other means of distraction
How do I feel right now?
really really low. I feel like hurting myself, I don't want to die but I really would like to be unconscious for a while.

How will I feel when I am hurting myself?
I'm not sure.
How will I feel after hurting myself? How will I feel tomorrow morning?


I hope I would feel better, calmer less obsessive
Can I avoid this stressor, or deal with it better in the future?


I don't know, it's internal it comes and it goes I want to avoid it but haven't been able to work out how
Do I need to hurt myself?
no but I'm not sure if not hurting myself right now is the safest thing to do. wow that sounds weird. no I don't need to hurt myself.
Let me think about the people who I care about the most. And how when they fail or disappoint me, I still love them, I still give them chances, and I still see the best in them. Let me extend that generosity to myself.” — Ze Frank

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Post by plantt » Sat Jul 16, 2005 12:51 am

wash dishes
laundry
take the kids to the library

those sound much safer than hurting yourself.

i'd definitely not tell you that it's ok to si. or that it might be the best thing to do. i don't believe either of those.

i do know how it can feel that it's simply a matter of plugging along... & just continuing to do that.
it's hard to believe that things will ever change much. especially when you're exhausted because of all the plugging along.

I don't know, it's internal it comes and it goes I want to avoid it but haven't been able to work out how
--might be worth really thinking it through & getting ideas about... have you discussed that with your therapist or on bus? if so could you do so again & maybe get different replies...?

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Post by herebedragons » Sat Jul 16, 2005 5:09 pm

I've discussed it a bit with my therapist (but then I've only seen her twice and once was an intake thing so we haven't gotten in depth) and I think her answers were a bit pat and then we moved on to other things. This next time (Which won't be for another month or possibly sometime in September depending upon if I can get someone to watch the kiddos). Anyhoo about si she said basically that people just do that when they don't know what else to do and that I should hold an ice cube or try snapping a rubber band.

This was helpful yesterday to a degree because I did the ice cube thing, though she wasn't specific about how long one is supposed to do that and I hurt my hand a bit. I'm not sure if I would count it as SI because I was told to do it and thought I couldn't acutally cause any damage with it.

When I talked to her about why I go so quickly from point A to wanting to kill myself she decided that was because my mom died when I was young and then I got a healthier "better" mom and so now she thinks that I feel that the sollution to a "broken" mother ( ME) is for that mother to die and be replaced. This is a take I never would have come up with on my own. I think that quickly going to suicide as a sollution may have more to do with the strong history of suicide in my family but what do I know.

At any rate I did not purposely SI last night and am a bit better today.

Thanks for your reply.
Let me think about the people who I care about the most. And how when they fail or disappoint me, I still love them, I still give them chances, and I still see the best in them. Let me extend that generosity to myself.” — Ze Frank

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