bus

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

Right now I feel as if I'm waiting for myself to snap, and it's difficult to stand the suspense. Waiting for something to happen is a situation I often dislike (sometimes if I get excited by a novel or movie, I will fast forward to the end just to get out of the tense feeling).

If I hurt myself I would not have to wait anymore.

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

It would bring a sense of power. I guess I equate being able to physically hurt myself with being strong.
It would bring morbid enjoyment of the graphicness of the scene, and fresh scars to replace the ones that turned white.
Loads of guilt for worrying my boyfriend.
The difficulty of hiding bandages etc. from my son.
Possibly having to deal with doctors and questions from T and all that crap.
Some physical risk.

It would take away my fear of that I might hurt myself because it would already have happened.
It would make a big dent in my newfound identity of someone who is trying to stop.

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'm not sure, but I think I want to feel safe. My rational thoughts and my more emotional thoughts really clash here. Intellectually, I get that it's much safer for me to not hurt myself. Emotionally, I have been feeling so much more vulnerable in the past several months when I haven't been cutting. Things get to me, I seem to worry constantly, although I try to not let it show too much. I daydream over and over of my family and friends having accidents. Or think so hard that I'm going to for example miss a train, that even when I'm safely on that train, I feel dread for having missed it in my imagination.

Rationally, I can see that the sense of security I get from SI is false. I don't know that with my heart.

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

It might last for several days, even weeks. If so, I would be likely to do it again and be back in the cycle of SIing.

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?

I can think of several different distractions, that's not a problem. I can endure this for days. But it doesn't much change the situation. Unless waiting will make some change possible in the future that I can't see right now.

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 on one hand feel a certain distant numbness that I feel comfortable in, and on the other very disappointed in myself.
If I go against my feelings and do what is rational, just go about my day, I will probably feel small and worried, and yet proud of myself.

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?

Gah, this is hard.
I really feel like I want to hurt myself, but that's not a very clever solution. I will not do it for now until I can see more clearly.

It's been a long day and so I'm having a bit of trouble formulating actual full thoughts right now, but did want to let you know that I read your post, and hear what your saying about wanting to feel safe. Is there anything else that helps you to feel that way, a bubble bath, cuddling with your bf, doing something special for yourself? I wish you all the best in getting through this time.

i could be completely off... so lemme know if i am.... it sounds to me... like you're anxious about something (feeling like you're going to snap)... & that anxiety is causing the si urges... even though all the rest of you knows that si isn't going to solve anything...
how could you deal with anxiety other than si?

personally... with the 'wanting new scars' bit... it can help to either very carefully keep clothes over them... or to find somewhere safe(eg. public place making sure i have no opportunity to si) & stare at scars until the feeling passes.

& really emotions *do* pass. even when it seems they might not...
sorry things are feeling shaky

Strmdncer and plantt, thank you both for replying.

It's true that I'm anxious about various things, and right now it seems to be very much large issues that are hard to resolve on the spot, like what about the future, what am I going to do with my life, who am I, do I really love anyone and what is love, how can I accept the inevitability of death, and so on. It puts me in a mood where I then worry about every little thing, like right this moment I'm freaked out that I forgot to buy coffee and the jar is not even totally empty.

plantt wrote:how could you deal with anxiety other than si?

I'm not sure. I can do it temporarily. Exercise, housework, keep hands busy like with knitting or computer. Doesn't make it go away though. But I guess while the perfect scenario would be do deal with the cause of anxiety in order to not feel it anymore, when that doesn't seem feasible it's still good enough to endure the feeling and not do things that make life worse...

But I do feel a bit better now after writing this down. It helps to separate the "want to" from the "need to". I think I should try to write more thoughts down and then let go of them, instead of walking around "think-think-think".

Re scars, I went to try some clothes on yesterday, and full-length mirrors are tricky things - that might have set me off a bit. I just now tried a few minutes of staring, and it did help. It's just skin after all. Thanks.