Before____

[tzanti]

Warning: SI and Self-Hate Stuff















Before You Self-Harm
write down the shadow that's hiding behind the urge. look at it. ask yourself:


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

I will think more clearly. I will become more patient.

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

It will bring clarity and stability. It will take away confidence, self-worth and any sense of achievement. It will take away all feelings of being able to cope.

* 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?

It will only last a few minutes, but I won't remember why I did it. It will cushion me from the stuff I am obviously completely failing to deal with.

* 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?

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

* 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 feel different. I don't want to be frightened. I don't know what else I can do.



urges aren't necessarily the enemy. they happen for reasons, and they're an expression of a desire to stay alive and stay sane and keep coping. remember that.

More Before Questions To Answer

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

I am angry that I can't do something that I should be able to do. I am angry that I don't remember how I did it before, and that I keep doing it wrong. It has taken me a long time to accept that I am thick, but I still don't like the fact.

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

Yes. I hit. I felt stupid and scared and worthless.

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

Screaming works sometimes, but it is a very public thing. I am a very private person, so screaming often results in more hitting. I can write my journal, but that is just a vain exercise in self-hate. It makes me cry and makes me hate myself even more than normal. But it isn't hitting. Sometimes I can stop hitting when I don't want to stop. Then the Ice Cube thing works quite well. But it only works to stop me continuing, not to stop me in the first place.

* How do I feel right now?

Very upset, very tired, very angry, very scared, very threatened.

* How will I feel when I am hurting myself?

I won't feel anything, until I get overwhelmed by the pain of hitting.

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

I feel drained and worthless. I feel like I am at the very bottom of a deep hole, and that all I can do is to climb out of it. Tomorrow will feel just like today. Days have very little to choose between them anymore.

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

I don't really understand what it is.

* Do I need to hurt myself?

I don't know.



Remember you don't have to answer all the questions if you don't feel up to it.


This isn't really before, it's in a gap because I managed to stop myself after I started today. I'm trying not to start again today. I'm just sat here typing and crying.

[Smeagol]

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

I will think more clearly. I will become more patient.

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

It will bring clarity and stability. It will take away confidence, self-worth and any sense of achievement. It will take away all feelings of being able to cope.

Why will hurting yourself enable you to think more clearly? Is it that self-injury calms you down, for example? Can you think of anythign else which might calm you down?

* 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 feel different. I don't want to be frightened. I don't know what else I can do.

What are you frightened of? How were you feeling? Have you tried using any of the strategies in <a href="http://buslist.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=34500">this</a> thread?

I am angry that I can't do something that I should be able to do. I am angry that I don't remember how I did it before, and that I keep doing it wrong. It has taken me a long time to accept that I am thick, but I still don't like the fact.

It sounds like you are frustrated with yourself. I can empathise with that, but not being able to do something doesn't make you stupid. Why do you think that you are thick? If you compare yoruself to others then there will always be someone smarter than you, but that doesn't mean that you are stupid. And even if it's true that you're not academically very intelligent, that doesn't make you a bad person. That just means that your strengths lie in other directions. Brains aren't evrything. And I can say that, because I'm an academic. Brains are meant to be my stock in trade.

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

Yes. I hit. I felt stupid and scared and worthless.

What were you afraid of? Would it have helped to have made a list of positive features about you?

Screaming works sometimes, but it is a very public thing. I am a very private person, so screaming often results in more hitting. I can write my journal, but that is just a vain exercise in self-hate. It makes me cry and makes me hate myself even more than normal. But it isn't hitting. Sometimes I can stop hitting when I don't want to stop. Then the Ice Cube thing works quite well. But it only works to stop me continuing, not to stop me in the first place.

Could you try writing just three things you like about yourself? It sounds like the problem you need to address is the self-hate; can you think of any ways to deal with that?

* How do I feel right now?

Very upset, very tired, very angry, very scared, very threatened.

Why did you feel scared and threatened?

I hope you felt better soon. Take care.

[tzanti]

I wasn't going to answer any of this til I was done with work for today. But it's rattling round my brain so...

I have an appalling memory, probably in part due to my particular facet of SI, but I don't know. I've got a good mathematical and technical mind, when it works, but I tned to forget details and little things in the process I just figured out. So I spend ages solving every problem from the ground up. This is really frustrating, and sometimes I try to shortcut it and just repeat something, but forget something important and wind up in the quagmire again. That's really frustrating. That tends to trigger things about the time I realise that it doesn't work. Afterwards, things get much clearer.

I can't quite get the words to explain *thick* so I'll leave it.

I've only the list since I joined. Some of it will help I know, such as the Ice Cube thing. The 'self-congratulation' and 'mutual appreciation' things I have a really hard time with. I don't like praise, particularly from strangers, it feels false and unwelcome, and a bit dishonest. I dislike self-congratulation too, it all seems a bit pointless. I think that's a family thing though.

I've had depression for a very long time. It tends to be pretty low key stuff in recent years, and the more drastic stuff is long ago. But I had a rough time early on and this is almost a holiday by comparison.

But my SI is...impulsive(?) a lot of the time. I don't even know it's there til it happens. When I do get some warning it's seconds or a couple of minutes at most, and then I can try to do something else like grab an ice cube from the freezer or just sit on my hands (that worked really well the day I was in my 6st mail shirt) or try to distract myself with something. It doesn't really prevent it, but can delay it a bit. One day, maybe I can delay it 'completely.' But mostly I just spend the time getting wound up.

I don't know where the hate comes from it's just there. I'm nearly always scared. I hate being scared. I don't do horror movies or rollercoasters because I hate being scared.

OK, that's enough excuses for a while. I joined this place to start dealing with all of this. The advice is very welcome, even when I can't always manage to appreciate it at the time. The whole police thing really put things into perspective that day. It really shook me. I think I hit an all time low for sheer terror.

T.

[Smeagol]

I've got a good mathematical and technical mind, when it works, but I tned to forget details and little things in the process I just figured out.

This might sound dumb, but do you keep detailed logs of what you're doing and why? I really have to comment the code I write because otherwise I'd forget the details. Forgetting things doesn't make you dumb, just forgetful.

Ice Cube thing. The 'self-congratulation' and 'mutual appreciation' things I have a really hard time with.

You don't have to congratulate yourself. As in, you can dispassionately observe that you have feature x or you have achieved y and that this is a positive thing, without being self-congratulating and smug and complacent. But listing positives, would that be pointless? If it reminded you that you're not all evil and useless, even if you're not as useful as you'd like to be? If it could lessen your distress then it would have a point. For my part, I've found that the more I dislike myself the more I act in ways which I dislike. It's self-perpetuating. I hate myself so I si or I stay at home hiding, which then proves my ideas that I'm weak and useless and I never achieve anything. So I blag it - find some thins I like about me, or just force myself into actually doing something, and it does make me feel better. It's not enough to make me like myself, but it's enough to get me out of paralysed self-hate. That's been my experience anyway. Do you think there might be anything in that for you?

Something that has worked for me has been just listing things I've got done that day. It's not to feel proud, but just to get my failure to do one thing into perspective. I might not have solved this problem, but at least I got useful stuff done. wouuld something liek that help at all? Something I suggested to somebody else was making a list of 5 things they were happy with and 5 things they wanted to change. The idea was that you can hardly be complacent if you're listing areas to work on as well, so maybe that would be a way to find positives without triggering more self-hate. I don't know whether that idea might work for you at all.

But my SI is...impulsive(?) a lot of the time. I don't even know it's there til it happens.

Hmm, that's a tough one. Could you work on identifying feelings which lead to si instead? Maybe if you can notice that you're in a black mood then you could find something to defuse that, thus lessening the chance that you'll do hurt yourself impulsively?

I don't know where the hate comes from it's just there. I'm nearly always scared. I hate being scared. I don't do horror movies or rollercoasters because I hate being scared.

I don't blame you on the horrow movies! Do you know what you're scared of? For example do you often feel out of control and you find that scary? Or are you afraid of consequences/tragic accidents/making mistakes? Next time you're scared, would it help to stop and think about what the fear consists of? Not the emotion, but why you're afraid. Try veering towards certain thoughts and back off if they scare you. Write them down. Or maybe make a list of situations in which you feel particularly scared.

I guess there's two ways you can deal with fear: one is to find strategies for dealing with it, the other is to figure out why you're scared and work on not being scared. My ideas might not work - I don't know you or how you think. Can you think of anythign which would work on eithe rof these?

The whole police thing really put things into perspective that day. It really shook me. I think I hit an all time low for sheer terror.

"police thing"?

Take care

[tzanti]

Oh, the police thing I realise I wrote up on the Arc forum not this one.

Had a bit of an episode last sunday, got to too much hitting and screaming and wound up having a chat with two gentlemen of the constabulary after they got called out by a neighbour. Really put things into focus. This stuff affects people around me, even people I don't even know.

T.