After

[microsue]

My slip was a day and night of a morphine high after 2 sessions dealing with my husband's abuse.

have you taken care of your physical wounds? if not, go do that now. we'll wait.
N/A

what had happened just before?
I finished a night of calling Crisis and PM-ing and Message-ing with friends online after a day with a session about my husband's abuse.

what were you thinking and feeling?
There's gotta be something better to life than this. If I don't feel better I'll kill myself. si or morphine will help me feel better. si will get me kicked out of my residence.

why did you end up hurting yourself then instead of some other time? was there an event that was the final straw? what was it?
Waking up after a very short (2hrs) sleep and realizing I had to make it through Satuday (with nothing), Sunday (with Mass only), and Monday (with nothing) before I could see Karl (my t).

how did the situation get to the final straw stage? trace it back through the events that led up to the last event. look for some point at which you could have made a different decision and not arrived at the final straw.
Possibly getting more sleep and/or having activities planned for the long weekend to look forward to.

were there outside factors like drugs, alsohol, being off your meds, lack of sleep, etc? can you address those in the future? how?
Lack of sleep. P-doc won't change sleep meds. Possibly try self-relaxarion and/or visualization.

what other ways of coping did you try besides self-harm? how well did they work?
Had already been using them all night long. Couldn't go any longer.

in retrospect, are there coping methods that you now realize might have helped? what were they?
Don't know. Hopefully upcoming dbt group will help.

name at least two things you will do to help yourself remember those coping methods if you end up in this situation again.
1)Journal.
2)dbt group?

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?
Continue talking w/ Karl, both about abuse & about coping strategies.

are you likely to be in that emotional place again? how will you recognize it when you're in that situation?
Yes--other difficult times in therapy. Can anticipate.

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.
1)Journal
2)talk to Crisis worker
3)post online


About Opportunities to SI
Opportunity to Self-Harm seems to be a common theme. Think about why opportunities are important to slips and learn why opportunity is important to you.



What made that opportunity more appealing than any other?
Apparent alternative: traditional si. That would result in my being kicked out of my residence. I knew morphine would take away the urges. I knew if I took more than that I'd get high.

Did you make an opportunity or was it there for the taking?
I had been saving morphine for years "just in case".

What would you have done if there was no opportunity, how would you have handled your urge?
Probably would have cut somewhere "invisible" and hoped I could keep it from Karl (unlikely).

If there had been no opportunity would your urge to self-harm have increased or decreased?
There's always opportunity. (In the sense that there's always a way to hurt yourself.)

What consitutes opportunity for you? Being alone? having new tools? waiting for the right feeling?
In this sense, waiting for the right feeling.

If your opportunties were taken away, how would you feel?
That's what I'm trying to do through therapy. I don't know how I'll feel then.

Sue

[Smeagol]

Hi sue,

I'm sorry you slipped.

how did the situation get to the final straw stage? trace it back through the events that led up to the last event. look for some point at which you could have made a different decision and not arrived at the final straw.

Possibly getting more sleep and/or having activities planned for the long weekend to look forward to.

Can you come up with a contingency plan for when you awke up in the night? Like comforting books or the radio or something? One piece of advice my doc gave me was not to have any clocks near me: if I can't tell what time it is when I wake up then I'm less likely to stress about being awake and thus be able to get back to sleep.

e situation that led to self-harm now? is it resolved? if not, what are some steps you might take toward resolution?
Continue talking w/ Karl, both about abuse & about coping strategies.

I wonder, and this is just a thought, whether it might help if you tried to frame the coping strategies not in terms of karl. It seems to me that part of the problem is that you feel you can't get by without him: he's helping you sort through the problems, he's helping you cope with the problems, he's helping you stay in residence and so on. Do you think you'd feel more in control if you were able to make some part of taking care of yourself independent from him? For example, if you're not looking to him to come up with more coping strategies (I know you're already working to find some yourself) then maybe a whole day without seeing him wouldn't seem like such a blackhole? I can't quite explain what I mean, so I'm sorry if I'm being upsetting. It just seems to me that not being able to see karl has now become a source of anxiety in itself, so maybe one way you could handle this would be to work on needing him less, for example by coming up with more coping strategies by yourself. If you view less of your healing and well-being as being dependenton him, then maybe you'd be less distressed when he's not around?

If there had been no opportunity would your urge to self-harm have increased or decreased?
There's always opportunity. (In the sense that there's always a way to hurt yourself.)

Not necessarily in that it's harder to hurt yourself with people watching. What would have happened if you'd had somebody in the room with you all the time? How would you have felt?

Take care,

Gwylan

[microsue]

Hiya,
If people had been in the room, it would have depended on circumstances. I've si'd while ip and required to stay in the dayroom, but keeping it from everyone else for as long as possible. So I don't si while someone's watching me do it, but I've done it with other people around.
As far as being dependent on Karl goes, I think it's actually a good thing to have someone I can entrust my life to. I sure can't entrust it to myself. I'm not expecting Karl to make my decisions for me (he won't). I'm not dependent on him for coping strategies; what I have I've developed myself. As they aren't adequate, I'm open to suggestions from him, but that doesn't mean I'll take them. Frankly, I'm rather resentful of the implication that I can't get along without Karl. I've done it for most of my life. So what's so bad to hope that he might have something that will help me? Whether from Karl or from someone on bus, I definitely need new ideas. I don't see you criticizing me for writing here; why isn't that just as bad, if not worse?
microsue

[Smeagol]

I think it's actually a good thing to have someone I can entrust my life to. I sure can't entrust it to myself.

Actually no. *You* are the *only* person you can entrust your life to. Karl cannot keep you safe. He cannot stop you harming yourself; he cannot stop you killing yourself. Sure he can talk to you, ask you not to, but ultimately the decision is yours and yours alone.

that doesn't mean I'll take them. Frankly, I'm rather resentful of the implication that I can't get along without Karl.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply you can't get along without Karl. I'm sure you can. I guess sometimes it seems like you feel you can't get along without Karl, and waiting to hear from him or having to wait to see him is causing you additional distress.

I'm just reminded of something deb said to me once, which is "Okay, how about you try and see this as an opportunity for you to look after yourself?". I'd just tried to ask my bf for help and he'd misunderstood and it had turned into a huge fight. That was devastating to me, because asking him for help had been really difficult and my last resort and then for various reasons I was left on my own, now distressed from a fight as well. But that question encouraged me to reframe the situation, stop thinking in terms of my bf helping me, and start thinking about *me* helping me. Not just "me helping me until he comes along and takes some of the burden off me", but me helping me regardless.

From your posts it sounds like sometimes you're hanging in there, waiting for his help. But as you've said, you can get along without him. So, based on my experience, I thought maybe it would help you if you reframed the situation and think about how you're going to look after you, rather than about how you're going to look after you until you see karl.

I just think that sometimes having a time in mind for when it will be "okay" can help keep a person stuck, because they're waiting for this external thing to make it better, whereas if that external thing weren't there they might be more successful at making things better for themselves in the short-term. Because it *is* hard to do things that might make you feel less bad, and sometimes, if you (people in general - not you personally) know that you just have to stick it out long enough, then you don't feel forced into going ahead and doing it, whereas if there is nothing and nobody to help then you either fight through and try an dmake yourself feel better no matter, even when it involves doing things you don't want to do, or you give up entirely, because that's the only choice.