before

[Emma Wallace]

I'm not going to Si, I'm not going to SI, I'm not going to SI...

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

I think that I will feel calmer, and less shakey.

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

SI is a good short term solution and I don't have another good short term solution right now, but if I slip up after a year, I'm going to feel pretty awful about that.

* 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 want to have to SI, but dammit, I don't want to feel like SIing to begin with. And I'm not entirely clear that not SIing is moving in that direction. It's not making things worse, but it doesn't seem to be making things much better either.

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

It usually helps for at least a few hours, even a day. After that... I don't know what I'll do after that. White-knuckle probably.

* 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?

If I don't SI, I'll probably feel the same as usual, which isn't great, but if I do I'll feel very guilty, and it will be worse when I have to tell people that I've slipped.

* 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 better, I'm just not sure how to do that.

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.

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

It might be made worse by med side-effects, but this is a pretty standard place for me to be anyway. It's worst at night, and when I'm alone, but there aren't always other clear stressors.

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

I have been here more times than I can count. And I usually rely on being stubborn and on a few close friends to get through this. I really need a better system.

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

I've been trying to distract, trying to do some breathing exercises. I should probably lie down and try some full out relaxation exercises, or curl up with a book.

* How do I feel right now?

I feel like I don't have control over my body, I feel tense as piano wire.

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

As far as I know, I can't. It would help if I could figure out what I'm reacting to.

* Do I need to hurt myself?

No, I don't, and I figured that out while answering the questions, but it's also pretty clear that I need a better system so that I can deal with this state and get back to something more livable and actually get stuff done.

[Smeagol]

Hi Emma,

I can really empathise with the situation you seem to be in. When the only seems to be riding it out, but keepingo n doing that doesnt' seem to be getting you anywhere. I'm sorry you're in that position. It's soul destroying. So much effor tfor so little gain.

You say you don't know what you're reacitng to, so I'm goign to throw out some ideas for figuring that out. FEel free to ignore.

Firstly, can you describe yourself and your life right now? Maybe looking at that will reveal something of what's uspetting you. Maybe post it here on bus and ask other people if anything springs to mind when they read it. For example are you talking as if things happen to you, rather than you having control over your life? That's a rnadom example, but the point remains that it might reveal what you're thinkinga botu.

Secondly, could you try keeping a feelings diary for a week. A DEAR model one. Each day you write down the events (describing what happened), then you describe how you feel about it, then you assert what you would like to happen now. May be by the end of a week a pattern will arise, or you'll be able to look back and say "Woah, I really felt low after that".

Tkae care

[tattybluetrees]

Hi Emma-

I'm glad that answering the questions helped you.

I think a lot of what you said was really interesting. I particularly liked this:

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.

It seems to me that this is a really important (and hard) thing to learn (and one that I have difficulty remembering, for my part). I think we tend to think of SI urges as "bad" because we see SI as "bad" but actually they are just expressions of need, whhich should be fulfillable some other way, and which should deffinately be listened to.

I guess where I am heading wiith this is it sounds like you need *something*, but like it's hard to work out what that thing is. You have said that you have tried distraction, and that's great, but after a while distraction gets harder and harder. You say you don't feel like you have control over your body- that seems pretty important to me ((although I could be totally misguided, as ever). It's also something that I can sympathise with- I quite often feel a need to mark my body or bring it under control. Rather than distracting from this, is there anything you could do to answer it? I'm thinking of anything from having a bath and moisturing afterwards to painting your nails, dying your hair... I used to cut my hair, but the trouble with that is, you look like you have a brush attached to your head and also, after a while, you run out of hair, so possibly that's not such a good idea... .

I think you should be a bit easy on yourself, too. The fact that its been a year is an immense achievement even if you slip, and if you do, then it's something to learn from, rather than something to be guilty for.

Saying that you need a better system is, I think, a positive thing to come out of this, but also one that you can come back to when you are feeling a bit better. Maybe you could revisit this thread in a few days when you are in a better place and try and think clearly about longer-term solutions when you are not also trying to deal iin short-tem ones?

I hope you're okay.

Tatty