After

[Scatterbrain]

Have you taken care of your physical wounds? if not, go do that now. we'll wait.
I have... i punched a wall yesterday and there isnt much you can do for that...

what had happened just before?
i punched a wall a couple times about 2 years ago

what were you thinking and feeling?
i was mad/sad/upset that one of the people i trusted the most and really liked/looked up to basically ditched me

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?
i had felt this anger building for a couple days, and then i exploded, JM not talking to me about the letter was the last straw. i poured my heart out in a 3 page letter and he didnt mention even reading it when i saw him twice on monday

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.
i stewed about it all weekend, and i was too embarrased to bring it up and ask him what he thought

were there outside factors like drugs, alsohol, being off your meds, lack of sleep, etc? can you address those in the future? how?
i have not been sleeping much lately... i was really tired. i need to know my limit in terms of lack of sleep, and how much i really cant function when i get less than 5 hours a night

what other ways of coping did you try besides self-harm? how well did they work?
i didnt. i just exploded

in retrospect, are there coping methods that you now realize might have helped? what were they?
there are several, i just didnt "want" to cope...

name at least two things you will do to help yourself remember those coping methods if you end up in this situation again.
i need to step back and take a deep breath before i do anything stupid like that again. i need to just step back and assess the situation

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?
it kinda resolved. im still pissed, but i actually talk to him today. well, im not exactly pissed. im just sad that i dont mean much to him. i thought we were close and that he really cared, but now i know im just another student to him...

are you likely to be in that emotional place again? how will you recognize it when you're in that situation?
prolly. i need to take a step back... im sensing a pattern....

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.
i will try to take a minute before i do anything. i will remove myself from the situation, and call jordin or liz


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?
i was "ready" to slip and explode. i had a shitty week last week too, so i was ready to just lose it

Did you make an opportunity or was it there for the taking?
the feelings were there already, but i pretty much made the opportunity when i didnt talk to JM after he wouldnt talk to me. i just let myself stew and get even more upset

What would you have done if there was no opportunity, how would you have handled your urge?
i prolly could have gotten through it if i was in class or something

If there had been no opportunity would your urge to self-harm have increased or decreased?
it prolly would have decreased since i knew i couldnt do it

What consitutes opportunity for you? Being alone? having new tools? waiting for the right feeling?
being alone, not at school, not necessary with my tools, but that makes it worse. i have to be pretty upset and cant just do it on a whim

If your opportunties were taken away, how would you feel?
it would be really hard for a while, but then i think i would be ok... i think

[tattybluetrees]

Hi. I'm really glad you came and posted about this here, and I hope your hand feels better soon.

It sounds like this is a really tough situation and dealing with it without resorting to self-harm would be hard for most of us I think. Is there any other explanatiion for this person not having resopnded to your letter when you saw him? Could it be that he hadn't received it, or hadn't had time to read it? I don't mean to open up these thoughts for you all oover again, but sometimes it is worth considering iif your assessment of a situation is the only one, or if there could be another one. Do you have a plan for what you're going to say to him when you talk? Would you have been able to talk to him on monday to find out if your assessment of his actions were right- to say "I sent you a letter, have you read it, becase it was very important to me".

I think the idea of stepping back a moment is a really good one, but sometimes it can be pretty hard to achieve oor to remember when your emotions are that strong (I find, anyway ). Is there anything you could do or have to hand which would remind you to try it? Also, I know that certainnnly for me things sometimes get too overwhelming, particularly when it comes to anger, to step back from- it;s just too big an emotion. It might be worth looking through the lists of strategies on coping and finding some that would appeal to you to use in that situation. There's one I quite like about hitting things with sticks, and I think something about punching pillows. It might just be an idea to have a backup to use if stepping back doesn't work, I guess.

I know exactly what you mean about not "wanting" to cope. I think that's a really hard thing to deal with. I suppose it's a good reason for having something you can *do* which wont actually hurt you. Or at least that's what I find when I am having a tantrum and don't want to do what I know I should.

I hope that things go okay for you, and that you get this sorted out. It *is* sad when you stop being close to someone you were close to.

Take good care, and best thoughts.

Tatty

[Smeagol]

I really empathise about the letter. I think writing stuff down is a great idea and it's a pity he didn't respond.

The agreement I came to with my bf is that when I really need him to respond I will label the email/letter "Please read" or "Please acknowledge". In an ideal world, he'd read and realise it was that important to me. But it's not an ideal world, and telling him what I need out of it has really reduced the stress, so I thought I'd share the idea.

I hope your hand feels better soon.

[Scatterbrain]

thanks!

tattybluetrees: I know he got the letter because I handed it to him and told him to read it over the weekend. I talked to him yesterday and he said he read it, but didnt say anything else about it. I cant think of any other explanation for JM not responding to my letter. He knows how hard it is for me to tell people personal stuff, and he knows that i wanted to him to respond... Also, i texted him, but he didnt text me back. He usually texts me back really quick... I will look at the list of strategies on coping to see what there is. Thanks for the idea. It still really sucks to think that the person i looked up to, trusted, and was like a father to me really doesnt care as much as i thought he did. It really sucks.

Smeagol: i probably should have asked him verbally to respond to the letter. thats a good idea to write it on there. i know that he knows i wanted him to respond, so i dont know what the deal is. (sorry that sentence was really retarded...)

my hand is feeling a little better. the swelling went down some, but the bruising got a little worse. the good thing is that my family hasnt noticed, but i am going to thanksgiving with my extended family, so i hope they dont notice... thanks for the feedback.

~Megan

[Smeagol]

I think there's a big gap between what's obvious to you and what's obvious to him. I say this from experience. You say that he knows it's a big deal for you to open up, but does he really know that? Have you said that explicitly? If he does know it's a big deal for you to open up, it doesn't necessarily follow that his conclusion is that he needs to respond to the opening up. He might have thought you needed to vent, but didn't need him to reply. Or he might prefer discussing stuff in person and be waiting for you to raise it at an appropriate time. Or he might not have known what to say, been busy, and decided to ignore it because he didn't have the energy right now.

I promise I'm talking from experience. I've had this "you didn't respond" problem with my bf before and it's hurt a lot, but there's not necessarily been malice behind it. One time I sent him an email saying that I'd had a really hard day, and got b ugger all reply. Why? Because he was busy, it was long, he didn't know what to say and so either left it for later or hoped the problem would go away. A month back I told him it was the anniversary of my grandmother's death; he responded by saying "I'm going - you're getting gloomy". When we talked about it later, I thought it inherently obvious that the right response would have been ":(, that's hard, we'll have to do some fun stuff", whereas he had just heard me turn the topic to something he thought morbid, and he was afraid I was going to get really upset and ruin the day so he tried to change the usbject before I started.

The point is, I know from my own experience that what is obvious to me about why I'm doing something and about the type of response I want is not obvious to toher people. Equally, why they're doing something isn't always obvious to me. He once emailed me after a fight saying "I'm in pain", and I thought he was guilt-tripping me for making him tense, whereas actually he was explaining that he was ending the conversation because he could barely stand up, let alone hold an emotionally intense discussion. And we know about being explicit and things still happen whenever one of us makes the mistake of assuming something. I think it's *always* worth spelling things out and going back and checking implications and meanings.

I'm NOT saying "all your fault, you should have tol dhim what you wanted". I'm just trying to point out that things may not be as bad as you fear, that you not getting the response you wanted may be because of a misunderstanding rather than him not caring. Misunderstandings are really really painful and difficult. The fact that there may be misunderstanding doesn't make the hurt go away, because right now you don't know whether it is malice or misunderstanding, and even then the memory of the hurt stays around. But it might not be the way you think, just because he might be reading things differently. And in future, it is worth being explicit. Being explicit *still* won't prevent misunderstandings, but it might reduce them. Can you talk about it with him? Calmly. "I did x hoping to achieve y and instead z happened and it upset me". And then ask him why he did what he did (or didn't do!). There's a possibility that you can avoid this happening again, and in the process get closer.

Take care.