Before

[herebedragons]

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

I will feel better (albeit tempararily)

what will hurting myself bring to the situation?

calmness, perhaps a distraction from nagging thoughts

what will it take away from the situation?

Mainly I'll lose a whole lot of time s.i.free

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?

in the long run I guess I want to feel that I handled things the way a reasonable person would. Clearly injuring myself isn't going to get me closer to that end.

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

Hard to say, as I recall it used to help as long as the injuries were fairly acute.

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?

Sleep, hang out with my family, I'd read but I can't concentrate well enough, crochet, sleep

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

I think I'll feel calmer tomorow if I si and I'm afraid I'll feel the same as I do today if I don't. I don't see not s.i.ing as something that will change anything. (I definately won't feel proud tomorow of not s.i.ing, if anything I'll just feel guilty for wanting to in the first place)

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?

What I really want to do right now is be well. I want to be healthy and stop feeling so exhausted and be able to run again and I want my ears to stop ringing and I want to be normal. I'm tired of this. I want to be a useful productive person. I don't want to be broken.

I don't know what I can do to honor a self-protective instinct. I'm just so worn out. I expect if I wait things out my attitude will improve again. I'll get over this and go back to dealing with reality instead of being pissed about it.

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

I miss it, I miss having something I know will make me feel better right away. I miss the quick fix. I'm anxious and upset and angry and I don't have anywhere to aim that anger except inward and I'm not good at dealing with anger, I don't know what to do with it and I feel guilty for being angry.

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

Honestly I'm not sure I have. I was upset once since I got dxed with M.S and I cried on my husband's shoulder and after a bit pulled myself together and, while I didn't feel better, I was able to function fine again. I'm not sure crying would help right now though and definately not on my husband's shoulder because I don't want him to know anything's wrong. There's nothing to be done about it so no reason to upset anyone else with it.

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

I talked with a friend of mine this afternoon. Actually two friends, one in person and one online. That helped a little but the friend I talked more indepth with (she also has MS so understands a lot of what I'm going through) well I think she kind of misunderstood where I was coming from. She took something I said as being a positive thing and encouraged me to continue thinking that way when I don't think it really was a positve thing. I can see where she was coming from but..I don't know.

Anything other than self injuring is not going to hurt me.

How do I feel right now?


How will I feel when I am hurting myself?


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


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


Do I need to hurt myself?

[syn]

I'll get over this and go back to dealing with reality instead of being pissed about it.

I think this is the key. We tend to dwell on what's happened rather than what we can do about it. SI provides us with a quick fix, but it doesn't address the problem.

One of my questions for you is why can't you let your husband know anythings wrong? Sometimes we don't want people to know we're hurting because they will hurt too. But in marriage not sharing your feelings only hurts trust, I think he would want to know how you're feeling.

You may not be able to be as healthy physically as you wish, but you can be healthy mentally. Your making huge strides in that direction by not SIing.

[herebedragons]

Thanks for your reply. I don't want to tell him because it won't change anything, there's nothing to change, there's nothing to be done about it. I'm just feeling bad now but I'll get over it. If I tell him then he'll worry and he's had enough to worry about lately. I think he knows something is up, he was asking me last night. I did tell him tonight that I was tired of feeling less useful than I want to be, that I had one good day where I could get everything I wanted to do done out of four days the other three of which were mostly blown to hell by not feeling well from my MS treatment and then today having a fever because I did too much yesterday. It's so frustrating not being able to do what a normal person should be able to do without getting ill or exhausted or both. And when I get exhausted I fall more and my left sided weakness increases and I stop being able to do things like work our front door lock or open a packet of shredded cheese (because my strength and coordination go to pot when I get fatigued.)

I'm not trying to be arguementative, just explain why I don't want to burden him with this, in the long run it's such a little thing, just an off mood. Wether I self injure or not it doesn't really matter in the long run. I feel like if I tell him and bring him into this it will make it a bigger deal. He'll be worried then I'll feel guilty for causing him worry.

I did visit with my SIL for a while tonight after I posted my first post. (She showed up while I was posting which is why I didn't finish the questions. I should do that.)

[herebedragons]

How do I feel right now?

Worn out, frustrated, not completely useless but not as functional as I want to be, somewhat depressed, tired, anxious

How will I feel when I am hurting myself?

calm, relieved

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

probably calmer. Tomorow morning? I don't know. I will feel badly if someone notices (though it's really only likely my husband would notice but then I'd feel espessially bad about that.)

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

I can't avoid it. I could start a journal and write about it I suppose..though I already have a blog OH! I did blog a bit about it today so that's another thing I've tried that was an alternative to si. I need to work on learning my limits so that I'm not as likely to wear myself out. I need to take more breaks when I am working or doing housework. I need to work on accepting my limits. That's huge. My endurance has taken such a huge hit since my last MS attack and I'm not used to it. I really don't have a good sense of how I work any more. Heck, I'm constantly tripping and kicking curbs and stuff because I don't even know how much strength it takes to lift my foot high enough any more. I need to get my house and my life more organized so that it takes less work to keep things running smoothly.


Do I need to hurt myself?

[herebedragons]

That last question (oh second to last I guess) really helped a lot. I feel more calm with a list of things to work on. I need to remember that about myself. I like sollutions, I like things I can do something about, that's part of the reason the MS thing is frustrating. Lack of control on my part, I need to concentrate more on the things I can control.

[herebedragons]

Forgot the acutal last question- Do I need to hurt myself?

No. I just want to. I want it a lot.