before

[zaphriel]

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 wont feel so overwhelmed by everything, but I will feel guilty, and bad for hurting my gf


* what will hurting myself bring to the situation? what will it take away from the situation?
It will bring relief, but only fleetingly, it will mean that last week was not a slip but a relapse, and I'm sure I will feel bad about that, but right now I don't care if it is. At least if I do that then I am recognising that I do have emotions.


* 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 want to stop feeling like I am failing, and letting everyone else down. I don't think that hurting myself will have any great impact on that in the long run.


* if hurting myself seems like my best option right now, how long will the relief it brings last? what will i do then?
Hopefully a few hours, or till tomorrow morning if I'm lucky. I don't know what I'll do after that, i always just tackle it all over again when it happens again.

* 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?
I could talk to my gf if I could let myself cry, I could go and walk into the hospital but I'm too scared to go alone. I don't really know what to do in the long run, I think that I need to go back on meds, and that I actually need to do something about that rather than avoid the issue in the hope that it will go away.

* 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 will probably just feel the same again, maybe with a little added guilt.

* 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 be able to forget things that have happened to me. I want to be able to sleep properly again. I want to be able to feel again properly.


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 can't stop thinking about things from the past, and as I didn't really let some of these things hurt me in the past, when they re-occur in my head it hurts me like it's happening the first time.

* Have I been here before? What did I do to deal with it? How did I feel then?
I ignored it and shut my emotions down and went numb. I felt nothing at all.

* What I have done to ease this discomfort so far? What else can I do that won't hurt me?
I have cooked a nice tea. If I knew what else to do I wouldn't be answering these questions.

* How do I feel right now?
urgy. depressed. alone. angry. tired. ashamed. dirty.

* How will I feel when I am hurting myself?
quiet. like the noise in my head has cleared. calm and not restless and agitated anymore.

* How will I feel after hurting myself? How will I feel tomorrow morning?
I will feel better after I've done it and guilty tommorrow.

* Can I avoid this stressor, or deal with it better in the future?
I don't know what to do to stop myself thinking of these things and forget them. If I did, then I wouldn't be feeling like this right now.

* Do I need to hurt myself?
I think so. Although answering these questions has made me think about what I'm doing and why, I still want to. I still want to go and do it worse than I ever have before. I don't think there is anything that I can do to take this feeling away other than hurt myself.

[zazie]

Hi.

Sorry you don't see any better alternative right now.

Good work recognizing what would be helpful in the long run, and what thoughts and feeling of yours are giving you trouble when it comes to getting help. You do seem to be learning things and developing ideas about how to help yourself.

[zaphriel]

I am slowly, but I managed to resist this time and got a really relaxing massage from my gf instead. don't really know where to start about getting help though, its pretty much a paralysing fear that if I go and ask for help and be honest I'll get made IP, which terrifies me completely.

[zazie]

I know about the paralyzing fear of getting help. I'm in much the same boat myself. I don't know what works, but I'm trying to sort of pick at the fears, a bit at a time? Like I spend a little while looking at one element that scares me, and getting information about how it's not likely to be as bad or scary as I think, then go and look at another one for a bit. That might help?