Before

[sojourner_steph]

• how will this situation or feeling change if i hurt myself?
  
  I'll stop feeling things for a bit. I might be able to function better and do things for a while.
• what will hurting myself bring to the situation? what will it take away from the situation?
  
  It will make feelings stop. It will make thinking about wanting SI stop (well, until it makes it worse because I'll want it more afterwards). It might help me do things I need to do. It will help me not feel like I want to talk to people about how I'm struggling. It will take away . . . Faith stuff. It will make faith stuff hard.
• 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 not be this. I want to not feel stuff. I want to not spend days crying. . .
  I want to be closer to God - I want to go to him when I'm hurting. SI would take me further away from that.
  I want to die (not SU). I'm really really over this and I really want to die.
• if hurting myself seems like my best option right now, how long will the relief it brings last? what will i do then?
  
  It's not the best option. It creates a cycle. It would make me want it more or make stuff worse in the long run.
  
  But - I'm just so sick of this - of spending days lying in bed crying, not getting anything done - I need to clean the house and every time I try to write the thing for work I was meant to have done yesterday - I fall apart crying and I can't do it. And I'm sick of talking to people when I'm crying and can't think and say stupid things. I'm so sick of me. I really just wish that I could die. I don't want to deal with feelings. I don't want to be stupid and awkward and ask for things from people.
• 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've already talked to people enough over the last few days. And, because I'm trying not to SI - I'll probably do that again when trying not to gets too much. But I don't want to. I'm really sick of calling my friend and crying on the phone and writing stupid things to my friend and asking for things from people. I wish I could go somewhere far away where I had no contact with anyone - no opportunity to give in and bother people. And maybe no responsibilities either.
  
  Other things I've been doing are - watching DVDs and beingon the internet on my phone. It's a distraction from feelings for a while. But it just makes me feel worse at the end of it.
• 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 probably won't SI. Caring about faith stuff is strong enough that I'll probably try hard not to. It just sucks that when I don't give in things stay hard and I keep on being stupid and none of this goes away - I still feel things and cry and can't do things, and lie on my bed, and eventually when it gets too much contact a person, and then hate myself for contacting a person.
• 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 die. I want to give up my job. I want to not have to try so hard anymore.



More Before Questions To Answer

• Why do I feel I need to hurt myself? What has brought me to this point?
  
  Job stuff
  Church stuff
  Friend stuff
  Feelings
  Me existing
• Have I been here before? What did I do to deal with it? How did I feel then?
  
  Many times probably. Work stuff has only been a more recent thing though. I don't know - I can't think of anything that changed anything - just that yes, eventually stuff gets better until it gets worse again.
• What I have done to ease this discomfort so far? What else can I do that won't hurt me?
  
  Listened to music.
  Prayed from my prayer book - helpful because it gives me words when I don't have them.
  Talked to people and hated myself for talking to people.
  Watched DVDs.
  Spent a lot of time on the internet on my phone.
  
  I can't think of anything else I can do. And it's frustrating just doing those things again and again.
• How do I feel right now?
  
  Bad
• How will I feel when I am hurting myself?
  
  Good
• How will I feel after hurting myself? How will I feel tomorrow morning?
  
  Bad
• Can I avoid this stressor, or deal with it better in the future?
  
  If I quit my job - part of it. But that would solve nothing because then I would have other things to deal with. And no, I'm not going to quit my job like that - I'm going to keep on trying and not make that decision lightly.
  
  No - I don't know how I can deal with any of this better. I'm frustrated with it. I'm so sick of myself for being this, hate myself for talking to people and just feel crap and it's not going away.
• Do I need to hurt myself?

No. I'll keep trying. But it sucks that by keeping on trying, I'm going to keep on being stupid - acting stupid, not being able to do things, feeling things, crying and bothering people. Honestly SI feels a whole lot better than that. And I would choose it if I didn't care more about what God thinks and value my relationship with him than what I think. I think that me giving in to SI is a better option than me talking to people.

Am I being stupid. I really wonder if I'm just being like a little kid. Is this real? Am I making it up? What am I? How do I change it? Is it my fault? Is it wrong? I don't know - I just know that I'm not normal right now - feelings hurt and I can't make myself do things and I cry. And I really hate my job and I'm bad at it and I'm scared and it's really hard to keep on trying. Is there a point where I need to tell myself to just get over it and do normal things. How do I stop crying and feeling things? I want to delete this because I feel like I'm complaining and acting like a child. But telling myself that doesn't stop things from hurting. I don't know. I don't know who I am. I don't know how to change. I don't know how to do this.

[treasure]

i think it's really brave that you're calling someone when you feel like you aren't coping, and that you are crying and talking about your feelings. it's ok to be stupid or vulnerable or sad. i've had people tell me they would rather talk to me than have me si, no matter the time of day or the circumstances, and that's probably true for people you are calling too.

it sounds like things are really hard right now, and i hope that changes. while quitting your job might be a bad decision, if the job is causing you a lot of difficulty maybe things can be discussed or changed around that?

[sojourner_steph]

Thank you for your reply.

I don't know. Stuff is just hard. It's not going away. I want something to help.

Work stuff - there's not much I can do that I haven't already done. I've told my boss I struggle with mental health. I've already asked for too much time off. And I've reduced my hours to 15hours per week.

My main work problem is that I struggle to talk to or build relationships with the other staff. Which then has an impact on a lot of things - how I feel when I'm at work, my work performance because I'm scared of my co-workers/superiors and therefore hesitant to do anything that involves talking to them. I had a conversation with my work friend (friend from previous job who I now work with at this job) and she gave me some good suggestions - about when/how to talk to other staff and to show that I'm trying and want to improve - but I just can't do it right now - that takes a lot of effort - which I don't have when I've been crying most of the day up until the moment I step out of the car at work and have to pretend everything is fine.

I don't know - there's many things I need to do to prove that I'm trying and want to improve at this job, but I'm not doing them because I'm really not ok at the moment so I just can't.

I don't know - I want SI. I want to be dead. Being like this and feeling stuff is too much for me.

[sojourner_steph]

*talks about wanting to die*
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I feel stuck here. Honestly, sometimes I wish I could be SU (I'm not, never have been, don't worry) - because I'm left with - this constant wanting to die. I think it over and over again. I wish I could die. And even SI, I'm much less likely to give in then I was a few years ago. So - I feel stuck - stuck with stuff hurting for a long time. And it's hard to deal with. At the time it feels like feelings are never going to go away. (And I know they do get slightly better eventually, but even then - it can be weeks and not much better.) It just hurts and I feel stuck - I can't do anything to make it stop hurting- I'm not going to give in to SI and I've never been suicidal - so instead I'm stuck with feeling things, constantly wanting to die, hating myself for being this and feeling things and existing at all. And it hurts. And it's not going away.