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tools to help you assess your urges before you give in to them, and to help you understand and learn from slips after they happen. by posting here, you're saying that you are serious about exploring the feelings behind your self-harm in depth, whether you're ready to stop hurting yourself or not. to request posting access, click usergroups above and join before and after.

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Smeagol
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Post by Smeagol » Thu Sep 07, 2006 11:30 pm

* how will this situation or feeling change if i hurt myself?
I want to do something. I'm awake and flipping out and I want to calm down and I've got nobody to talk to and/or I don't feel I can talk to anybody.
* what will hurting myself bring to the situation? what will it take away from the situation?
My bf will be pissed as all hell with me. It doesn't exactly set a good precedent for coping with anything else. What will it bring? It will make it all real. It will reaffirm how I feel about myself. It will pass the time, calm me down, make it possible to move past this freak out and do something with the empty hours.

* if hurting myself seems like my best option right now, how long will the relief it brings last? what will i do then?
Don't know. Maybe until tomorrow.
* 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?
Pretty much anything. Keep surfing the web. Read my reading assignment for next week. Print off a form, fill it in and write a cheque. Prepare for a meeting I've got tomorrow. Do my engraving art. Read a book. Surfing the web won't change how I feel - it's just a means of disaster aversion. I don't know if i can concentrate enough on the reading or prepration for the meeting. They're both to do with work which is freaking me out. Maybe I'd be less freaked if I'd done them. printing out involves leaving my room which I don't want to do. I don't feel like reading or engraving art but it wouldn't hurt me to try. I could get up and drink something.

* how will i feel tomorrow if i hurt myself? how will i feel tomorrow if i do the other thing i came up with?
Don't know. It would depend on how badly I hurt myself I think. If it doesn't cause lasting damage and isn't that noticable then I don't think I'd care.
* 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?
Um, hurt myself?
* Why do I feel I need to hurt myself? What has brought me to this point?

I've had a shitty day. I didn't handle it well. I hurt myself earlier. I went out for a meeting but I picked up the rental agreement colelge are making me sign and all the conditions are freaking me otu. LIke they're going to remove all the hotplates leaving us with just a microwave and a toaster. And they're going to lock the near gate at dusk so it'll be a 20 minute walk to the canteen. They're going to tighten up on what elecrical appliances we can have and we have to have them all tested. And I can't live like that. If I can't have a kitchen then I've got to move out. So I'm worrying about that. I might be lucky - they might not be organised enough to remove the kitchens this year. Some things my bf said are ringing in my ears. Tomorrow is the weekend. It's freaking me out. I don't want to see him. And anyway I@m angry with him for reasons mostly based upon the fact that he exists and he's my boyfriend therefore he's the most convenient outlet for how I feel in general. It's 11 o'clock; I slept between 7 and 10 and now I can't get back to sleep, and I woke up to find an email from my bf saying he was going to bed, which has made me angry and frustrated because it means he's not going ot be around. Though I'd be hurt if he hadn't emailed me, and I don't want to talk to him anyway so it doesn't matter. Can you spell irrational? I just feel like I want to explode, but I'm afraid to wail because the porters will hear and come and bang on my door.
* Have I been here before? What did I do to deal with it? How did I feel then?
I don't know. I really don't know. Occasionally IMe dpeople only I@m living in college and they've blocked IM. (They're forcing me through a proxy server on a certain port and all the messenging programmes require port tunneling...which is blocked.) I don't know. I can't remember. Slept?
* What I have done to ease this discomfort so far? What else can I do that won't hurt me?
Not much. I haven't really tried. I'm probably working myself up more. I could stop working myself up, tlel myself that it's okay. I could do distracting things to try and occupy my mind. I don't want to though. If I do other things then it's not real and it's all in my head and it's all my fault and I'm worked up about nothing. Defusing things healthily just shows that I'm stupid and useless because when they're defused I'll think there was nothing to be upset about. If I hurt myself and feel better then it was okay to have been upset, or at least, if it was my fault I was upset at least I've been punished for it.
* How do I feel right now?
Frantic. Well, I did. I'm slightly calmer for going through this.
* How will I feel when I am hurting myself?
Satisfied. More peaceful. Unless I regret it of course. If I regret it then it'll send me even more up the wall.
* How will I feel after hurting myself? How will I feel tomorrow morning?
I don't know. This afternoon I felt better. But I remember occasionsin the past when I felt awful.
* Can I avoid this stressor, or deal with it better in the future?
Um, don't think so. There's not particular stressor. Its just this anxiety and freakingoutness which flares up periodically, and the things that are freaking me out are really just incidental. Another time they might not bug me at all; another time it mgiht be something else.

* Do I need to hurt myself?
Of course not.
Act in such a way as to make yourself feel capable and effective

The change starts now.

If in doubt, don't

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