If I hurt myself I know for a brief time I will feel more in control and maybe a little less frustrated. However if my parents find out that I hurt myself it will just make things worse. I know I'll get lectured about how I am just self harming for attention and that I just don't want to be responsible for my behaviour because I am resorting to self harm.
What will hurting myself bring to the situation? What will it take away from the situation?
If I hurt myself it will bring a little bit of relief from stress I am feeling right now and a sense of control. It would make me feel like I could still feel free to express myself somewhere even if that somewhere isn't at home. It would make me feel like I still had something in my life that was a secret, something that was my own and was private.
But by doing so I would hurt myself both physically and emotionally at the same time. By starting to self harm again I know I would be opening up the door to doing it as a habit again. The urges would become harder to resist as a result in the future and I would have to go back to trying to hide my scars and wounds. I know I would be ashamed but yet at the same time definate.
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 feel respected and free to be myself without getting critized or lectured whenever I make a mistake. I want to have fun with my mom instead of always taking about finding all the ways to try and make myself perfectly physcially healthy. I want my privacy to be respected. I want the freedom to make my own decisions about how I take care of myself and how I deal with the challenges that come my way. I want to be respected in those decisions. I don't want to keep walking away resentful every time I talk to my mom.
I don't know if hurting myself will take my closer or further away from how I want to feel in the future. It could end up taking me further away if my mom finds out that I self harmed cause then she will be watching me even closer then she is now and analyzing me. But it could also temporarily take me closer because I would have a way to at least maintain a little bit of my privacy and a way to express all the emotions I fear expressing around my mom.
If hurting myself seems like my best option right now, how long will the relief it brings last? what will i do then?
The relief probably won't last long maybe a day if I'm lucky.
The emotions I am feeling right now are just to strong in order to be satisfied and calmed by only self harming once. I probably will end up self harming again later if I do it now.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 can write how I am feeling in a journal, pray, go to bed and try and sleep the pain away and then go and look at my finances and set up a time to talk to my spiritual director and some other wise people I know. None of those may change the situation directly but they might make it easier to bear if I did them. That might even reveal another option that I could do instead of the one I am faced with now.
How will i feel tomorrow if i hurt myself? How will i feel tomorrow if i do the other thing i came up with?
If I hurt myself tonight I know I will feel ashamed and yet comforted at the same time. I will feel like I have gained back some control over my independence as a young adult verses feeling like my parents are the ones making the decisions for me.
But if I do the other option then tomorrow I will not feel ashamed. I might feel emotionally drained and still frustrated and stressed but I will also feel proud of myself for trying to work things out in a positive way.
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 still want to self harm.
But I think I am going to make a deal with myself instead. The deal is this, I first have to do the things I mentioned above to try and solve the situation and then after that if I still feel this way I will call a crisis line. And then if that doesn't work I will self harm.Why do I feel I need to hurt myself? What has brought me to this point?
I feel invaded right now. I feel like I have no privacy with from my mom. I feel like I have been treated like a child instead of a adult lately and it bothers me. I am afraid and I don't want to move home because I am afraid that I won't be able to express myself when I am happy or frustrated or sad. I feel like I am being sentenced to a emotional cage and I just don't feel like I have the strength to bear it. I am angery and disappointed that I don't feel free to be myself in my family ( or at least with my mom). I am sad that my mom and I can't seem to ever resolve any of the things we talk about satisfactorily. I am sad that I can't just enjoy her and her me instead of talking about serious things all the time. As my lease comes to a end I feel more and more terrified and frustrated at the idea of moving home especially now. I feel so helpless to avoid moving home.
Have I been here before? What did I do to deal with it? How did I feel then?
I have felt like this before but I didn't deal with it very well the last time I was here. Then I think I did end up self harming but it didn't help it just left me feeling frustrated and helpless all over again.
What I have done to ease this discomfort so far? What else can I do that won't hurt me?
So far I have prayed, journaled, talked to other people, tried to distract myself, talked to my doctor and balenced my check book. I have exercised, tried to eat healthy and have purposly done things to try and help myself relax.
How do I feel right now?
Scared, frustrated and helpless.
How will I feel when I am hurting myself?
Sad, angery and in control ( a little bit )
How will I feel after hurting myself? How will I feel tomorrow morning?
Pained, relieved, more urgy and ashamed.
Can I avoid this stressor, or deal with it better in the future?
I can't avoid it but I can do the healthy steps I listed above.
Do I need to hurt myself?
I don't know yet for tonight I don't think so.
