After (A Month and Half)

[secret_writer]

•Have you taken care of your physical wounds? If not, go do that now. We'll wait.
Yes, as best as I can.

•What had happened just before?
I was texted by a bunch of friends who needed my help, and yelled at by my mom for my grades. I went upstairs, and started crying.

•What were you thinking and feeling?
I was fuzzing in and out - sort of dissociative. I felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders, I was supposed to be strong to help all of my friends, but everything was falling out of place. I felt stressed and with no escape. I was thinking about all the things I had to do, and how if I didn't fix things, everyone would be hurt, and I wouldn't be able to go to college and it just kept going from there...

•Why did you end up hurting yourself then instead of some other time?Was there an event that was the final straw? What was it?
I gave myself twenty minutes to calm down. If I didn't want to self-harm anymore, I wouldn't. I made it about 15, before my mind got the best of me. My mind started playing scenarios of what could - would- might happen, and these little voices (each one belonging to someone I know in real life) started hounding me about things I was doing wrong o about my sexuality. It was then that I self-harmed.


•How did the situation get to the final straw stage? Trace it back through the events that led up to the last event. Look for some point at which you could have made a different decision and not arrived at the final straw.
I had spent the last month and a half free from self-harm, but had bottled my emotions. I hadn't spoken up for myself at all in certain situations, I wasn't take care of myself very well. I was taking on problems that were not my own, and feeling very overwhelmed. I felt stressed, and kept dissociating. If I would've gotten more sleep, or done better on my grades, I may have been able to avoid some of what caused the final straw. Also, I've got to learn not to try to help everyone when I'm falling apart myself.

•Were there outside factors like drugs, alsohol, being off your meds, lack of sleep, etc? can you address those in the future? how?
Probably lack of sleep, which causes my dissociative state to be much worse, which in turn leads to depersonalization and feeling less pain. I really need to start going to bed as soon as I can, instead of staying up until the wee hours of the morning.

•What other ways of coping did you try besides self-harm? How well did they work?
I tried music, which works sometimes. I tried to let my feelings out by crying, but by that point I was in and out of dissociation and it didn't help. I tried giving myself a time limit : "If you still want to self-harm in twenty minutes, you can." But I couldn't even make it 20 minutes without self-harming.

•In retrospect, are there coping methods that you now realize might have helped? What were they?
Yes, my friend Giraffe was open to me talking to her, but I shut her out. I didn't want anyone to know I was falling apart.
Also, I could have painted, which almost always calms me down. Or done homework, which would've taken care of part of the actual problem: my grades.

•Name at least two things you will do to help yourself remember those coping methods if you end up in this situation again.
I'm going to write down mine and Giraffe's friend phrase on my hand, and probably mirror or something.


•How do you feel about the situation that led to self-harm now? Is it resolved? If not, what are some steps you might take toward resolution?
No. I need to talk to my friend about how she has been treating me, and stand up for myself. I need to catch up on homework, and get my grades up so I don't feel like a failure.

•Are you likely to be in that emotional place again? How will you recognize it when you're in that situation?
Yes. I start to alternate between dissociation and being overly alert and/or anxious. Then my thoughts race and I feel tense.

•What will you try before you resort to self-harm if you're in that situation again? List three specific things you will commit to trying.
Calling/texting/messaging my friend Giraffe
Going onto B.U.S. and looking at My Place/Coping/Before&After boards
Painting and/or writing something that expresses my emotions (or in the case of writing, plants me in someone's else's shoes)