Before

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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sojourner_steph
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Before

Post by sojourner_steph » Wed Sep 30, 2015 12:35 pm

  • how will this situation or feeling change if i hurt myself?


    It would make me stop thinking about and imagining SI - temporarily. It would make me feel something which I understand instead of something which I don't (even though both are negative emotions - how I feel after SI is something I understand and can deal with). . .
  • what will hurting myself bring to the situation? what will it take away from the situation?

    Temporarily it would help. Longer term it would make stuff worse and harder.
  • 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 work on things. I want to get somewhere. I want to change. SIing is going to take me further from that.
  • if hurting myself seems like my best option right now, how long will the relief it brings last? what will i do then?

    Not long. I would probably then want to SI more. And it would be harder to not give in to it since I already had. . . I don't want to give in to wanting to SI.
  • 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 want to sleep. But I've been trying and I can't sleep. If I could sleep then I wouldn't have to think and feel until tomorrow. Tomorrow stuff would be hard again. I don't know what else I can do - I don't want to get up and try distraction type things because I really just want to sleep.
  • 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 give in I would be dissapponted and it would make things harder. If I don't, stuff is still going to be hard, but I won't have to add dealing with SI on top of it.
  • 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?


More Before Questions To Answer
  • Why do I feel I need to hurt myself? What has brought me to this point?

    I can't sleep. Stuff hurts. I can't think. Stuff has been hurting all day . . . And the past few days have been hard.
  • Have I been here before? What did I do to deal with it? How did I feel then?

    Probably. I don't know.
  • What I have done to ease this discomfort so far? What else can I do that won't hurt me?

    I'm trying to sleep now. All day - I've been distracting myself - reading stuff on the Internet. Watching DVDs.
  • How do I feel right now?

    It hurts. And I don't know what it is - I don't know what emotions I'm feeling other than it hurts and I can't think.
  • How will I feel when I am hurting myself?
  • How will I feel after hurting myself? How will I feel tomorrow morning?
  • Can I avoid this stressor, or deal with it better in the future?
  • Do I need to hurt myself?

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Scarlett_
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Re: Before

Post by Scarlett_ » Wed Sep 30, 2015 3:13 pm

Hey,

Sounds like you can think of some really good reasons to not hurt yourself. I hope sleeping helps.

Does it help to try and label your emotions more? Sometimes when I know what I'm feeling that helps me manage it better.
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sojourner_steph
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Re: Before

Post by sojourner_steph » Wed Sep 30, 2015 10:56 pm

Thank you for your reply. Yeah - it does help me more when I identify my emotions so that I know what they are. But I find it really hard to do that - like I feel stuff, but I don't know what emotion it is.

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treasure
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Re: Before

Post by treasure » Thu Oct 01, 2015 12:25 am

i've been having trouble sleeping lately. i often listen to guided meditations and they help a lot to relax me and stop me thinking so much. i really like satify (android or online), excel at life and isleep easy (android).
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sojourner_steph
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Re: Before

Post by sojourner_steph » Thu Oct 01, 2015 10:37 am

I can't do this. It hurts. I feel stuff . . . I still want to SI. And it just hurts. . .

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treasure
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Re: Before

Post by treasure » Fri Oct 02, 2015 1:15 am

have you cried? i think sometimes we hold in the pain and crying can help let it happen naturally.

i'm sorry it hurts. :1soothe:
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