Self Injury Revisited

resistor

Hi all. First let me start by saying I am okay.

I have been putting off writing about this for weeks. The two main reasons are

1) I don't have any questions or seek advice. This makes it feel more like dumping my problems on someone than proactively engaging in conversation. That is not really my personality and makes me feel selfish.

2) I feel a lot of shame.

After a lot of back-and-forth in my head, I decided to write about my recent experience. Despite my reservations, I think it's important to let go and not to hold my emotions in. Ideally this should happen with a councillor, but I can't wait until find a new councillor.

I have a long history of untreated SI until five years ago. By some miracle I got it under control and have been free of hurting myself since.

A month ago I was overwhelmed with emotion. My usual maladaptive tricks to manage my headspace failed to help. I felt the weight of all that heavy emotion I carried, lift away. I also felt SHAME. For the next week it felt like my emotional burdens were turned down. I had a clear head again. Of course this is a temporary fix, and a TERRIBLE way to make me feel better.

A week later I shocked myself did it again. That set off alarm bells. I haven't done it since I recognised the warning signs. It speaks a lot to my mindset at the time.

I am better now. But I have to find a better way to deal with these emotions that overwhelm me. I can acknowledge this is risky behaviour, that it's not a good coping mechanism, and that I need to work on it before I fall into the SI spiral again.

I'm open to any advice, suggestions, coping strategies, etc. If you have read this far, thank you for taking the time to listen to me complain. It does feel better to let me express myself. Thank you.

therising

Hi resistor

So important to get things out, let off steam/pressure. A build up can definitely create a pressure cooker of thoughts, emotions and overwhelm.

There are so many different forms of self harm, used as coping mechanisms. For someone who's given up drinking, they may turn to drink. For someone who's given up smoking, they may reach for a cigarette. For someone who's managed to stop emotional eating, they may visit the junk food aisle of the supermarket. The drinking binge, the smoke-a-thon, the eating fest etc does not take away from all the hard work, commitment and progress someone has made. It's a tiny section on a long and impressive path of reformation. What that section or part of the path is about becomes the question.

As a gal who traded one form of self harm for another (an emotional drinker who became an emotional eater), I'm seriously struggling with not eating food that I know is causing me physical harm. While I was going brilliantly with eating in much healthier ways, helping take the weight off my knees (which were expressing a lot of pain), in the last week I've returned to my old ways. While my life is not bad, it could be much better and I need to identify exactly what's wrong. If there's one key thing I've learned over the years, when it comes to my mental health, it relates to the need to identify factors I'm not entirely conscious of yet, such as

Any new emotions or a new set of mixed emotions I haven't met with before, that may need to be explored and identified
Underlying issues from the past that could be part of a current issue
A need to develop a new skill, tool and/or ability with which to manage certain challenges
A need for a significant change in lifestyle or style of life
A growing inability to tolerate what I may have been tolerating for decades
Mental dialogue that may be coming from my inner critic or the saboteur in me
A need to consider physical issues that could be complicating things. While there could be dopamine, B12, iron or other chemical deficiencies at play, too much of something (such as cortisol) could also be creating problems. Is there an lack of energy in play or some level of exhaustion that's worn or brought me down in some way? Down is not a good place to be

Gee, we're complex creatures. While keeping such complexity in mind, I'm less inclined to beat myself up these days if I go off track in some way. Being a human being is a tough thing to manage on occasion, so I think we have to cut our self some slack as we learn how to manage being human. It's definitely a 'learn as you go' experience.

While anger, joy, frustration and other such emotions are natural emotions, it's suggested that 'shame' is a human construct. It was designed to be felt. I've found that in being able to replace a sense of shame with a sense of something else, such as disappointment, it lessens the sting. Taking it one step further, if I appoint myself as 'She who will be more conscious of my style of life' and I’m dis-appointed from that level of consciousness for some reason, the challenge is to become fully conscious again, accept the appointment again. While we can put some positive or constructive spin on disappointment, shame doesn’t give us anything to work with other than deep regret, pain and suffering. Send it back from whence it came, back to those who created it. We definitely do not need it.

resistor

Thank you therising, for your valued comment. I will keep that in mind.