I'd like to jump clear over that "clever clogs" kerfuffle (thanks for laying it to rest, P7) and back to something TPND said earlier:
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Originally Posted by ThePainNeverDies
... how could I possibly believe what that tiny part of me tells me? And that is that they are wrong and I am right. I confuse myself sometimes!
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I take confusion for a good sign. It generally means you're getting close to the truth. Anyway, that "tiny part" of you is what counts -- it's called mindfulness. All the rest is baggage.
You don't need to believe anything. The best thing you can do is start from where you are, only keep the lights on. If you don't believe something, just watch yourself disbelieve it, and then watch whatever you choose to do about it, and then watch whatever happens after that.
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I felt kinda like that.. Like there was a big ball of crap weighing me down and making matters worse and even harder to deal with aand i can't shift it, so in a way I used SI to shift it...
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Another member here, whom you already seem to know, recently reported
* that she stopped SI-ing to see what would happen. After a few weeks she noticed a lot of sadness (among other things) starting to come up for her. It sounded as if SI had been her way of suppressing or dissipating that, or at least distracting herself from it. As soon as she learned to just let the sadness be there, that was when the fireworks began and she started discovering what was on the other side of
that.
If you should feel like SI-ing, what I'd recommend would be first noticing what comes up for you when you
don't**.
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But then with therapy, I've figured another part of it is down to punishment. Carrying on the punishment that they gave me. Why I do this, I don't know. I believe that I deserved it and still do deserve it.
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And again: when you feel as if you deserve punishment, notice what that "deserving" actually looks and feels like to you -- and what comes up for you when you don't act on it.
When you've chosen to work on something mindfully, if you find you only get an inch into it before giving up, (a.)
watch yourself give up, (b.) keep noticing what comes up for you
after you give up, and (c.) next time see if you can make it two inches.
Just be that "tiny part" of yourself and keep the lights on. It's all you ever need to do.
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* If the "other member" were to read this and find that I didn't get the facts of her story exactly right, no matter; let's then call this a different story that I made up, inspired by hers and loosely based on it.
** I just noticed that Rapunzel recently addressed this same subject a little differently,
here.