I am at two weeks free of self harm. I am not holding my breath but I have hope. I have decided that I want to feel the pain inside. I used self injury so I didn't have too. But I think that it is important to feel it. The thing I have found most helpful is my emotion manager sheet. It gives me a vehicle to work through the emotions when they start to come on and to seperate from them enough in an analytical way but still think and feel them enough to sort them out and deal with them. Also affirming the addiction aspect has help me to sit with the discomfort. Perhaps it is that I can deal with pain if it has a purpose. It is just that in the past I couldn't really connect to that purpose. Why do I hurt so much?

Both of you have help emmensely, thank you for sharing your stories. I hope that more people will share theirs. The more info we get the better.
Carrie

<font color=green>But the implicit and usually unconscious bargain we make with ourselves is that, yes, we want to be healed, we want to be made whole, we're willing to go some distance, but we're not willing to question the fundamental assumptions upon which our way of life has been built, both personally and societally.--Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft