so, I guess I figured out this weekend that the self-harm and surrounding crisis is a desperate (though mal-adaptive) attempt at gaining a sense of safety and containment (duh! but hey, I've never really thought/was able to look at it or put it all together before this weekend). Despite this new-found insight, I really can't pull myself out of the cycle. I think I managed to slow it a tiny bit, but I don't know how to stop it. I don't see my therapist until tomorrow. I need to not screw up so badly that I require a hospital visit before then. I need to stop this little spiral because I only have my T for another 2.5 weeks, and I want to be able to say goodbye properly (very important to me).
I know all these things. I can write them down and look at them a million times, but I still can't change things in the moment. I've gone from self-harming once every other day or few days a month ago, to doing it multiple times a day for the last 2-3 weeks (ironically, it got worse a few days before my T told me she was leaving)... I know I can't afford a hospitalization. I know that if I have to get medical attention for my self-harm, that I am pretty much guaranteed a hospital stay. I know hospital stays don't offer anything but containment (and are actually really traumatic for a number of reasons), yet I can't wrap my head around the consequences when the urge to cut gets so overwhelming... I still crave (and get) the release from the self-harm. I still push the limits of it because what I did 5 minutes ago is no longer helping. I try to distract, I try to look for support, but I feel like I'm too far down on this spiral to stop it effectively. It's like my brain is split in two, and there's no reasoning with the side that seems bent on this course. I can be calm and collected one minute, then something happens and I'm overwhelmed and I forget all this insight... I really don't want to screw things up, but I'm afraid I will anyway... this sucks.