Posted this in srlf - harm section but re-posting it here as I really need some advice or understanding. I can't tell if I'm making excuses for a bad habit or there is something outside of my conscious going on, a me reacting withougj really being aware of it. I'd say the majority of the time I self harm without having any particular feelings present...or that I'm aware of:

I'm genuinely at the end of my tether with self harm. I desperately want to leave it behind me. Everyone seems to imagine this is a choice I make but it isn't generally. Sure, sometimes I'm so upset that i don't care what I do to myself and actively want to do it. But there are other times where it is automatic and I'm doing it before I realise, times when I am aware it will happen but it doesn't mean enough to me for me to try and stop it and then times when I sit thinking "I really don't want to do this, this isn't what I want, I really don't want to" and then I do anyway. Perhaps it is an excuse or just such an ingrained habit now that I actually do have a choice but it feels as though I don't.

Yesterday I went through my entire day meeting friends, being sociable and I'd say I was happy...I certainly wasn't unhappy...perhaps I don't register myself enough. Anyway, I came home and without any known trigger (except one maybe 10days ago which I'm still in a tailspin of i think) I started to self harm. During this time my family calls me and I pick up the phone and chat to them for about 5-10minutes and they're unaware that I'm in the midst of self harming. When I out down the phone I go back to it.

It is as though I'm completely disconnected sometimes. I must be getting something out of it though to do it...I also have self harmed multiple multiple times at work and gone straight back to my role once I left the bathroom. It is as though I'm fragmented.

I want to understand this so that I can explain to others. A private therapist was surprised by my complete fragmentation suggested apparent competence but also complex trauma. I don't know if these are the same thing and besides I'm not one to buy into a forgotten trauma. I don't feel able to tell other treatment staff these suggestions as it seems ridiculous and I don't understand it enough.

All I want is for people to understand I can be hugely triggered but then after a day or so I seem to split off from it. One part of me continues to react it seems but the other just continues as normal. To everyone I then seem fine and it makes me confused and I wonder if I am fine also. Maybe self harm is a habit...but would it lasts for a week+ at a time? I always imagine it as though a train thats been derailed and it'll keep ploughing forward destroying everything it hits until it evertually comes to a half. During that time it means more balancing for the real me. I want to understand but more than this, I want to stop hurting myself. I'm tired of it.

Any ideas of what I can do?