Quote:
Originally Posted by Abby
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?
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Hi Abby,
I was wondering if self harm has become a control mechanism for you, I used to be bulimic when I was 18, I'm 43 now and eating disorder stopped for me at about 20 when a very solid and loving boyfriend intervened and substituted none sexual physical holding love in the face of my urge to binge and purge. I don't know if this is healthy, probably not given what I know now about co-dependence after 30 odd years and a lot of life.... but it worked for me back then, his soothing and solidity kept me grounded from the self harm release valve.
What resonated in what you said about no real sense of self whilst doing it rang true to me and I remembered my binges being just the way you described your self harm.
I would eat and puke on auto pilot. Feeling disconnected, almost as though the act of binging disconnected me from the 'nowness' of my massive load of stress. But I didn't consciously connect that this was what I was doing, I was on automatic. Feel stressed = stuff body with insane amounts of crap food = purge and purge and purge the bad out.
The binging and puking was so physical it shut off my stress and anxiety. It is hard to feel emotionally stressed when your body is releasing a crap load of endorphins because it is retching out two loaves of bread and a litre of milk.
Afterwards I would be exhausted, empty inside and stress free. Though at the time I was unable to consciously identify that as the pay off, in retrospect I am seeing why I was automatically going for physical harm to offset my terrible emotional load.
I was in so much pain and that was so normal to me that the self harm also seemed intuitive, normal, needed.
You have caught yourself and are questioning it.
This is what happened to me with the intervening boyfriend. I reached a point where I could not hide it and had to 'tell' what I was doing to someone I trusted.
Now I would probably tell a therapist I'm 43 and a Mom, but back then I didn't have one, I didn;t even know therapists existed as a thing. However my boyfriend was a combat veteran with his own awareness of '**** people do when they are feeling messed up'
He was able to step in and ground me as he had stepped in and grounded combat peers when they were playing russian roulette or the knife and finger game after twenty shots.
Bottom line he recognised what I was doing and told me I needed stabilizing because I was using dangerous physical means to escape built up stress.
His 'seeing' and 'saying' what I was doing with the promise of love and support was enough to allow me to let the binging and purging go.
I offer that you have made a first step by 'telling'
This means you are not on auto pilot any more, next step is finding a place to take the stress that offers a solution that supports rather than harms you.
If not therapy maybe a full on hard core workout that hits all the right notes with physical relief. That is what my boyfriend did. He took me to the gym and encouraged me to sweat and scream it out on the weights, rather than with a bag full of groceries and the toilet bowl.
It worked for me back then. I was not ready for therapy but I was ready for a change in the physical valve.
Best wishes and a big strong hug for having the courage to 'tell' xx