[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?

I suggest researching self-harm articles here at PC. Go to the PC Home Page and in the upper right-hand corner type in "self-harm." See what comes up.

Here's a start: Cutting and Self-Injury | World of Psychology

I hope this helps.

The part about "forgotten" trauma really jumped out at me. If you can't buy into the "forgotten" bit, then hopefully you'll be open to exploring "repression". Abusers often brainwash and gaslight their targets to such an extent that they will believe their lies (what the abuser is saying is/isn't happening) over the truth (what the target knows is actually going on).

Rarely does someone choose to self-injure and/or dissociate from concious awareness for no reason at all. Often there is going to be some unresolved deep emotional pain that is causing us to do this, and it often revolves around those we relied on and looked up to the most while were were growing up, and they ended up bullying, abusing and betraying us instead.

Of course, all this is based on my own personal experience, but in the 20+ years I've been in therapy (individual and group), I have yet to meet anyone that dissociates and self-injures that wasn't seriously bullied and abused in one way or the other and resorted to dissociation and self-injury to numb themselves because there was no other way for them to cope and deal with the overwhelming emotional pain regarding what was going on at the time.

As far as my own self-injury goes, it has vastly improved over time as I have found healthier ways to cope and deal with the unspeakable acts committed against me by my parents and siblings when I was a child, adolescent and young adult, and with that being said, I'd like to add that while our families of origin aren't always the culprits, often they are, and THAT is what makes it even harder for us to face our truth over their lies.

I encourage you to continue working on this in therapy (individual and group), and am sending you warm wishes to heal well as you continue to find the courage and strength to explore what is causing you to self-injure and dissociate in the first place.

Sincerely,
Pfrog!

[Abby]

Thank you. I've been told I have an attachment disorder or an attachment trauma. I'm not sure if they are the same thing. I don't know how it happened because I have a wonderfully supportive and loving family.

Do you think it is possible then that I dissociate and self harm? I have been having such problems explaining to people I don't feel I have a choice sometimes - that it simply happens, or that I am not me enough to stop it or want to stop it. But I get the huge feeling that they don't believe me and feel I can and should do more. It is really upsetting me because I don't want this to happen anymore. I want to move forward in my life away from it - it has been such a long time dealing with this.

I am trying hard to find healthier ways to cope. In some ways I have improved over the years but I admit I get quite tired of always coping through it, but perhaps that is simply life and I need to accept it.

I think I'm feeling sad a lot. I'm not sure if it is dysthymia or an emptiness or what. I'm pretty tired of continually having to go to therapy. I want someone to understand because I feel I'm going crazy having to try and explain the seemingly unexplainable.

[ChipperMonkey]

Maybe treatment with a therapist familiar with dissociation/DID would be in your best interest.

[brownhare]

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?

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

[brownhare]

I have a wonderfully supportive and loving family

Abby are they too wonderful ? Are you surrounded by so much health it is hard to be unhealthy? I am wondering how this feeds in to the dissociation and cut off that leads to secret self harm.

It is very possible to become isolated by wonderful and supportive family health, if you feel like human wreckage & feel required to perform to the same standard.

I have felt this in my extended family, who had a hard time 'seeing' or 'acknowledging' personal and emotional crumple as something that could not be instantly fixed by hugs or presents or weekly loving phone calls.