Need Help

It's been over a year since i last cut. I really haven't had many triggers since then, however tonight i am feeling really triggered...i want to cut so bad!....i need to cut!....please...help me.

If you have stopped before, you know that it only gets worse and it isn't easy to stop. Think about how you will feel about it after you do it.

Would you like to talk to us about what is going on and making you want to cut again? Talking about it might help. We understand just about anything here.

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{hugs}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

I hope you are feeling better - let us know what would help you.

<font color=green>"Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible" Carl Jung</font color=green>

All I need is to cut....i'm really going to do it..i've reached a point of not caring anymore...about anything...i want to die....but for now cutting will do.

Just don't do it.

We can all listen but it is hard to help you from here, have you ever been to a pdoc? I think you should seek professional help and the others that post here, if your present one isn't helping then seek another one.
You all can't go on cutting much longer, I fear for you all that there just may be that "last cut" and there is more to life, live it to it's fullest even if there are those crappy days
Please get professional help, but also come to the forums here to talk, and support one another

Take care,
"darkeyes"

In giving advice seek to help, not please your friend
SOLON

{{{{{{DE}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

Seems to be a trend, doesn't it? I know that I can't stop, although I have tried. I wish I had the feeling that even the bad depressing days are worthwhile.

I'm simply burying myself in my job.

Mary Alice

Have you taken this up with a good pdoc? There are meds that can help in adjunct to talk therapy, just don't give up, okay?
Please take care now,
DE

In giving advice seek to help, not please your friend
SOLON

{{{{{{{{DE}}}}}}}}}}}}}

yes I have actually. My pdoc has a call in to my T to discuss other meds - get his input I guess. Still waiting - I checked yesterday on it.

Haven't completely given up yet.

Mary Alice

I am on atidepressants...have been since i was 12. i guess they help. i cut last night...it was wimpy though, not even and inch and not deep at all...it can be passed off as my nail catching my arm....i cut again just now, it's on my stomach..much easier to hide...it's bigger and a little deeper...not much though. I really don't want to cut, but i'm so damn sick of everything. my mom is basically threatening suicide...she's been sick for over 2 years, and isn't getting better..she's just tired of not feeling well. all my friends, well proved themselves not to be friends. getting married, without telling me, having a baby....ect. i see a therapist, but i haven't seen her lately, i am going to make an appointment. thank god this semester of college is about over. i'll be done tomorrow, just have to survive my finals. i'm so disappointed in myself...i mean it would have been 2 years come january. anyway....goodbye....if anyone wants to talk my AIM name is believer62604 and my MSN name is believer62603@yahoo.com
goodbye.

{{{{{{{{{Dreamer}}}}}}}}}}}} Two years is very good. Be proud of the fact that you made it that long. You did good. Don't let this mishap make you feel like you didn't accomplish anything. The triggers you mentioned, the stress you are under right at this moment are HUGE to say the least. The question is now that you have cut where do you go from here? Now that you have relieved some of the pressure it is time for you to try to remember all the things that you do to make yourself feel good. All the things that are good coping measures that have carried you through the last almost 2 years. Sure you say you have not had any major triggers but there were bound to be times when you felt stressed and needed comforting. What did you do then, when the stress wasn't so large. Those things can help you now. I find that if I can locate the specific trigger and how it connects to things that happen in the past I can reduce my need to cut...I guess it puts some perspective on the situation and relieves the intensity of the moment.

Meds are not the answer. They can help eliviate the stress that may lead to cutting but I think there is a psychological addiction factor to cutting. Meds help with pysiological stuff but the psychological addiction is harder to deal with. The truth is, cutting works and it works fast. That makes it an easy way to deal with intense feelings that over whelm the psyche. It is a maladaptive coping response but it works. That is why it is so hard to stop. I keep practicing my new coping procedures but the fact is that they just don't work as well or as quickly as cutting does. But as I practice and get better at them and start to make them a regular habit I find the my need to cut is reduced substantially. Intense emotions brought on by certain triggers however override all the stuff I have been working on because I need help NOW not in the more extended time that the other things take. It may have to do with my particular brand of mental illness. When I am triggered I return to the moment that the original trauma happened. I am not "remembering" that pain but actually living that pain again. I am in that emotional place as if it is happening right here right now. It is like an emotional flashback...is it simular to ptsd? Often times I don't even know what those emotions are connected too until after I have had a chance to calm down and process it. I don't know if this is the experience of the other people here who cut but it is why I cut. I believe that I can kick the habit so to speak but I think that the only way is by being proud of the steps I have made and forgive myself for the times I just can't seem to help it. I made it almost three months this time, I will be so incredibly proud when I make it almost 2 years.
Take care,
Carrie

<font color=blue>The soul should always stand ajar ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.--Emily Dickinson

Thank you Carrie. I know that almost two years is an incredible accomplishment....however i have gotten back to a place where i really don't even care anymore. i wish i did, but i really don't.

You really don't care about the two years of not injurying yourself or don't care about life in general? I wish I could give you some wonderful peice of advice that would make the world shine for you as you read it because it would open you up to a whole new world of health and happiness. Have you ever noticed that there are a million books out there that claim that if you read them the world will be wonderful for you and you will become an enlightened soul and suddenly you will be happy. Why is that? Why is it that they have the answers but their answers just don't fit our lives? Then I ask myself "are they still so wonderfully happy now that a year or two has gone by since they wrote the final draft and the gloriness has worn off with the tumble of life?" "Did their advice really hold water or was it just given in a state of temporary nirvana?" I do the book buying for a "spiritual" bookstore so I am inundated with the info on thousands of books written by people who have found peace in their lives and want to tell me how to find peace in my own life. It is funny because most of them would be deemed mentally unstable and not in touch with reality. If I went to my T and told him that I was channeling an alien angel and that it knew exactly what mankind needed to do to survive our times, my T would send a note to my pdoc and suggest that maybe I needed more medication. But people buy these books. Thousands of people have paid millions of dollars to JZ Knight just to learn what instructions she recieved from Ramtha the last time she channeled him. People find comfort in the words of John Edwards who is hearing voices and recieving images. When I was hearing voices I got put in the hospital but people buy his books all the time.

I know this has nothing to do with your problems but when you said you didn't care anymore all this stuff flooded my brain. Perhaps all these people seek this information because they too wish they cared. My most dangerous times are when I feel I don't care anymore or more accurately I tell myself that I don't care because caring hurts too much. That is when I begin to lose hope. But at the same time it is when I care the most because if I didn't care then I wouldn't hurt so badly. If I didn't care I would need too squash the emotional pain under physical scars because if I truely didn't care none of that pain would matter anymore.

I am worried that you are in that place. I worry because it is the bleakest place on the face of the earth and many people get lost there never to come back. I want you to come back. Don't ask my why. I don't know you. i only met you yesterday so you shouldn't matter to me, not yet anyway. But you do matter to me, perhaps because in some ways you ARE me. Your pain is my pain that I lived once before and will live once again. If you can hold my hand and I can pull you back into a world that matters to you then I will be able to come back too.

So you see, I have no answers, no wisdom, no way to help. However I do care about what happens to you and I hope you will use that care as a surragate emotion to help you get through this moment of darkness.

So please take care dear one,
In light, love, and hope,
Carrie

<font color=blue>The soul should always stand ajar ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.--Emily Dickinson

Carrie,

Wonderful post.........full of support and wisdom and encouragement. Where were you before I fell into my black hole? lol..........j/k

I've missed you - glad you're being more vocal lately.

Mary Alice

Thanks Mary Alice,
I have been in a weird space of late. Last couple of days I have been dissociating all over the place. It is scary. When I took my son to school yesterday, he was out of the car and half way up the sidewalk to the door before I was even aware that I had pulled up to the curb. I surrendered the keys to my hubby right after I got home. It makes me wonder how many other people are driving around who are totally whacked out.

Feeling this way isn't all that unpleasant, just perplexing. It worries me because I am not at all sure how far down into the hole I really am. I think that is why Dreamer has touched me so deeply. I hope she is ok. I want to say that everything will be ok, that with time it all gets better and that with hard work and dedication we live happily ever after but I am lost and I can't seem to locate myself. I do however have faith that I will find myself eventually and will regain the peace I had not too long ago. Perhaps that is what I need to say. Life is full of pitfalls. Sometimes we don't even realize we have fallen into them at first but every time we manage to climb out of the hole it makes us stronger and more capable of climbing out of the next one. The almost two years of not cutting was an experience that made her stronger and more able to climb out of this particular pit she has fallen into should she decide too attempt the climb.
Carrie

<font color=blue>The soul should always stand ajar ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.--Emily Dickinson

<font color=purple>Thank you again Carrie, you have very valid and inspiring points. And I care about the two years of not cutting, but I am so damn sick of the world right now, that I don't really feel like i have accomplished much, if anything. So this is my delima, trying to survive until this depression and hopelessness passes. I've been "surviving" for over 5 years...so I will most likely be able to do it again. It's not that i don't want to go on living, i do. I want to live, I have plans for my life, it's just that right now those plans and goals seem so far away. I guess one thing that has really lifted me up in the past has been my faith in God. However, my faith has taken some serious hits lately, and i'm really not sure who seek advice from. i know there are people at my church that would be more than happy to listen, but i don't want to burden them.

The thing is that when i was in high school and going to church regularly, there were things for me to do, there was a youth group and choir and sunday school class, all for high school. Now that i am out of high school i really don't feel comfortable in the high school group, and i really too young for the adult groups. so i'm hung out to dry until i'm like 25. there isn't a young adult class...and i really need one.

Anyway, now that i've babbled for a while i am going to go. But to update on my cutting, i did cut last night....i feel like i'm on such a downward trend...spirally down and down, and i've got nothing to grab onto and pull myself up. (sigh) oh well....</font color=purple>

Dreamer,

What are your goals? You said that they seem far away to you. But maybe focusing on what you want to do with your life would help you to feel better. My goals also seem so far away, but when I start to give up on them I get sucked back down into serious depression. I just have to keep on taking baby steps, even when it's hard, because if I don't I will give up, and that's bad.

You said that church and choir, etc. were good for you before. Is the choir limited to just certain ages? Could you still participate in that? What if you told them that you need a class for your age group? There are most likely other people your age who could use it too. Maybe they would start something.

What else are you interested in? Let's find something that you can grab onto, okay?

Wendy

<font color=green>"Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible" Carl Jung</font color=green>

I have a suggestion but I don't know how to phrase it because I know how hard it is when residing on the plane of existance you are on right now. On graduating highschool you entered that no-where-land between childhood and adulthood. For all intents and purposes you are an adult but until just a short time ago you were treated as a child. This is something that totally sucks about our society and the school system at this time. Until you graduate you are not given the respect, honor and responsibilty that an adult would recieve then one day you walk down the commencement isle and suddenly you are expected to enter the adult world RIGHT NOW. There is no adjustment period, no lessons on how to act, no real guidance on how one behaves as an adult. Is it any wonder that so many kids blow their first year in college on booze and drugs and the opposite (or same) sex? And those who don't go to college are left with the angst of "What do I do now?" so they go into unfullfilling work and wile away the time often hiding their depression under alcohol and other vices...such as cutting.

But you gave the answer to the problem in your post. You found comfort and beauty in church with your groups. You feel lost and out of place now that you have passed the milestone into adulthood. I know this idea is going to sound way to big but it needn't be and it would kill two birds with one stone. Why don't you go to your pastor and talk to him/her about how you feel. It will give you a chance to tell someone how you feel and the worries you have. It will also help your pastor to see that there is an important niche that needs to be filled. You could be the catalyst in the beginning of a new group of people who share their fears of being thrown out into a world they have only just begun to figure out. I would give you and others a new connection to your church and help you stay close to your G-d when you need it most. You wouldn't be doing it alone. You would get help from so many different people in the church, from you pastor to the secretary to leaders of the other church groups who would be more then happy to lend a hand and show your new group how to make things work.

Please don't automatically say "I can't do that." It would be my first inclination to shrink from the idea. It sounds so big and so scary to me but it makes such good sense when I look at it from the outside. Give it some thought. Let me know what you think about it.
Carrie

<font color=blue>The soul should always stand ajar ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.--Emily Dickinson

<font color=purple>I have gotten the same advice from three different people, which leads me to think that I should try to start the group. I am going to contact someone as soon as I can, but right now I am sick, and really can't do too much of anything. So, I will try to make it through until I can do something...I am going to try to go to church this sunday, but if i'm sick that won't happen... thank you for your advice....it has been helpful. I know that i have needed to do this for a while, and you guys telling me to, has just confirmed it, and hopefully will push me to take action.</font color=purple>