Lent

((((((((((Kit)))))))))))

It sounds like something, maybe anger?, builds up inside and gets harder and harder to resist around 50 days.

((((((((((Kit)))))))))))

If it's true about something building up: Do you also think it is anger? If not, what else might it be?

HUGS!!!!

Hey Bill! Yeah, 50 days is usually around my breaking point. IDK why. There's nothing magical about the number 50. I just get worn down after around 50 days and it gets harder and harder to resist. I think it could be anger. Anger at my parents for neglecting me and for my Mom physically abusing me when I was a kid. But I have a great relationship with my parents now so I think it's hard to feel that anger. But I've never really dealt with it. After 10 + years in therapy you think I would have. But I just avoid anger like the plague. But then I get hurt by hurting myself, so my T is trying to help me pry the door open a little. I drew today (whilst at work--bad employee--I didn't have any work to do) a mandala and a scene of a girl in a closet scared. I'm trying to get to that anger but it is buried deep. It's easier to cut it away. HUGS Kit

It must be really rough to have in the back of your mind that trying to address anger about the past with your parents could jeopardize your good relationship with them now.

What happened if, when you were a child, you got angry?

HUGS Bill

If I got angry as a child, I got punished. I learned quickly that being angry wasn't okay. Then I saw the adults around me out of control with their anger which made anger even that much more off limits in my mind. There were no good role models for me with healthy anger. My former T tried to do that for me, but if she got angry bc of something I've been through it just made me dissociated. Even though she would never ever hurt me. Anger just isn't safe. It's not safe in me and it's not safe in others. I get hurt either way. It's safer to just cut. This is something I have to change. Hopefully my new T can help with this. I know intellectually there can be healthy anger, I just don't know how to be angry in a healthy way. I don't even know how to be angry. I don't let myself get angry. It's just not safe. So T feels that my SH has a lot to do with my anger. She probably has a point. It's just one of those things that I haven't learned how to deal with yet. But I have hope. Hugs. Kit

First of all, you're doing great. I'm glad you have a good T to work through this stuff with. I don't have much advice but your story echoes in my own life. As a teenager I would get hysterically upset (I had good reason to) and would be told to 'just stop it or else'. I didn't know how else to get the hurt out and started cutting. It took me a long time to feel comfortable expressing my hurt instead of harming myself and the urge to do so has been a life long struggle but it gets easier

Are you saying that it might be helpful:

—to experience someone else’s unhealthy anger (so as to learn how to tolerate it)

and/or

—to experience someone else’s healthy anger (to learn what healthy anger is like)?

Hugs, Bill

Thanks MsSunflower and Bill3. I think what I'm saying is that it might be helpful to experience someone else's healthy anger and try to tolerate that and learn from that. I've experienced a lot of unhealthy anger from others and I haven't learned how to tolerate that, I just dissociate. Former T tried to help with the expressing healthy anger but it just scared me and I would go away in my head. By drawing mandalas which my T suggested, I did get a memory back of what it was like before getting punished and I was able to tap into some feelings of sadness (though not anger) but I think that I might have to go through the sadness to get to the terror to get to the anger. I haven't cut yet. It's been 52 days. I'm working on it. The urges are strong but I have a PCP appointment at the end of the month and then my sister's kids are visiting at the beginning of August so I don't want to do anything that might lead to stitches. I'm trying to hang in there. I'm having lots of urges today but if I can get distracted enough I can get through them. HUGS Kit

It's been 55 days. I'm close to cutting. I don't think I can hold out much longer. Its dominating my thoughts. I've been going through my bag of tricks...deep breathing, journalling, coming to PC, drawing, etc. I just think it's not working right now. It's hard to keep my head focused on the goal when I feel like how I feel. Its going to win, sooner or later, if not today another day. I'm going to try to hold out. Failure looms large.

A lapse is not failure.

The occasional lapse is a part of the recovery and healing process.

It happens. Until one day it doesn't happen!

It can be a signpost on the road to greater healing.

A lapse is not failure.

HUGS

Thanks Bill3. I haven't lapsed (yet) but I feel closer to it. I'm still trying things in my bag of tricks, emailing my former T, playing with my kitties, sewing little tee shirt dresses for my dog etc. You're right though. I need to reframe lapsing so that I don't think of it as a failure and then dig myself deeper into a hole. I will work on that. Thanks for the encouragement! HUGS Kit

I have to talk to my T tonight about my recent (10 days ago) SH. I had this sticky thought in my head that I had to and I couldn't get the thought out of my head. In fact we had discussed it at my last therapy session which was on July 6th. But this thought just stayed with me and stayed with me. I couldn't push it away. It became very important to me that I did this. IDK why it was, it just was. That's probably the "psychotic features" part of my depression. Now that I'm 10 days out, I'm very removed from it and I'm removed from the emotions of it. I can talk about it very factually now but I don't think I can draw back up the intensity and the emotions of whatever it was that was going on in my head that said, let's do this. On the other hand, I have been creating art again. I did a black and white one with lots of "x's" that I darkened in to make it look like bow ties, and thick black lines outlining the x's. And then I did one with a cross and a frame and then x's in the back that I turned into a stained glass window look with colored pencils. That one turned out really pretty actually. So I was able to get my artistic creative side going after I SH-ed. Something about drawing the x's I find very soothing, although I don't know why. I'm worried about talking to my T because I don't think she is going to understand if I can't explain it and I don't know how to explain it. I can talk about the mechanics of it, but as for why I did it, I really have no clue now. She says I have to pay attention to these things. I try. I maybe should have journaled or something around that time, it may have given me some insight. But I didn't and it's too late now. Does that make sense to anyone? How SH can be so important at the time and then later on, it's like, I don't even know why it was so important. I can't even describe what was going on besides things were building inside and that was the release.

If sounds to me as though you did pay attention and you do have a perfectly reasonable explanation for doing it: it was very soothing.

Maybe you don’t know why it was soothing, but nevertheless it was in fact soothing! 🙂

(Repetitive actions often can be soothing, e.g. saying the Rosary.)

Hugs!

Thanks Bill. I had a really good session with T last night. We talked a lot about a lot of things. She helped me with some hallucinations. We talked about the SH and I feel better about it now. I can't totally stop thinking about it. She told me to think of it the reverse way, not what I'm giving up, but what I'm gaining. And when I think of wanting to hurt myself, to think of things to calm myself or soothe myself instead. Self-care. We talked about some ways to do that. We talked about some anger that I must be having towards others but I take out on myself. That I treat everyone kind and with compassion except myself. That I need to take as good of care of myself as I do my kitties. A lot of this resonated with me. So she gave me some ideas to try and I'm going to work on them. In the meantime, I might keep drawing those x's because it's really soothing!

I'm definitely in a self harm cycle. This is two days in a row where I have self-harmed. I definitely am doing some protective measures like staying busy in the evenings and spending time with friends. I'm also engaging in riskier behaviors like self-harming at work. Generally I'm alone in my office but there is always that chance someone could walk by or someone could come to see me. So self-harming at work isn't the best idea. I try to not do it there much but two days in a row I have self-harmed at work, in my office. There's definitely a push and pull for and against me. There is part of me that wants to stop this behavior right now and part of me that wants to keep going until my arms are messed up. I think this is called ambivalence. I think part of it is in response to my T session last Friday where my T didn't really take my suicidal idealation seriously. So now I have to prove that I can mess myself up. I know how messed up that sounds. It's also soothing the suicidal idealation so part of it is about relieving that feeling inside of wanting to die, in a healthier way than by suicide. My head definitely feels in a bad space. I'm not doing what is healthy for me and that's a problem.

Again its that push and pull inside of me. I know in my head what I should do, but I'm not doing it. I'm going to go meet a friend after work though, and that's good for me. I really don't quite understand myself right now.

There's also something in me that is saying the wound isn't "bad" enough and that I didn't punish myself enough. I have to be reacting to something. Not sure what it is exactly. Maybe T's lack of empathetic response. Maybe because I'm planning on telling T about some Trauma I had in my past next session.