yesterday

I cut myself yesterday. I can't decide if I will tell my therapist or not. He thought I was doing pretty good. (I did too.) Since I'm not going to be here the next time he is in town it will be a month until I see him again. I saw him yesterday, about half an hour after I did it, because I was in the building for another reason, and he asked how I was doing and I just said okay. He was getting ready to go home and I didn't want to bother him.
Up until yesterday afternoon I thought I was doing okay. I don't quite know why I did it. I was surprised because I didn't expect to actually get cut from what I was doing. I'm not particularly upset or anything but I noticed a lot of negative thoughts yesterday afternoon and today and I'd really like to just go sleep for a long time.

The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root it doesn't need its brain any more so it eats it. It's rather like getting tenure.
Rodolfo Llinas, neuroscientist (from Daniel C. Dennett's Consciousness Explained).

Hi I think you should tell your therapist As he can then help you find out the reasons why? Im sure he wont be angry at you.... Ive gone through life thinking That I must not bother anyone With my problems But now They have got worse as Ive not let anyone help me.....Please talk to him.....Thats what he is there for to help you.....Let me know How you get on,Thinking of you

Louise

Some of the stuff you were saying got me to wondering if you are a little disconnected from your feelings. The surprise and the not being all that upset and the vague notion of having negative thoughts (I say vague just because when I phrase things the way you did I usually am not totally in touch with the thoughts I have been feeling) all sound totally familiar to me. I will sit there and wonder why I did it and struggle to remember or figure out what caused me to do what I did. If you feel safe enough you might want to explore those negative feelings and ask yourself if those feelings are symptomatic of something else that you are squashing emotionally. If you don't feel safe save it until you talk to your T next time. And yes, most definately tell him.
Carrie

<font color=blue>The important thing is this: to be able at any momeent to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.--Charles Du Bos

Oh, and just because you did this doesn't mean you are suddenly not doing well anymore. It is just a little speed bump in the process we call life. This is an excellent opportunity to learn how your brain operates.
Carrie

<font color=blue>The important thing is this: to be able at any momeent to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.--Charles Du Bos

This new system makes it easier to find stuff. I hadn't realized that in 5 years I only started 166 threads ever. This one was my first one. Carrie was right about disconnecting from my feelings. I still do. It keeps coming up over and over again. I wonder if we all do.

We are not supposed to be doing it but many do. The end goal is to integrate our personalities. When our upbringing isn't the best for us we become fragmented and all of our parts don't work together. We should be at one with our feelings and work with them. I had to learn a lot of this. The first step is recognizing your feelings. You can do this by becoming aware of yourself and your surroundings at all times. Another term for this is living in the present. Of course many of us grew up not living in the present because it is painful. This can be worked through.

((((((((((((( Rap ))))))))))))))

Yeah hun, you should tell your T. Why not, he's there for you to talk to isnt he? what are you thinking differently for - you think he's going to be dissapointed? He's not. Your not a dissapointment, your not a failure, you just relapsed, everyone does it

Please talk to him about it hun and youll feel so much better about it, much love - babyg -x

What's weird is this was five years ago, but I can still remember. I've been with a different T for 4 years now. But I remember that I did tell him, and he asked why, and said that some kids he worked with told him that they cut because it "feels good." That one didn't fit for me, but I really didn't know why I cut back then. I'm still working on trying to understand my feelings. I do dissociate from them. Nothing seems real. A lot of the time, cutting has been a way to prove that my feelings were real, because they always got discounted.

And also to get help. One trait that a lot of us probably have is that we don't really show emotional distress. Body language stays calm even when we are screaming and jumping up and down and boiling over on the inside. Reacting wasn't allowed. Showing feelings wasn't allowed. So we don't get taken seriously when we say we need help. It always seems like someone else needs help more. Physical problems get taken seriously but emotional ones don't. No blood, no foul, right? So we learn that we have to be bleeding to be helped. That was part of it for me too.

Are you in therapy? Do you work on understanding your feelings everyday?

Sannah, yes to both of those questions. I'm working on replacing the nonliving that I did to survive, ironically, for most of my life, with learning how to actually be alive. Which would include feelings. It's not easy. Things bother me that I used to not pay attention to. I can't live like I used to.