Oh god, this is the post that I’m printing out for my friend, the one who got to deal with me in meltdown this past week. She looked at me and said, “But you hadn’t self-injured in *years*.”

And I was sitting there bawling because I didn’t know why I did it–it just seemed Like A Good Idea even though I knew better.

But it is my first response–and somehow I’d never really grokked that.

@Ettina That’s the route that I always went, partially because I started self-injury before I was old enough to come up with other ideas. (5 year olds should not be in a place where they feel the need to injure themselves.)

I still self-injure, mostly biting or punching at my wrist trying to make a bruise without causing too much pain. (The worst I did, completely on impulse, was hit myself with a glass bottle hard enough to see stars, but that’s unusual for me.) I’d like to be able to stop, but currently when I’m in that emotional state, the other options are worse.
Regarding seeing something that could be used to self-injure and immediately visualizing doing that, I can relate. Except with me, it doesn’t feel at all right, just causes a visceral horror – I’m afraid of what I might do. Very often, it’s not just self-injury, it’s suicide or something that straddles the border between suicide and self-injury, like tieing a ribbon around my neck and pulling it as tight as it can go. Oh, and seeing my pet rats in that state sometimes makes me picture bashing their heads against the wall, and I feel the same horror at that as most pet owners would – if not more.
I wish someone could tell me how to stop having meltdowns, and all the associated stuff, self-injury included. But no one else has my mind, and something that worked for someone else’s mind won’t work for mine unless I find a way to adjust it to me. It’s so frustrating.

I tried to kill myself when I was 15 because the person I was didn’t match up to the person I felt my parents and my teachers wanted me to be. Brilliant wasn’t enough, I had to be academically driven and willing to do bullshit assignments, too.

I haven’t tried again since then. The ideation, yeah, it’s there.

For me, the more dangerous one is the ideation that’s not deliberately suicidal. The what-if. ‘What if I yanked the steering wheel of the car to the left and made it spin?’ ‘What if I just kept walking, right off the edge of the cliff?’ I think the reason I do that falls closer to why most people self-harm – I need to do something, need to make something happen, something change. Emotional ennui is more dangerous for me than rage or overwhelming darkness because I know the latter passes, while the ennui…sometimes it stays for a long time. I think it’s a form of depression, but no one has ever been able to do anything about it, except that a few of my more purely physical old habits (dancing, archery, rock-climbing) could hold it at bay temporarily.

The ennui is the most dangerous thing in my life. It makes it harder to feel anything, so numb, and in that state I get so distant from everything that none of it matters anymore. Which is why the ‘what if’ becomes…possible. Because nothing matters, nothing connects.

~Kali
http://www.brilliantmindbrokenbody.wordpress.com

It makes me feel pretty ashamed of myself, to think that I will always be like this.

@Becky: I think it is both in that they are sort of the same thing, partially. Oftentimes the overwhelmed feeling is instantaneous, but also some of the time, for me at least, it builds up BECAUSE of my poor coping methods, over a period of time of not handling it well, I become overwhelmed by what I am experiencing.

*This is my first time using gender neutral pronouns. Is that right?

I quit smoking years back and sometimes I still want a cigarette. It’s a real specific one too: I could tell you the brand and the way the cloves in the tobacco leave oil stains on the paper and how it crackles when it burns. I think about damaging myself a whole lot more often than I think about cigarettes but with the same loving detail. Which I’ll spare y’all.

It may always be there. But when you needed to do it it was what you needed to do to stay alive. It’s a coping skill. Just like it was for me. Then you — and I — didn’t know anything else or there wasn’t time for anything else. Now we’ve got other options (though it can be hard to remember them) and we use them.

I’m not disappointed in you at all.

POSSIBLE TRIGGER

I struggle with suicidal ideation – wouldn’t it just be easier if I didn’t have to do this because I’d be dead?

I watched a movie – that I love to pieces – that had 3 suicides – one described, one body found, and one attempt. The attempt made me cry, because the movie was about college and the pressure cooker feeling. It was good to see it in a way.

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POSSIBLE TRIGGER

I have hurt myself in the past as a “coping mechanism” I think party out of anger (when coping with depression) that I turn on myself, and partly for a sense of control. It was the only way to release everything that was pent up. I haven’t done it in 3 years though, so I guess I’m dealing with everything more healthily now. Does (did) anyone else find themselves using it for these reasons (anger/control)? Either way it is still my first instinct when I am that low, it has become such a habit.