Tomorrow I begin my first writing assignment in DIP Lite on Self-Forgiveness, although last night I actually wrote my first SF statement and a whole string of others in evernote on my phone... and it was pretty rad. :)
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Recently I've noticed myself much more aware of strong emotions than usual. I typically suppress very strong negative emotions and within self-honesty it is becoming impossible to do this. On the one hand my awareness of my emotions and process of learning how I accept and allow them is helping me see them as reactions and I can reject them as being powerful or definitive about me and who I am. But some of these emotions are ones that I have suppressed for years, and they're intense. What I am encountering that is alarming is a desire to injure myself as a reaction to intense feelings of shame, guilt, regret, sadness, hopelessness, embarrassment, etc. Specifically I want to cut myself, especially my arms, or I even have this feeling of wanting to cut off my arms, or otherwise mar my torso and chest. Thinking about it now, when I am not experiencing this emotion, I'm actually a little confused at the desire to cut off my arms or mar my torso/chest. It's new and I'm not sure where it's coming from. But that is the way I felt and the desire I had.
So I posted about this on the forum and per the suggestion of Anna (thank you) I am going to try to continue in writing about it. I will try to write about it some now, and then the next time I encounter it I will write as soon as I can. This is something that has been in my life and mind and lived through my body for about 10 years. So, it's going to take some time. I'll be coming back to this I'm sure.
Some points to consider and questions to answer:
- Why, specifically, do I resort to a desire to hurt myself when I am facing especially uncomfortable emotions?
- What do I think I will gain by hurting myself?
- What would actually happen if I hurt myself?
- What does it mean, if anything, that I want to mutilate my arms/chest/torso?
- Why, specifically, do I feel alarmed when I encounter the intense desire to injure myself?
Related to this experience I have some questions I want to ask myself about crying and emotional release.
- Why have I suppressed especially uncomfortable emotions? When did I learn to do this and what did I gain?
- How do I feel when I cry?
- How do I feel after I cry?
- How long do I usually cry, and why?
I had written previously about my catastrophic thinking and how from it I gain a sense of internal validation by imagining a scenario in which I would undoubtedly be consoled and comforted by others, which would indicate to me that my emotions are valid, which I have been unable to indicate to myself solely on the basis that they exist and I have them. Often these catastrophic thoughts charge up to a very brief emotional release wherein I begin to cry or feel flushed and then remind myself that it isn't real and suppress the emotions. This is another area that I think is closely related and I also want to unpack over time.
***Some of the answers to follow might be... speculative, and tentative. I've suppressed a lot. There's a lot to sort out, and some of this might end up best tossed out or otherwise refined. ***
Why, specifically, do I resort to a desire to hurt myself when I am facing especially uncomfortable emotions?
My initial answer to this is simply that it is habitual. As a teenager I developed self injury as a coping mechanism for dealing with the confusion that I felt about my family, about growing up, about myself, about my emotions. I developed it. I fed it, made time for it, and sought it out as a solution to my problems.
So, why as a teenager did I resort to actually hurting myself when I was facing especially uncomfortable emotions?
- Attention, especially from my mother, who never noticed.
- Self-victimization, to feel self-pity and garner pity from others as a helpless child in a dysfunctional family.
- Self-sabotage: abdicating responsibility for my own well-being and imagining a future in which the potential for hospitalization was "cool" because it would mean something was "really wrong" with me which would make me exceptional and exempt from various responsibilities and a candidate for further pity and sympathy and attention.
- Self-abuse: this should seem obvious, but it's not. I don't recall really feeling like I deserved it. I recall playing out a personality character role that I took on as a way to validate my own experience as being an experience worthy of attention (genuine attention, tending to) and care. I saw others who received attention for their self injurious behaviors, so I assumed the position in an effort to gain the attention I desperately needed. But maybe, because I did not receive the care and attention I thought seemed appropriate, and is appropriate, and because even when I spoke it was as if no one heard, I thought I was not worthy. And so I abused myself, punished myself, gave myself what I perceived to be what I deserved based on my interpretation of the dynamics within my family.
- Within this, how do I explore and understand this further through my self responsibility without only blaming my parents for not being there in the ways I needed them?
So, why now do I resort to a desire to hurt myself when I am facing especially uncomfortable emotions, besides that it is habitual/something I learned many years ago?
- I believe it will solve something, or at least provide instantaneous (albeit temporary) relief from the present emotional experience.
- I believe I deserve it. I am sickened by myself at times.
- Within it being habitual: I honestly am not sure how I stopped. I made a commitment to stop. Some things got better. But mostly, this is probably where suppression really took over. I wouldn't let myself feel because I couldn't let myself cut.
What do I think I will gain by hurting myself?
My desire is fueled by the intensity of the emotions which I find uncomfortable and want to have stop. I think that by hurting myself I will receive instantaneous relief from the emotions as it was so often my before-bed ritual wherein I was able to sleep soundly with my arm wrapped and bleeding knowing that retribution was with me. I remember that feeling of peace and calm as I would climb into bed after injuring myself and I want that feeling. It was almost a feeling of accomplishment, as if I had actually done something to fix what was wrong. It's pretty convoluted; there's a lot to unravel.
I think that I will gain relief.
What would actually happen if I hurt myself?
I would be breaking a commitment that I made to myself 7 years ago to never intentionally injure myself for purposes of emotional coping or escapism again. I would feel regret. I would feel childish and immature. I would feel embarrassed. Maybe I would feel relief, but it would not last, as I know I would be flooded with the aforementioned emotions, plus whatever I was trying to escape would come up again.
What does it mean, if anything, that I want to mutilate my arms/chest/torso?
If anything, it might mean this: my arms and hands are vehicles of action, and when I want to hurt myself I have a sense of wanting to immobilize myself from doing or saying anything that might ever make me feel these intense emotions again. My chest/torso are my core and besides my face I sense them as being the presenting half of my body. I'm having a hard time tapping into this aspect of the desire/urge though since I am not feeling it presently, so I'm really not sure here.
Why, specifically, do I feel alarmed when I encounter the intense desire to injure myself?
I feel especially alarmed at the desire to injure myself because this desire, although having never left me completely as it has always been in my mind as an option since day 1 of my participation within it, has been pretty successfully overcome as can be seen by my 7 year abstinence from engaging in self injurious behavior. I also feel alarmed because it is an impulsive, urgent desire, and I worry that if it gets bad enough it could seem so much bigger than me that I let it overpower me and I break my commitment. At that point I see myself allowing myself to see myself as having failed and needing to start over and possibly being so discouraged that I don't even care to start over but will just fester in my own selfish self centered self abuse. I feel alarmed because I have higher expectations of my current ability to cope when in reality I have separated myself from my emotions and suppressed them as I have allowed them to seem too unmanageable for me to cope. I have been told by friends, family, and therapists that I am "strong" which has fed a personality of maturity and level-headedness and bolstered my ego when actually my internal experience is one of confusion and feeling intimidated by and thus avoiding the depth of my emotional reactions.
And I had asked this in DIP Lite and posted it here: It seems as if I need to learn to validate my emotions for myself while at the same time re-cognize them as my own creation and not accurate indicators of what is real. This is confusing. Help?
Why have I suppressed especially uncomfortable emotions? When did I learn to do this and what did I gain?
I think that I must have learned to suppress emotions when:
- My expression of my emotions did nothing to practically improve my environment, because when I expressed my emotional experiences within my family, my family remained dysfunctional.
- When something would happen in my family to which I would react with intense emotions, the next day my family would operate as if nothing had happened. This got to be exhausting.
- I was told I was strong and I interpreted then a best practice of maintaining a strong front so as to continue to receive this compliment.
- I decided I wanted to stop injuring myself, which at the time meant that if I ever wanted to injure myself, I had to get rid of the emotions some other way.
By suppressing my emotions I gained a surface-level existence wherein I no longer had to exert the energy to experience fruitless emotions. I was able to refocus some of my energy on other aspects of growing up.
How do I feel when I cry?
A little bit stupid, and pretty intense. There will sometimes be a flash in my mind of if another person was present, how they would respond, in what ways would they provide me comfort. If another person IS present, I feel embarrassed. I feel an energy throughout my body, especially in my chest and arms, and it feels good. Probably some chemical release, actually. It feels relieving. It feels validating. I feel relieved, and I feel validated.
How do I feel after I cry?
Sometimes I feel like I don't even know what that was about, that was dumb, why was I crying? Sometimes I continue to feel emotionally sensitive and prone to more crying. Sometimes I feel relief and want to cry again or more, but don't, because the energy is gone, or as with this morning, I had to get ready for work.
How long do I usually cry, and why?
I usually don't cry very long. I get a burst out and then suppress it. It is as if I relieve just enough pressure to go back to where I was before the pressure burst. I judge myself for crying, too.
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This got quite long. I've been writing for a couple hours at least. I did not feel pressured to write this much but I think even so it would have been wiser to go deep into one or two of these questions rather than try to answer them all right now, as I notice that some of these answers are not as extensive as they could be. But that's okay. It's more than enough for starting and it's a good example of why I need more patience with myself and more seriousness in my exploration.
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