every week I attend a therapy appointment, every week we discuss my self harm and methods on how to delay what seems to be inevitable. I am lucky in a sense because my therapist has never told me that I have to stop of anything like that, instead she is supportive and suggests things which i can do to delay doing it or even to damage control. And every week I promise her that I will try to be careful, that I will delay it for as long as I can.
But every week, I seem to leave her session and as soon as I get an urge I act on it with no thoughts to limiting myself what so ever. So why do I keep telling her that I will try? and how do I explain to her that I dont want to try, that currently I like self harming and dot particularly want to stop.
An is this even a normal feeling or am I losing it in someway. I dont think I have wanted to stop since started. I always tell myself that if I want to I can, but i just dont want to.
I was doing the same with my therapist- telling her i was going to try and stop when really there was no part of me that was ready to/ wanted to. i really think the best thing to do would be to tell her- maybe print off this post and show her? I tod my therapist that i had no motivation/desire to give up and since then we've been working more on my thoughts and the consequences of my actions which has been alot more helpful than me sitting there and telling her i would try this week, when really i knew i wouldn't. It feels so much more honest and i'm sure your therapist would be happy if you are honest with her.
I don't know what you say really. Maybe discuss that you don't feel like stopping and see what she says. Just say you never even think about delaying it so what you've been discussing isn't helping you or something?! To be honest, I don't really have a clue. I'm useless with talking to therapists and stuff; I don't tend to talk about anything that bothers me, just sit and hope they won't say anything that will make me feel worse. I always go in with the intention of talking but it never happens. Being honest is probably the best thing to try if you can but that could make a bit of an awkward conversation so maybe tell her in a round-about way. She needs to know if she isn't helping so she can do other things which might help you in other ways and not focus so much on your self harm (which can be counter-productive- I've always found that to trigger me more!).
I did try to mention it a little bit. To which she just began again with the fact that i really must try to be careful and such. And if im not being careful then perhaps i should speak to the crisis team.
Things are wierd, she kinda sees what is happening to me and knows that I am struggeling. She wants to put the support in there for me. Yet the support she puts in place often falls through, usually because im not "ill" enough. Yus I have spent the most part of the last year feeling sucidal, but there has never been an actual attempt. I know if i was to do it, i would suceed, so i have always been careful to get help when things got to bad. I think that has come counter productive. I think i need to either drop the facade of coping or else learn to just stop moaning. The latter is probably easier on others. (Sorry for the rant)
What you've described is really normal. And I think your therapist isn't handling it quite right, which is her fault, not yours.
The reason you're telling her you'll try is probably, at least in part, that you want to be a good patient, which is really common. It's so common in fact, that it was one of the first things we talked about in my clinical psych class this term. You may really want to try to hurt yourself less, and that just disappears in the moment, or you may not want to at all - I can't tell you what you're thinking - but either one is perfectly normal.
Now, the part about you being "not ill enough" to get treatment is making me angry at the health care system that's supposed to be helping you... Asking for help rather than hurting yourself is a good behavior, and it should be rewarded. From the treatment provider side of things, I've heard about it particularly in the context of DBT for Borderline PD (which is the best supported treatment for BPD) because a lot of people with BPD hurt themselves essentially as a way of asking for help, and because it works that behavior is reinforced. In order to help someone overcome that, the therapist needs to provide reinforcement for asking for help in healthier ways, which means always being there for them when they ask for help (even at odd hours of the night, which puts a lot of people off from doing that kind of work, which is why we were talking about it in the first place). And a lot of times, treatment will even include things like having the client call a crisis line when they're not even feeling suicidal at the moment, to see that it will be there to help them when they need it, and similar things with various other support resources. So making you feel like you'd need to actually attempt suicide before you could get the level of support you clearly need is such complete and utter crap, and it's totally iatrogenic, and it's setting you up to have problems that you don't even have yet that are going to be harder to treat than if they'd just get their act together now.
I think that you should try to explain to your therapist as best you can both what you said about trying to be careful, and also your experiences with the additional support services she's tried to get for you. And if given that, she still just sends you back to these same services you're not actually getting, then I don't know what to tell you other than that you should recommend she read up on DBT, particularly in relation to self harm and suicidal ideation and behavior, and also on the potential for psychological treatments to cause harm.
Emily
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The point of therapy is to have support and help before things become worse. Treating you like you're not "ill enough", as invisible girl pointed out, is b.s. It sounds like your therapist is going on the basis that you say you're trying to recover and when you self harm, she's considering it a simple slip up. Have you considered why you don't want to quit harming yourself? Is it because it is a quick fix for relieving tension or is it that you don't have another way of coping? You should be honest with your therapist though, because she won't be able to do her job properly if she thinks that she's helping when she isn't.
I'm so sick and tired of the taste of tears the sting of pain the smell of fear the sounds of crying
-Voltaire "Feathery Wings"
I dont know why I dont want to stop, its not a thought that has really entered my head. Stopping would mean breaking my self destructive cycle and right now I dont want to do that. My mind is set on self destruction, it wants to do the most damage that it can. So the thought of stopping isnt one that my mind wants to tollerate.
My therapist keeps trying to wrk with me on ways to delay things and bring up alternative coping straterges as I am on the waiting list for psychotherapy and EMDR. However once I get to the top of the list, I need to be able to prove that I am stable enough for treatment. Which is why she wants me to find other coping things.
I see her on Thursday and I am going to try to tell her this. Dont know how it will go though.
