Hello! I must admit I feel a bit silly posting because you, Khailitha, are someone who we consider to be a personal friend of ours. You are certainly not unfamiliar with our ongoing struggle with this issue. Nonetheless.. I feel it is important to clarify one thing. Forgive me if I am misunderstanding..we are having a brutal night..but I noticed someone say self-injury was a meme for young women. We were hospitalized at age sixteen for a very dramatic self injuring episode. The member of our system who did it, Blue Morpho, had no idea that anyone else in the world had ever done such a thing, nor had she ever heard of it before. The idea occured to her, you might say, out of the blue. What Blue Morpho did, in such an automatic, zombieish way, was later taken up by Roman as a learned behavior to bring emotional release, but most of all as a sort of trump card, to frighten a world that frightened and sickened her. She knew most people found it to be a deeply disturbing, even viscerally repellant, behavior. That newfound ability to repell made her feel safe. Roman has..barely..sworn off such behaviors. She has been severely tested in this regard, and has learned that the price one pays is that there are times when one must simply writhe like a worm and feel horrible feelings. There are some odd rules in place to prevent her from returning to old ways. One of the oddest is that if she ever feels she must act, she calls the person she is closest to, in this case her fiance, and talks about why she feels she must act, first. So far, it has worked. The important thing is to not place too much emormity on the behaviors, even as you set in place rules to control them. If you have a trauma background, be you multiple or singlet, it is quite likely that the feelings that prompt self injury are.. are almost awesome in their magnitude. At times controlling the behaviors may seem to be a hollow triumph, but that is not to be taken as a signal to revert to the behaviors again. It is only a sign that it is time to face the slavering beast you are running from; the feelings and memories which you feel cannot be endured. be well, my friend. Tir Nan Og
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I feel it is important to clarify one thing. Forgive me if I am misunderstanding..we are having a brutal night..but I noticed someone say self-injury was a meme for young women. We were hospitalized at age sixteen for a very dramatic self injuring episode. The member of our system who did it, Blue Morpho, had no idea that anyone else in the world had ever done such a thing, nor had she ever heard of it before. The idea occured to her, you might say, out of the blue. What Blue Morpho did, in such an automatic, zombieish way, was later taken up by Roman as a learned behavior to bring emotional release, but most of all as a sort of trump card, to frighten a world that frightened and sickened her. She knew most people found it to be a deeply disturbing, even viscerally repellant, behavior. That newfound ability to repell made her feel safe.
Roman has..barely..sworn off such behaviors. She has been severely tested in this regard, and has learned that the price one pays is that there are times when one must simply writhe like a worm and feel horrible feelings. There are some odd rules in place to prevent her from returning to old ways. One of the oddest is that if she ever feels she must act, she calls the person she is closest to, in this case her fiance, and talks about why she feels she must act, first. So far, it has worked.
The important thing is to not place too much emormity on the behaviors, even as you set in place rules to control them. If you have a trauma background, be you multiple or singlet, it is quite likely that the feelings that prompt self injury are.. are almost awesome in their magnitude. At times controlling the behaviors may seem to be a hollow triumph, but that is not to be taken as a signal to revert to the behaviors again. It is only a sign that it is time to face the slavering beast you are running from; the feelings and memories which you feel cannot be endured.
be well, my friend.
Tir Nan Og