I sliced a non-lethal part of my arm last night, with an anesthetized razor. Daubing the bloody wound in antiseptic, I bandaged it.
Now the only question is, why would I do such a thing? I don't feel any self-hate, pain or anguish. Anybody else decide to slice arms on whim?
Psychologists: Is it some repressed self hate? Some runaway self destructive tendency? Does it relate to sexuality, health, paranoia, or depression? Is it just a boring me-too-ism? What are the usual motives for this kind of action?
I'm at a dead end. I don't understand my own motives anymore, I'll do things just because they feel right, then twist logic to justify these impulses. Usually small things, like changing my eating habits, but sometimes larger things.
I mean, self mutilation, what's the usual idea behind it? I have long accepted that I am generally definable by means and bell curves, but I was wondering if I could pass through this information in the manner of funghi growing into a plant. My current theory is: The subject views the cliche as embarassing, so engages in embarassing action to find reasons to lie and cover these things up. However, the obvious problem with self-analysis is that it falls prey to a million and one petty paranoias, the same neurosis that causes the problem in the first place, and a certain hypochondria - a condition I am familiar with.
Inb4: Not your personal shrink.
PS: I need information, badly, to stop everything coming apart at the seams.
PPS: I'm standing right behind you.
Well, I cut my hand up in the shape of a logo from an anime once. No, not Naruto. I was just trying to push my pain threshold.
Most people self-harm as a method of control. If you feel out of control with other aspects of your life, you may cut yourself because its something that you feel in control of. The same generally goes for eating disorders as well.
You probably should see a psychiatrist if this persists, and even if its not always cutting yourself it seems you are struggling to take control of your life by twisting logic to justify your actions. If you can't go to a psychiatrist for cost reasons or whatever, then you need to try and identify the problem yourself. Are there any aspects of your life that depress you because you feel you aren't in control? You need to find what makes you happy and unfortunately that takes time. But as you say you have a problem with self-analysis I think a psychiatrist would be the best course of action. You may only need to go a few times.
Also, are you generally happy? Are you fit and healthy? An unhealthy lifestyle often means problems like this flare up more than they would if you lived a healthy lifestyle.
I'm fit, and healthy. I have some stuff sorted out.
Perhaps this control thing has some merit, I am very passive, and I'll often act in all spheres (work, social, rommantic) in a way that makes me drift on, because I'm not sure if I care about which girl I'm taking out, or which people I hang with. I mean, I'm out of control, but I've tended to think of it as a choice...
I'm not sure I have emotional depth, so it's difficult to emotionally source these things. I don't feel intense emotions, just mild annoyance or slight interest.
A psychologist is out of the question. I don't have enough money to get a good one, and a shit one would piss me off.
Just a heads up, OP. Don't sterilize your wound with any sort of antiseptic. It can cause flesh decay and causes hypertrophic scaring. If you need to sterilize with something, use nothing but water (preferably saline).
Oh fuck it. TCP wont do that, will it?
>>5
i thought you only experienced slight annoyance.
>>10
Ahm, I could give you the chemical structure, if that'll help you any. I think it's TriClhoroPhenol, but I could be way off. It's certainly a halogenated phenol. Looking into it more, it's a liquid antiseptic.
As far as I can see, my wound's healing up nicely, if I'm llucky, I might even avoid scarring.
>>12
Don't cut yourself if you're afraid of the scars.
That's fine, then. It's the alcohol that causes scaring. I should have clarified what I meant by antiseptic.
you claim not to know if you care about friends or how you spend time. you also said you don't experience strong emotions. one question: do you care about yourself, i mean, like your future or day to day activities?
right now you seem like you are repressing some feelings.
>>15
Well, a bit. But not on the scale I used to, more on the scale of how people care about the fortunes of Cameron in House, you know? I mean, I'll happily watch, and I don't really want the series to devolve into 'This week X sleeps in a dumpster', but past that?
All this stuff seems a little abstracted to me.
>>16
my guess is that you are detached from your world, what you watch or read is received with basically the same emotions as when some friend tells you something about his personal life, so the "real" things to you is what you can feel physically. right now its the pain after you cut yourself.
and no one cares about cameron.
>>17
A problem with reality? A dodgy definition between virtual things and real things?
It fits.
Except, how would I fix it? I mean, I recognise it's unhealthy. I do remember feeling strongly about things, and I want it back. It's just difficult to think yourself into having emotions.
You could try affirmations or whatever it's called. So when something happens that you should be happy, you say to yourself (Either out loud or in your head) "I am feeling happy right now", something short like that asserting the nowness of the feeling. Try and act it out. If something pleases you, make sure you smile. It'll seem silly at first, but if you keep at it you can begin to 'think' your feelings, and then it should start up as an automatic process.
>>18
seriously, you should consider drinking a little. you don't have a lack of emotions, what you do is that you learned how to block it. alcohol somehow (atleast for most people)lowers your emotional barriers. i don't mean drink like a fucking maniac and say those classic drunken "love speeches" to your friends.
what you should do is drink a little (enough to get you a buzz) and then put in a DVD of some good movie (you seem to like tv, so it should be easy to find something). the music in the movies/tv shows are made to play with your feelings, along with the scenes they should do the work of getting you emotional. the alcohol is so that you won't be able to over-analyze the scene at that very moment. you should feel better after it, its kind of a cathartic experience, much like what you do when you cut yourself.
>>20
I use (abuse?) entertainment in a fairly similar fashion except I use something other than alcohol which happens to also amplify emotions and senses. As a result I'm able to cry during TV shows even though I wasn't able to cry at my best friend's funeral.
Prot, Psychs usually have sliding scales, so it's not as though they'd be incredibly expensive. At the very least, you could probably get some information from a local non-profit counselor, or go to a university and ask to see a grad student. If you're charged at all, it'll be less than usual because they need the experience for training.
Secondly, I don't know that you're repressing anything. Some people have low emotional levels for reasons we can't exactly explain. You may simply have that sort of condition. Then again, maybe your environment has stimuli that you reacted to be detaching, and thus it's become a numb feeling over time.
In response to this, you may cut yourself to feel connected to something, reality, whatever, as said above, or perhaps just to be aware that you exist, have emotions, etc.
However, I also think that it's possible that you cut for the very experience of it for the sake of experience. Do you have a morbid curiosity about other things?
The point is that one doesn't necessarily need to be "especially deranged or damages" in order to do things out of the norm, they just need a willingness to do it. Sometimes people mistake their willingness to do things for there being a causal relationship to something that identifies them as "mentally ill in the clinical sense".