Posted by bob on March 18, 2000, at 9:36:54
In reply to You missed my point:Dr Bob please read this thread, posted by Kathleen on March 18, 2000, at 0:48:17
Kathleen,
First of all, your compassion is touching and very much appreciated. Thank you for caring, and for expressing it so strongly. =^)
If I'm one of the three, you can cut it back to two (no pun...okay, pun intended). As I mentioned in my last post, the right meds keep me from engaging in my own form of self-injury ... and I happen to be on them right now.
I'd also say that the "triggers" aren't necessarily so specific as to worry about this conversation. If I was hurting myself, there is somewhat of a class of triggers for it. If it's not one thing, it would be another.
Bottom line: I still have needed to talk about these issues with my therapist. It has to come out. It needs examination.
This board is perhaps an even more important forum for discussing it for several reasons:
(1) I learn from others who cut or injure themselves and it's a mirror for me. Somewhat of a funhouse mirror, at that -- definitely "distorted" from my own view of myself, but is the distortion in my mind or the mirror? Seeing a different perspective on the same sort of behavior gives me different insights than I can generate on my own.
(2) There are always the lurkers out there who read and seldom, if ever, respond. Not everyone needs to chip in their two cents to learn something from this board or find some new perspective on why they do what they do. Cutting is one particular behavior that people try to hide. It can be really difficult to expose yourself and your behaviors to others. Sometimes, it's the fear of the reactions of others -- disgust, pity, horror, or that look in their faces that says "You are really one sick mother...". What is rewarding when it's private and secret can become a great source of shame when brought out in the open. Another reason -- and this one really has a grip on me when I'm doing it -- is the sense of control over my pain. I don't want ANYONE to take that away from me; I don't want anyone to stop me. Making it public means a loss of control, since there will be at the least some social pressure to stop and, at the worst, someone pushing for involuntary hospitalization. For the cutters out there who don't want to expose themselves to public scrutiny but still NEED to have some better understanding about why we do what we do, this conversation can be very informative and therapeutic.
(3) Finally, you said you don't understand this behavior yourself.
If you have some issues with depression of your own and YOU can't understand us, how do you think we'll fare with the "normals" out there? I really appreciated Elizabeth's questions because they worked to inform me as much as they were to inform anyone else NOT into self-injury. That is our burden in general -- we need to make the "normal" public understand who we are and what we face day in and day out if we're ever going to successfully fight the stigma that surrounds the "mentally ill" and get the parity of treatment we need and deserve. Before we can do that, tho, we have to understand ourselves. We cannot be effective in our advocacy if we don't know how to communicate effectively about it.
So, again, thank you for your passion and your compassion. You're right, this thread may act as a trigger for some -- but if this thread wasn't here, they'd just find another trigger, or one would come along. I, for one, think that far more light is being spread than darkness by this coversation.
cheers,
bob
poster:bob
thread:26764
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000312/msgs/27452.html