Day 56 - Self-Harm: Identifying the Source and Moving Through the Urge
10:49 PM
This is me. I am stopping OCD. Here is my story.
What does it feel like?
There is an internal experience that I live with that I get
both before and after self-harming. It is as if this experience drives me to
self-harm, and then is also triggered because I have self-harmed. It feels like
a searing burning in my solar plexus, where I am so angry with myself for what
I have done, so remorseful, frustrated, helpless and victimized that it leaves
me in a state that simply continues the cycle of self-harm.
What effect does it have on behaviour?
This searing, crawling feeling seems so big, like it will
take me over. I can feel it physically, and I want to get it out of my body by
scratching, squeezing, picking, tearing and digging it out. It is confusing
because the thing seems so big, terrifying and unbearable on the inside, but on
the outside, I see regular life going by, with everyone in my world getting
along just fine. Then I look inside and it is like a pit of torment, like the
world is coming to an end.
Where did it come from?
I wonder, how did I go from an innocent child that would
never think such things about myself, to this internal self-hatred and disgust,
feeling like I need to be put down and punished?
When I look back I can see there was a time in my life where
there was peace. And I can see a few times where that peace was shockingly
shaken up in my early schooling years. I was very shy and did not like attention
drawn on me, whether it was good or bad, I’d rather not be seen. So, when I was
unexpectedly reprimanded in front of a classroom of students the first few times,
I felt as if I had been ambushed for no reason. It would be for playing when I
was not supposed to be playing, or for work that I did not know had been done
incorrectly.
I remember feeling completely confused as to why this was
being done unto me, taking it all very personally. And when I would look around
at the other students, it was as if they had all taken the side of the teacher,
agreeing with her cruel words, seemingly daggers coming out of their eyes and
piercing me. I felt as if I had no cover or protection from the pain it was causing.
After having experienced this quite regularly, as happens in
school, I began to fear it. It was as if I never knew what might set it off, as
I was not intentionally being bad, disruptive or un-cooperative. It was like
lying in wait for ambush at all times. This became my protection, the cover of constant
fear and hiding, withdrawing within myself and internalizing the pain.
I also mostly hid from adults in my world. I became
distrustful and did not want to let my guards down when I was begin treated
nicely, because I knew at any moment it could turn. My internal reality became
a lonely, neglected and isolated place. And with the internalization of all the
emotions, I began to reprimand and attack myself in my thoughts and internal
conversations.
How to define it?
I began to believe it all as if it were all my fault. I was
worthless, despicable, unbearably intolerable, no good, unable, disgusting and
so on. And so it became a cycle of talking to myself in these ways, and
creating an unmanageable and unbearable internal reality that I did not know
how to cope with, and it began to manifest physically. I remember self-harm OCD
starting when I was about 6-7 years old. I caused myself pain and it felt good
after, like a relief and release for me.
What is it today?
Fast forward to today, and although I have found many ways to
cope and get by, the main patterns and thought processes are still there at the
foundation of my self-relationship. What it feels like is tip-toeing throughout
the day, but any time I am required to check with myself and look inwards, I am
met with this wall of searing fear and self-damnation.
I can see how I connect this fear to a multitude of
situations throughout my day.
What will happen is, as I move throughout my day, there will
inevitably be moments of challenge, uncertainty, not knowing, and moments that
require decision, self-introspection or looking inward. But instead of looking
inward and finding a nice, quite open space within myself to play with ideas, I
am confronted by what seems like the fiery pits of hell.
It is like trying to find solutions while being under attack.
For example, if I am writing and I don’t know how to express
what I am physically experiencing within myself, I will look inward and be met
with this unbearable searing wall of fear that prevents me from seeing, from
finding the words or from understanding what is going on. In these moments, OCD
is triggered, and I look for relief through self-harm.
How to Manage?
Self-harm seemed to be my only solution, because I thought
that I should not go towards, move into or through something that feels so bad.
But throughout the process I have been walking, I have been challenging this. I
have during my process, moved through that wall many times, and as unbearable
and endless as it has felt, I have always come out on the other side empowered.
What I have found is that on the other side of that wall is
forward motion, continuation and self-direction. It is normal to, throughout
the day while doing tasks such as cooking, cleaning, or while working, find
oneself in a position where some problem-solving is necessary. There are always
times when it is not easy and I don’t know exactly what to do. These are the
moments where I will often hit the wall and go into OCD.
OCD is like a bottomless pit where you go in thinking you
will find the bottom, some ground to stand on to get your footing, to find a
safe place in the ambush, but instead you just keep falling. However, there is
comfort there, because it is a distraction, a focused-attention elsewhere.
There is the illusion of control. There is the aftermath of pain found there as
well, that is endorphins that can be used like a drug to feel good, if only for
a moment. It is a momentary, absolute lostness.
But what I have realized in pushing myself so many times, is
that I do in fact have the creativity to find my way. I just, at the moment,
have to find it within or beyond this searing self-hatred, anger, frustration
and remorse that sits there in wait. It is like a trap, where many of my
answers hide inside, or just on the other side of this emotional wall. And each
time I have to pass this wall it fools me into believing it is all real and
true, unless I stand up from within it. Stand up and be the authority from within this experience.
How to stand up from within it?
The take-away here is that when and as I see OCD is being
triggered, it is because I am being confronted by something that requires me to
find a solution and act on it. I challenge myself to, in these moments, take a
moment and make a space for me to define in words what it is I am looking at.
To actually have a look at what it is I am telling myself. I know I have the
creativity to find a solution and a way forward in any situation, it is just a
matter of weathering the storm that I know will be there. It is no longer an
ambush, it is now simply a process of repetition until I prove to myself that I
can stand through it.
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