PTSD, coping mechanisms, self harm
Jan. 16th, 2014 01:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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So as I've been learning more about mindfulness, I've started finding it easier to reach for mindfulness-based techniques when I go into an anxiety attack: take five deep breaths; do a three-minute meditation; list ten good things.
But "easier" isn't "easy" and definitely isn't "always", and it is still the case that very often the thing that will make me notice I am Not Terribly Okay is catching myself digging my nails into my hands or forearms.
I've been thinking about coping mechanisms a fair bit, recently, what between counselling being good for me and trying to work out how to live gracefully with PTSD; and it seriously only just hit me that a huge part of my compulsion to self-injure is self-soothing from panic attacks, and that's been the case for as long as I can remember.
And so I circle back around, once again, to viewing self-harm as a value-neutral tool.
So as I've been learning more about mindfulness, I've started finding it easier to reach for mindfulness-based techniques when I go into an anxiety attack: take five deep breaths; do a three-minute meditation; list ten good things.
But "easier" isn't "easy" and definitely isn't "always", and it is still the case that very often the thing that will make me notice I am Not Terribly Okay is catching myself digging my nails into my hands or forearms.
I've been thinking about coping mechanisms a fair bit, recently, what between counselling being good for me and trying to work out how to live gracefully with PTSD; and it seriously only just hit me that a huge part of my compulsion to self-injure is self-soothing from panic attacks, and that's been the case for as long as I can remember.
And so I circle back around, once again, to viewing self-harm as a value-neutral tool.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-16 07:42 pm (UTC)Ours is mostly anxiety-related, too. I actually have a whole tl;dr post that I've been brewing in my head about how this surgery is fucking with coping mechanisms like whoa.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-16 11:50 pm (UTC)The tension/pain/relief cycle can be played out in a number of different ways. Some kinds of self-harm are more socially acceptable than others, and some are less damaging than others. Finding something that soothes but doesn't scar is the challenge.
I think for me pain ends the suspense. The anticipation is the worst part. And when it's over, you know you're safe for a while.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-17 12:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-17 12:48 am (UTC)Also, at one level, self-harm is value-neutral. It's just that people have odd attitudes towards visible scarring. I look at self-harm scars and tend to think 'someone a bit like me', and that makes me OK. But others don't think like that. It also reminds me a bit of some of the advice I get as an eczema sufferer - scratch something else, not yourself. And it doesn't fucking work for me. I now try to do something else with my hands - in my case, play Roguelikes, but I am a bit strange. I try to direct the fidgety fingers and figdety brain into something else which may not be productive, but which is at least not apparently harmful.
BTW - if my habits aren't helpful to you, please feel free to tell me to fuck off. I appreciate that I don't necessarily use habits that are helpful to many people - I vaguely hope that they help some people who find oft-recommended things less than helpful, but I'm aware that others may find me Not Helpful, and I'm happy to be told that and fuck off and interact with you in more helpful ways.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-17 09:10 am (UTC)I dig mine in my thighs. Much less visible to a casual observer. :(
For me sometimes it's self-soothing, but sometimes it seems to be a direct message from whatever process in my brain monitors unacknowledged stress (now I'm imagining brain daemons) alerting me to a situation that is Not Okay and which requires my conscious attention.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-17 10:33 am (UTC)For them, the value judgements are real and immediate: there are worse things than self-harm, and they are choosing between them.
If I could offer better choices, I would; but there's no way of doing that without making value judgements that aren't mine to make, and imposing 'choices' on them. Better to give unconditional support, or to make sure that it's there when they are ready to accept it.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-17 04:48 pm (UTC)It took a very long time to realize I was suffering from PTSD, and absolutely *none* of my psychs even had an inkling of an idea about the SH aspect, much less the cause of it.
OTOH, from my first contact with a physician who was genuinely interested in helping me, mindfulness has been a key influencing study and discipline I work at. It's most definitely not there all the time (how could it be?) and I often have to work at doing the things that bring it.
Keep breathing, quite literally, deliberately.
<3
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-22 04:48 pm (UTC)I think that, for me, I just get to a point where I have SO MUCH pain that I just flat out do not have the energy to actually actively cope with MI. I'm using every damn spoon I have to deal with the physical situation and I end up disconnecting from the MI situation. It's still there, but there's a distance that allows me to go "ugh, not dealing with you" and I cope that way. (And I do think that's a way to cope.)
I don't worry too much about the scarring, because the focus of my SI is something that would naturally scar anyways, plus it's not scarring that anyone would actually see.* I just got to the point where having to deal with the infections and other complications that come with the disease wasn't worth the soothing that the SI gave me anymore. It's just that, now, I'm left with nothing to focus my SI on until I get another cyst. (And, tbh, I'm really going to try to break the whole "SI by digging at cysts" thing because this surgery has gone SO BAD and I really do not want to fucking do this shit again.)
and yes, I absolutely grok the whole "pain ending the suspense" thing, especially since my body is weird and will give me random levels of pain for the same thing on different days. Sometimes having a consistent "If I do X, I will have Y level of pain" is very soothing. It makes me feel like I have some sort of control over something having to do with my disabilities.
(* I had surgery for hidradenitis suppurativa. The first surgery was on my breast, and this surgery was in my groin. HS tends to focus in intimate areas, so if you're not sexually active and don't like running around naked, you can very easily hide it. That's part of the reason I ended up focusing there.)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-23 04:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-23 12:34 pm (UTC)I have eczema too, but luckily, that one's easy to keep under control for me since it's super minor. -knock on wood- It drives me insane when it's flaring up, though, because the itch never. fucking. stops. I usually catch it before a patch gets too big and then I cream the hell out of it until it fucks off.