My type of self-harm - Trigger warning

[sanmagic7]

thanks, sweetie.  back atcha!   

[Blueberry]

I have a bit of progress to report. To clarify, I pull my hair out partly as an expression of self-hate. I was criticised about my appearance, especially my hair, so much growing up particularly by M and B1 that I wanted to destroy myself on some sort of unconscious level. Looking back I can see that that's how it was. I know that when I was about 9 years old, I hoped I would somehow slip off and die, rather than actively wanting to kill myself.
For years I have had problems doing anything new with my hair. I do try different things from time to time, but it's just really, really difficult. And sometimes my immediate impulse afterwards is to self-harm. I may not, I may manage to not do so. But that's my standard impulse, sometimes almost as if my hands have a mind of their own. I used to say "my hands want to do it" because the impulse was not only in my mind but somehow physical too (visceral?).  (It's the case also but to a lesser degree with putting on makeup, wearing perfume etc. etc.)

So my progress is: A few weeks ago I started pinning my hair up at the back, so that my long hair is not hanging down at all. I then covered the whole lot with a colourful cotton scarf but that was because I was working in food production (the farm). However, I was able to keep working and not with the constant SI impulse I might otherwise have had. The farm is a place where I feel less self-conscious about my appearance than in town. Today just before my evening client I finally managed to shower but I didn't have time to wash and dry my hair, so I again pinned it up so I could put on my bath cap while in the shower, and then I left it pinned up while client was here because I think you don't notice quite so much how badly it needs washing this way. The huge progress is that I managed to go through with work with client without feeling self-conscious    and more particularly

**** Severe TRIGGER WARNING violence ***

without the impulse to pull all my hair out by the roots and/or hack it all off with scissors and simultaneously chop my own head off.

*** End Severe Trigger Warning ***

have you ever discussed tapping about your emotions?  may be something to talk to your t about as to how that process would look.  one at a time, or even a piece of one, since your tricho what-not is to escape feeling them.

I'm considering talking about the above tomorrow in T and seeing if we could have a look at self-hate and self-destruction. That'll probably be a topic for screen processing. One of these days I'll provide a description of screen processing for those who've asked.

Thanks FOO so much for either doing or allowing such extensive criticism of the appearance of your little daughter / sister. Much appreciated. NOT.
As usual I'm not quite far enough along to express my anger and hurt towards the perpetrators. But I know that will come when I'm ready. And then there'll be another few non-sender FOO letters in my thread for that purpose.

[Hope66]

Hi Blueberry,
I've only read the most recent of your entries in this thread, but I am aware that you pull your hair out on occasions, and I am really glad to hear that you've managed to find a way of wearing your hair that has caused you to feel less self-conscious - and that you wore it up infront of your client today - and it was fine.   

I feel speechless at your FOO for how they have caused you to feel self-conscious and I don't know what to say - except that they have a lot to answer for.

I hope your session goes well with your therapist.

Hope 

[Blueberry]

I feel speechless at your FOO for how they have caused you to feel self-conscious and I don't know what to say - except that they have a lot to answer for.

The fact that you write that you feel speechless is very validating for me. Thank you. I often feel speechless myself about the extent of seemingly 'minor' things my FOO did for years on end and never noticed/cared about the effect on me. And still don't understand. So, yes, I'm often speechless.  My FOO does have an awful lot to answer for. You're right there.

I am aware that you pull your hair out on occasions

"on occasions" is unfortunately a bit of an understatement. It's an almost daily habit.

[Liminality]

I'm so glad you found a way to lessen the need to SI! 

Don't know what else to say, except same as Hope66, I'm appalled at and so so sorry for what your FOO made you go through. You deserved to be treated gently and lovingly, not with passive and aggressive violence. They deserve your anger, whenever you feel safe to express it. Many warm thoughts your way.

[sanmagic7]

darling blueberry, kudos to you!  there must be something emotionally different for you in the act of having your hair up.  what a breakthrough!  that sounds huge!

i'm with hope on her perspective of your foo, what they did and didn't do to make you feel beautiful, just the lovely little girl that you were.  she's so precious, and so is her hair.  instead of criticizing, why wasn't that taken care of, combed, brushed, washed, fixed by those who were older and wiser?  the shame and blame is on them.

i'm so glad to hear about this.  good luck with your t - i hope you're able to make even more healing inroads on this.  you're doing great!  warm hug coming your way.

[Blueberry]

Thank you Liminality and san for your replies and validation. It's really good for me to know that some people are reading and understanding, after years of people neither hearing nor understanding.

Today in T we were discussing the progress and changes since last week - quite a lot - so didn't get on to this self-hate topic till in the final 10 minutes. There were about 3 different aspects to it, which I felt emotionally rather than just cognitively. The one aspect we got into a little bit is that it felt to me emotionally as if my M wanted to get rid of me completely. Not just my hair was unacceptable but the whole of me. I've always kind of known this, it's not the first time I've even said that in therapy but this is the first time a therapist has got me as far as remaining in my Adult person but still feeling from the point of view of a child (or in this case several children) what my M thought or felt. And then how this translated into this urge/impulse in my hands to attack my hair and head. As I write that I remember my M saying that small children do impulsive things without thinking, so I'm wondering if this urge/impulse in my hands is a very small inner child? I didn't actually pull hair out when I was 3 or 4, I didn't start till I was about 6 or 7, but maybe the impulse was already in my hands? Something for me to consider / think on / feel into.

I know that up until 3 or 4 years ago I used to say that the trauma was situated in my hands. It's good for me to note that that is much reduced. I mean, I used to have this urge/impulse to pull all my hair out by the roots and/or hack it all off with scissors (and possibly simultaneously chop my own head off) at the thought of doing almost anything with my hands: changing the vacuum cleaner bag, sellotaping a postcard to the wall, hammering a nail in somewhere.... If I didn't actually have this impulse e.g. with things like washing the dishes, hanging up laundry, they would just exhaust me beyond imaginable and I used to get a lot of arm pain and tired/tense arms too.

We'll be continuing with this self-hate topic next time, which is in 2 weeks.

[Blueberry]

Decided to split my post on self-hate.

Today after therapy I remember reading a review of the book "Understanding the Borderline Mother" by Ann Lawson, which is on OOTF    http://www.outofthefog.net/forum/index.php?topic=58922.0   where there are 4 types of Borderline mother including Witch Type. When I first read this post a while back, I knew: my M is a witch, and I was almost devastated to read that you can learn to love the other three types, but Witch type you can only learn to live with and not become a victim, so loving M will be impossible. Now, in light of my emotions today in therapy, that is no big suprise, nor does it feel devastating.  So, further progress.

*** Possible TRIGGER WARNING for PARENTS ***

It also occurred to me today that it could conceivably be that my M didn't hate me that much or didn't want to get rid of me, but the point is my ICs absorbed this hate from her and turned it into self-hate and suicide ideation. So that junk we sometimes hear to the tune of: "you must've misunderstood, misheard, falsely interpreted, falsely remembered" etc is all irrelevant. We're working in therapy to heal me from the traumatisation of my feeling rejected by my M from early childhood (maybe even infancy) onwards and what I 'gathered' then would have been more on a visceral and emotional level, more 'felt' than cognitively understood. So these words quoted above about misundertanding et al. don't mean anything. That's just FOO trying to wriggle its way out of the situation as usual and find a scapegoat, dumb Blueberry misunderstood again. Only I'd say with a small child the onus must be on the parents to communicate correctly, not expect a small child/infant to re-interpret the actions / body language / facial expressions of the parents into something more acceptable or something other than what it felt like to the child.

*** End TRIGGER WARNING for PARENTS ***

[Andyman73]

Blueberry not dumb, not misunderstand. Parental units defective! Blueberry good and delightful child, never given chance for happy childhood or happy adulthood either.
Not Blueberry fault at all! 🌸🌈🌺🌷🌹🌼🌻🍄💐💐💐🌟✨

[Blueberry]

Thank you Andyman  Parents very defective. 

I'll have to work a lot on believing that I was a good and delightful child and still a bit on it not being my fault e.g. that I was never even given the chance to be a happy or productive adult. But I've written your words on paper and later when I'm offline I'm going to work with them creatively a bit, let Little Blueberries work with them.

I love all those symbols of flowers and rainbows you add to your posts! Really brightens everything up.   

[Andyman73]

Thank you for responding Andyman  (safe hugs are fine). I'm sorry you have something similar, or do sth similar. It's still good to know that others understand where I'm at.

Your responding led me to reread my whole post and reminded me why it's good that I'm still not doing the type of nitpicking work that always leads to SI.  to myself to keep going as I am this week - feels like I'm doing nothing but T says I'm allowing time and space for 'things' to come up and am most definitely not doing nothing.

Yeah...do the tricho thingy thing too.

Thank you Andyman  Parents very defective. 

I'll have to work a lot on believing that I was a good and delightful child and still a bit on it not being my fault e.g. that I was never even given the chance to be a happy or productive adult. But I've written your words on paper and later when I'm offline I'm going to work with them creatively a bit, let Little Blueberries work with them.

I love all those symbols of flowers and rainbows you add to your posts! Really brightens everything up.   

Glad you liked those flowers and stuff.  Wasn't exactly me that wrote that for you. Parental issues are very triggering for me. So....had some help with that post.    How did the little blueberrys like my words? Oh, the flowers and stuff come from my smart phone when I'm logged on through that. 

[Blueberry]

I was away doing 4 days of intensive group therapy in a place where self-harm is not allowed. You are not allowed to physically hurt other people, light fixtures/furniture etc. or yourself, no matter what emotions come up. (Nor is verbal abuse allowed). Nor are you allowed alchohol, drugs (apart from prescription meds), and a number of other things are discouraged as being detrimental to the process.

I've been there before and managed to not self-harm. I knew it was going to be tough this time. The first 24 hours I still had the sentence about "throwing in the towel is the best solution" running through my head, which I mentioned on and off. But strangely enough I didn't have much impulse to self-harm (and didn't). As the sentence about "throwing in the towel is the best solution" got much less frequent, self-harm impulse returned. I didn't do it though. Once I caught myself running my fingers through my hair and removed a loose one. Could happen to anybody (so I've been told) but that's sometimes / often how I start. So I noted that.  I wore a head scarf daytime and I wore socks on my hands at night. By the final day, I'd removed my head scarf again and didn't return to self-harm. Today I've caught myself running my fingers through my hair again, but always stopped short of pulling out any non-loose ones. That reminds me: there's an exercise I could be doing, given to me by my T. Check my diary later, where it's written up. 

It really seems that this place where I go for intensive therapy is such a - I don't know - 'safe place' / 'place of healing' that I can manage without self-harm. This time, oddly, it gives me hope that I might manage to spread an aura of safe and healing space around myself that I in time do not self-harm at all. Just an idea, a vision. Not good to set myself under pressure with. There's enough of that as is.

[Blueberry]

I admit, while reading posts as Mod today I pulled a hair out. This is not a reason for me to give up the job as Mod. I don't expect to be able to give up self-harm completely, except in exceptional circumstances like in the intensive group therapy place. (If I did it there, I wouldn't be sent home, I would admit to it and explore the issue.) On good days, I do less of it.

During Mod work, it was a combination of 'I need to make a decision' and "oh dear, I'm texting the other mods again" running through my mind. Don't worry, fellow Mods, you don't have to react to this! It's just good for me to look at what went wrong in my mind and emotions. As I posted in my Journal, I got less dissociated as time went on during Moderating. SH was in the middle somewhere. And I made the decision to keep going.

This is also not the first time I've self-harmed since being in intensive group therapy! Moderating isn't setting it off, it's 'whatever' in my emotions.

[Blueberry]

Just now, reading posts as Mod, I caught myself wanting to pull a hair out. I didn't though. I'm writing directly to try and undestand what was what. I read a post and didn't understand it completely and then my emotions got blurred a bit. I mean, my mind felt clear, despite not understanding completely  My emotions hmh. I'm meant to try and feel or something like that as homework for therapy. But now I've forgotten what my homework is and exactly what T said and what I was reading in the post anyway.

Sorry for the mumbo-jumbo but I think it's good for me to try and formulate what's going on and then notice that I can't. Helps me feel better about not being able to do my professional work. Cuz I think: no wonder!

[AphoticAtramentous]

Don't know what else to say other than offer a hug, Blueberry.