Edited by request of the Moderators. 5/2/16
Very interesting and helpful discussion @CannonSalt, thank you for starting it. It has been a long time since i SH'ed, last time was in year 2000. (unless you count smoking tabaccoo daily repeated SH - which in a way it is).
My thought process (or emotional state) prior to self-harming was always one of extreme self-loathing.
A bit of a life's moment as background. I am an adoptee, my adoptive Mum's sister was a very judgemental woman. One day when I was 15 I heard her having a conversation with her husband about me (I was staying with them while Mum and Dad were interstate). I had a boyfriend from a different nationality to us at the time and she and her husband were racist and outraged at my "waywardness" (My Muma nd Dad were bemused but not racist). My Aunt was running me down for ages and then said "Bad Blood Will Out". That used to run through my mind when i self-harmed. I have lived with this false view that, as I was adopted, and then abused in my adoptive family that I was "dangerously different", and of course the trauma and genetic predisposition to MI (from my birth mother) all came to the pointy end of self-harm for many years.
For me it was about letting out the "bad blood" and once I had done that I was calm and relaxed and felt okay. My scars are reminders of how hard I used to be on myself. I know now that I was mistaken about myself. I have a very gnarly and negative self critic. I went to see a meditation-counsellor (buddhist type practices) who did heart practice. On the day i saw her I was very nervous about disclosing much about myself - but we did this meditation exercise that had me 'talking' to my own inner-critic. First I had to imagine what she looked like, then hear her voice clearly, what did it sound like, then have a "conversation" (in my own head) with her. It was very helpful - having a conversation with that harsh, judegmental hardline person in me, arrogant, ego, harsh self. I asked her a question "What have I ever done to make you so hard on me?" and the silence was defeaning - she eventually said in a very little voice 'Nothing". I could see she had shrunk to about 8 years old and was terrified of having been found out to be little, not big and gnarly and mean at all. I gave her (myself) a mental hug and everyime she raised her ugly voice at me about how useless, stupid, ugly, hopeless, harmful and toxic I am - I used to give her a bunch of heart shaped balloons in my minds eye and tell her I loved her. That broke the nexus on bad blood & contemplating SH for me. I lived with it for 40 years. The compulsion to SH broke when I just loved that damaged part of me, despite herself.
I still have the gnarly voice, but nothing she can say (or nothing she runs silently in my subconcious) can now make me hurt myself - she was hurt, deeply and we (she and I) just needed to see one another and embrace.
In an episode of Xena Princes Warrior , Xena met her shadow (her terrible violent past self) and they struggled and in the end she embraced her shadow and they became one. I cried for days when I saw that.
In Ursula Le Guin's The Wizard of Earthsea, Ged struggled ont he ice with a shadow beaast and realised the beast was aspects of himself,a nd embraced it, and it dissapeared. I "saw" how my past was that shadow-being out on the ice - the broken, drug addicted alchol, fighting, swearing hard gal I had been. I forgave her and embraced her then. (that was in my early 40's I am now in my mid 50's)
I meet my hated-self with love and understanding now and while she might still want to harm me - i hold her closer. Love is the antidote to fear and hate. I still struggle with her but she knows she has me on her side now.
This leunig cartoon is the 'place" i go when the knives are knocking... I hide in my Heart's Bunker with a flower (balloon) to give to my harsh-critic/harmer self.
