seeking advice...

[Damon Inferel]

Hn... I don't know how well it would work for me to place this here, as I can only imagine that the advice i'll get will still be the same as I have always gotten, but, as they say, it never hurts to have a second opinion.

 

You see, I've noticed through a lot of my recent past, namely the past few months and maybe the year, that I have a lot of people who have mixed feelings about some of the stuff that I do. Nobody here knows what they are except for two, maybe three of you.

 

The general concensus is that i should stop what I have been doing to myself, and try to get help for the stuff that i can't stop. However, if you could say that it is a twisted mentality (I don't think it is) I have no real desire to stop this. This is probably the only thing that keeps me rom helping myself is the fact hat I do not really want to be helped, and yet the other half of me does. That would be the half that equals about twenty percent of me... the part that cares about my life.

 

Anyhow, I'll be rather open with this and wonder if there is perhaps anyone who has some form of opinion on it. Perhaps some in favor o what I'm doing, but i can imagine the majority will not be. That does not matter, as I'm trying to figure out a way to stop this. Of course, the key to it all is myself, and none of this can stop unless i want it to. I'm not trying to burden any of you, just ask opinions.

 

I've never really been diagnosed with any particular psychological disorder, but through my studies of discovering what waswrong with me, I found that I, due to signs and symptoms and whatnot, that I do indeed have some of the problems, or at least I had them.

 

My most prominent and dangerous ones would be my undying love for causing pain to myself, usually through the manner of a small razor. My shoulder has nearly forty scarsfrom it, and my arm is becoming lined with them as well. none of them have ever drawn enough blood to be life threatening in any way, and certainly not enough to taste blood in enough quantity to be sufficient for my taste for it... However, as i am studying 'abnormal psychology' which deal with the issues thta nobody really wishes to deal with, I read a lot about cutting and anorexia and such, and I aspire to become like these people. Scars are not pretty, but at the time, the blood and the 'pain', if one could call it that, is. I, with my aspiration, want to see more of this blood. My life does not matter to me in most senses, so if they do become life-threatening, it makes no difference to me. i'm eighteen, and thus I can't be forced to seek help.

 

My other problem is that I have dealt with anorexia twice. I'm a very small percentage, as only 15 percent of anorexia patients are male, and that is a significantly small number, not even numbering a million. Perhaps it does, but I'm not entirely sure. The number is indeed small though.

 

I have an obsession with losing weight, as my goal weight is 110, or lower. however, I also have the Obsessive compulsive disorder to eat,as when I as little, I loved to eat, and it became so familiar that I can't stop once start. It is aggravating because I gain weight instead of losing it. My ideal weight is 150-ish, and I weight about 125, and I still have 15 pounds to go. I can't stop that, but i know i'm not anorexic anymore. At least not yet. I figure thta if continue though, I will have it for a third time. I just can't stop... not until I've reached my goal, at least, and my preferred maximum weight is 120.

 

Overall, I have to want to be helped to be helped, but... In the former case of cutting myself, I do that to feel pain, to relieve a lot of stress (since i deal with a lot of other people's problems... {I'm the box that holds people's secrets}), and to taste blood. I do it because nothing else works, and i feel much better afterwards. The cuts never are more than an inch except maybe ten of them, and then not much more thna an inch, and they only get a little bit of blood. As long as I feel better, whatever.

 

In the latter case, I am not anorexic anymore, but i know that, since I do not work out, whatever weight i gain will be fat, and I have a vanity problem about my figure. I don't like to be... muscle bound and athletic and... built. I prefer the more lithe appearance. I prefer grace and frailty over strength and masculinity. I would work out and such, but I don't have that sort of privacy... as I can't be watched like that. Hell, nobody has seen me without a shirt, pants, socks, shoes, and coat for almost two years. i'm too private to just do pushups and stuff wiht other people in the room, and since my mom's husand is alway home...

 

Sorry this was so long, but i'm just looking fo insight or something. If you care to respond, i thank you for your time, and if you even read it, I also thank you for your time. Good day.

[Ayshela]

answered privately.

[Lady Celes Crusader]

Well... the best I can do for now is to give you support and understanding.

[X-Sabre]

Damon, I'm not really sure I should say too much. I'd love to give you some advice, seeing as I've done a few of those things myself. I used to be a cutter, I wasn't much into scarring myself, but the feeling of pain kept me feeling that I was alive, instead of just numb.

 

The very fact that you have posted this shows that you do in fact want help, even if part of your sub conscious doesn't allow you to get it.

 

The best I can do is offer you support and understanding during this time.

 

You may not know me well, or at all in fact, but if you ever need anything, you can always PM me. I am more than willing to help in whatever way I can, just like I'm sure the rest of the Penners are as well.

 

Good luck Damon.. It's a long tough road, but you do have friends.

[Damon Inferel]

Thus far, I am very grateful to all of you who have given some time to give me light words of caution or entire pages of advice or knowledge. i'll continue to be grateful as well.

 

For those of you who have given responses in private, I apologize that I have not responded back to them, but it will take some time to give an appropriate reply. I'm not ignoring you in the least, I would just like to send more words than a simple word of thanks.

[Salinye]

(This would have been posted last night had the st00pid boards not been down all night. *casts an irritated glance at the board*)

 

Damon~

 

I read this earlier in the day and your words stayed with me. However, I didn’t have the time to write a response with my thoughts until now. (Having children and not feeling so hot delays my thoughts from getting onto paper.)

 

I wanted to first address the following statement:

 

My life does not matter to me in most senses, so if they do become life-threatening, it makes no difference to me.

This is the first area that concerned me. See, it goes against the innate desires not to care for ones own life. Many people say they don't care if they live or die, but I think inside it is a slim few who truly do not care. If people/other animals/plants did not have a natural desire to strive and fight to keep their existence many more things may have been wiped out of the gene pool long ago.

 

I would think this would be the first area I would start looking at within myself. Do you TRULY not care for your life? Do you just feel like you don't care for your life because you don't care for the things going on in your life? Is it possibly the people you are around that you truly don't care for? Is there some abusive/bad events that took place that make you feel this way?

 

I would want to look at those things and first try to get my love of myself and life back. Perhaps there is a way to convert lack of desire to live and love life over to lack of desire to be surrounded by people/environments that make life or how you view yourself undesirable?

 

Secondly, I don't think your thoughts are a twisted mentality-Even if I can't comprehend them. It takes an honest person to see that he has an issue that is probably not healthy, yet recognize that in his heart of hearts he wants that unhealthy habit in his life to some degree. Is enjoying inflicting pain upon yourself or enjoying the taste of blood common? No, yet, I wouldn't be surprised to find it's more common than most think/believe. However, in the general scheme of life, I would venture to call it an uncommon hobby/stress relief.

 

My first question in this area would be this. "Do you have any desires to move that practice from inflicting pain onto yourself onto another person?" You don't have to answer that here, just a question to ask yourself. Because you view this practice as something pleasurable, do you imagine it would be pleasurable for someone else to have it done to them? Because if you have those thoughts then that is something you don't want to hesitate to seek help to overcome. Not everyone has the same views as you and even a small urge or curiosity about harming someone else should be addressed immediately. Not only for others safety but for yours too.

 

Now, please don't take offense to that last paragraph. I'm not assuming you want to harm other people for enjoyment. Just sharing my thoughts. You seem genuinely concerned about this. Concerned enough to seek advice here. So although I am nobody, and not even close to an expert in this area, I will offer my thoughts. :0)

 

As much as I know you want to hear some opinions in favor of this habit, I couldn't in clear conscience give you such a vote of confidence. In truth, the habit can be harmful to you in the long run. I'm sure this is the advice you have been given by many people, but I would encourage you to seek help from people you trust to overcome the self inflicting pain habit. Not only because it's not good for your body, but also because you may discover there are other reasons you do these things. The human body is a beautiful thing, and perhaps there are deeper reasons why you want to harm yourself that not even you see. Perhaps once you start overcoming these things you will discover things about yourself you didn't even know and will be able to grow in ways you never were able to before.

 

I sort of view it as backwards programming. Would you want to be programmed differently so that you found joy and stress relief from positive healthy actions instead if it was possible?

 

Regarding the anorexia, if you're not working out regularly, and not bulemic (spelling) then I would assume you use starvation practices? I urge you to look up the effects of starvation practices as a weight loss tool. The long term results may surprise you if you haven't seen them already. I can fully understand the need to feel attractive and beautiful, but I'm betting you are attractive at healthy weights as well. My advice would go back to the "backwards programming" theory. Why do you only see yourself as attractive at harmful weight? Would you choose to feel attractive and sexy at a healthy weight if it were possible?

 

You are right, the bottom line of all of this does come down to you and your desires and choices. Sometimes we have to choose to make a decision that goes against our primal desires, but by doing so we improve and enhance our lives in ways that we may never have thought possible. Usually it's the first step, the deciding and taking the step that is the hardest part.

 

Again, I am nobody, and no expert, but as a fellow penner and generally clear headed and caring person, these are my thoughts. I hope they only come across positively and if nothing else help you delve into the sources of your issues more clearly. :0)

 

~Salinye

[Damon Inferel]

Ummm... It might seem a little off that i post such aresponse here, but perhaps there is a trifle amount of other information that I might possibly offer to this little, or rather, a possibly large, dilemma of mine. thus far, the thoughts and expressions that have come from those who have shared their viewpoints with me on this matter have actually caused myself to inquire about myself. Some answers... I'm too afraid to find, and others simply make no sense. Perhaps some time in the future I would weed out thses instances of confusion and possibly find out who I am, but at the moment, while my brain still shambles through this wave of self-inflicted grief and moderate pain, I cannot discern what would make sense even if it actually did... (I don't know how much sense that made...)

 

I have a belief that I am taking up space in this world. I heard the expression off of a commercial once, and that only gave me the words to express how I felt. Thus far, my purpose is unclear, save to make my girlfriend happy. To anyone who reads my journals, that fact is no secret. However, that number is two...

 

I have asked myself several times if I truly do care about my life and what I might make of it. i might answer that as i always do. I care about my girlfriend and my friends, nothing more. I am convinced that that is the truth. I despise who I've become andwho i might eventually become, as my current road is leading me to a soulless shell of nothingness, as i am in the make of destroying my emotions. Teenage apathy and angst taken to the extreme as one might put it. There is still that shred of whoever i really am that exists though that tells me to keep going, as well as a promise i made to my girlfriend not to die. More of that promise than anythign else.

 

I believe that i can safely say (if 'safely' can be used...) that I do not care about my life, but I care about the lives of others. Whatever I can do to make someone else happy, I will do, unless it puts my friends or my girlfriend in danger. For instance, if it makes someone happy for me to shoot my friend, I couldn't do it. extreme example, but the fastest I could conjure. I live my life helping others live theirs. I care nothing for their longevity or health in the most part, but simply that they live their lives happily. I will live in anguish with myself if everyone else around me can at least be happy, and I'm at different eends on whether or not i'm comfortable with that.

 

I would go for the gold and try to bring back whatever I once liked of myself, but as much as I can remember of my past (which is very, very, very little... semi-amnesia or something) I have never liked anything, especially since i haved matured and seen how childish I was all those years ago. Becoming angry, becoming happy, becoming irritated, sick, anything... I hated it. At the time, when i was still a small child, or even an immature adolescent, I did not care. It was what I liked to do, but as time progresses, I realize how immature I was and i hate myself. I fear I have become too mature in the sense of myself. I can still laugh with my friends, of course, but it only adds to my reflections later on. I love my friends, and i love my girlfriend more, but I have a feeling that my life is going to leave them. I feel my emotions are inevitably being drawn towards a nexus of all things empty, and that my soul will simply cease to function, leaving me with no personality and no care for anything. The only person who is truly unique, the person with no personality. A machine, an automaton, something more lifeless than a plant. That is what I fear i am doomed to become, and I see no resolution to this problem.

 

I can say that the only reason I hold onto my emotions is because of my girlfriend. I hate to admit that all of that puts her on the spot as the only thing holding me together, but it's true. I have already lost myself, but I live because of a promise made to her. Everyday my life is questioned by my mind, and everyday i think about that promise. If she were in my same situation, I'd want her to live too, so I live because she doesn't want me to die.

 

This, of course all radiates stereotypical teenage mentality of those who grow up saying "I don't care." and crap like that. I do care, but not about myself. I've seen the effects of what I do to myself when other people take it to an extreme, and I know everythign about my problems. I cause my problems willingly, seeing how far I can go before i must regress. I don't want to, but what else is there? Fun and happiness are finite. no one can live their life in perpetual happiness, unless that comfort, that happiness radiates from somethign that can be perpetual. Pain can run through a person's life unending. emotional pain, physical pain, it has the option of never stopping, and if one finds familiarity and comfort with this pain, then they can live in infinite bliss, while still regretting.

 

It is a paradox... pain causes pain, but pain causes happiness. Happiness causes pain, for when your happiness ends, you want it back, and sometimes you can't have it. Thus, you feel depressed or the like. Everything ends, of course, but why make it end when you don't have to. It is by these philosophies that I have lived for somethign over a year now, and it is these philosophies that I regret ever forming because i now hold them so dear. I believe, truly, I have gone insane, but yet my sanity remains intact through some thin thread, and i know what that thread is.

 

In all of this, i do not believe I am uncurable in my instances of inflicting pain on myself, starving myself to my physical perfection, and the like of things which only expose themselves on the veil of flesh that houses our souls. I fear my uncurability comes from where my dark destiny is taking me to in this oblivion of everything that makes me human. I don't understand it, and I can choose to not accept it, but if I change who I am, I will eventually grow tired and thus hate it once more, reverting back to this. Overall, my problems, my physical problems are certainly not beyond hope as long as I want that help, which I do, but my mind is lost, at least I believe so.

 

My 'cutting' and my 'starving' are smaller things of the big picture in my mind. They are minions to the overlord of my madness, symptoms of a grander disease. In my mind, I am already dead, and the only indication of my life is that my heart still beats, my brain still thinks, and I still breathe... Life is finite, but I fear that my finity has come to a conclusion earlier than my body had anticipated...

[Yatsuna13]

hello...well...i know what you mean. i tend to have that problem too. i start something and even though i know i need help with it...but i dont want it...well i kind of want it

[Savannah]

You guys should remember this. You were put on this world with a purpose in mind. You may not know your purpose-but someone does. You are here because you are needed.

There is no way you should pre-empt the task you were given. Life is a gift and should never be wasted. There are those who love you and this is no matter what you might think. Tho you might struggle, and think you are getting nowhere, there are those who watch you and realize if you can manage your life they can certainly manage theirs.

Do not give up on the light and the good around you.

 

Hmmm-I am really not as sanctimonius and prissy as that sounds. I just hate for you to think you are alone in anything when you have people around who care for you.

Edited December 5, 2003 by Savannah

[Elwen]

Ashke, I'm not exactly good at putting my thoughts into words-or, at least anything outside fiction. Always remember this-life holds those who wish to hurt you, but life will also bring you people who love you.

 

Like me. I will always be here for you. I want you to stay here...if you need me, I'll be as close as I can.

 

 

-Lynne-

[Beautiful Nightmare]

Im going to say the same thing as what i do to my friends, this is your choice this is your life whether you choose to take part in it or kill yourself is up to you but as long as this thing comforts you maybe you should do it but try ease yourself off of it you no not cut yourself so much! If you like pain im sure you can find it in another way than cutting yourself! hmmm im sorry thats all i have to say if it souynds harsh im sorry!

[Aardvark]

If you're of two minds over this, there's a simple way to deal with it. Don't make the decision yourself. For this solution, you need a pen, a piece of paper and one D6. Firstly, write numbers 1 through 6 on a piece of paper. Then decide, what chance do you want to give helping yourself fully, put that many "Seek total help", what chance for just helping one aspect, then put no help as number 1. Or six, if you want. Then toss the dice and let it decide what you should do.

 

Bam! any way the dice rolls, some part of your body is satisfied.

 

And redo this every couple of weeks, with things like "Continue down this path", "Change completely", "Dress in pirates clothes and run down time square screaming at passers by, demanding their pieces of eight" and the like. If you can't decide, let an inaminate object decide for you

[Damon Inferel]

Hn... I don't know what to say to all of this. I am grateful, surely, however as fluid as my thoughts came out on a keyboard before, they're not really manifesting the darkness they had some days ago. It's like this all the time. One day, I'll hate everything, the next, I'm all happy and stuff. Maybe i'm a schizo? Anyhow, thank you all for your insight and advice and otehr views. I'll try to give that crappy short term memory of mine a shove and take heed to what you all said insstead of pilin it into the "Well, nobody wants you to hurt yourself so why don't you just shut up and do it anyway" pile.

 

I guess some good news would be that despite my forty or more little slices on my arm from the past months, I haven't done it as much recenty as the balde just doesn't seem as appealing. I guess it's because my mom's husband isn't drinking right now, so i have no need to feel total hatred for anything. but, if he gets mean or whatever, i'm sure that my little problem with overactive empathy will pick up my mom's anger and such from his drinking, and i'll just have to vent my hatred elsewhere... i'll try to keep it under control. Thanks again.