I Need To Hurt Myself If I Want To Feel Anything

[GypsyThatIWas]

I so rarely feel any connection to anything. I feel stunted and in my own head. I don't notice when I experience pleasure or joy, so physical pain is the only thing I have left to feel. Grounding doesn't work. Meditation doesn't work. Exercise doesn't work. I feel void and shallow. I have no bridge between myself and reality. I don't want to hurt myself but how else can I feel anything real?

 

[Ronin]

How does 'real' feel, to you?

Or, what combination of things did it use to feel so it'd feel 'real'.

& Do you need real, in order to live well? (A question if living without feeling real cannot have the same value as with feeling it; maybe you're at a different form of life and quality can be found just where you are, instead of trying to find the past that's long passed.)

 

[Justmehere]

Eventually, hurting yourself won't work either. It "works" via an endorphin rush and eventually your body will become numb to this.

Try physical excerise or seeking strong safe sensations. Don't do still medatative activities. Try strong tasting candy. (I used fireball candy at first.)
Try holding ice. Go from a cold shower to a warm shower quickly. Get essential oils with a strong sent. Do 4 square breathing -an ER doc taught me this to help me get back into my body - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mgzhKW08bMQ

Work on trigger management plans and use these types of grounding skills prior to triggers, not just afterwards.

Also, look into low dose naltrexone. This can reduce the numbness/dissociating of the body for many people. If it works for your body, you will feel a lot more feelings and need the grounding skills on board even more. It also takes away the body's ability to get addicted or hooked on needing the self injury to feel real. It will break that addictive cycle and help one to feel real without self injury.

 

[Intrepid]

Some feelings make us move toward something and others make us retreat. For example fear makes you retreat and happiness moves you toward something. If you are moving toward or away you have feelings. You just don't recognize them.

My therapist kept asking me week after week what I felt and I couldn't answer her. I just didn't have the words. I was like a lost child.

Eventually I got a some worksheets on feelings from a DBT book she had sitting around. I decided to become emotionally competent and studied these the best I could. I've had to learn what feelings really are and how to put the right words to them. I knew all the descriptive words, but not how they affected me or how I related to the world. I've learned to not condemn or condone my feelings, but to accept them as they are. (Okay, there are still a lot of feelings I really hate, but I'm working on that).

But where I started was just watching where I felt like I was moving toward, or moving away from.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

Do 4 square breathing -an ER doc taught me this to help me get back into my body - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mgzhKW08bMQ

That's awesome! It sort of forces you to breathe slower because you're holding it.

@GypsyThatIWas, I don't have much to add to the other replies other then I am wondering, when you say X doesn't work, how much effort you placed into it. I don't mean this in a judging way. I know that when I am at the end of my rope, it is very hard to put much effort into anything. But there are literally millons of exercises you can do. Many ways to meditate. I didn't know there were so many ways until I came here. Also a ton of grounding techniques out there.

Someone said on here somewhere, "when you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot". Well, digging into and trying out many types of things might be your knot. Id say try to check them out in a less emotional time, if possible, as I think you might have more patients with it. But I assure you, there are many more things you have tried.

DBT is a wonderful thing to try as it helps with distress tolerance and emotional regulation. It helps a ton in this area.

I'm sorry you're having a hard time! :hug:

 

[Sideways]

Feelings are there, it's just our awareness of them that changes. Trauma causes intense emotions, more intense than we can cope with. The brain does a pretty smart thing by teaching itself: emotions need to be silenced. Emotions might cause us to lose control if they're too intense, or they might even cause someone to hurt us. So the brain has built in a protection system - numb the feelings, stay in control.

Self-harm causes physical pain, but the need to self-harm is all those silenced emotions trying to find a way to express themselves. Self-harm, pretty much by definition, is a way of hurting in a way that you have control over.

The degree of control that we have over our self-harm wanes. Like any addiction, the brain's need to feel that release starts to overtake our ability to rationally assess how much control we actually have. Scratching becomes cutting. Drinking becomes alcoholism.

To feel emotions in the 'real' sense, the way that healthy non-traumatised people feel them, you're going to have to prepare yourself for the wave to hit. Because it will, eventually. Reteaching your brain that emotions don't need to be silenced anymore is going to release all the stuff that your brain has protected you from by numbing it down. There are skills you can learn, DBT and mindfulness are good examples, that help us teach our brain not just that it's okay to feel emotions now, but also how to cope with them when they hit.

All that is great information to have. The catch though, the bit that you don't want to hear - you have to stop self-harming to feel. Doesn't happen straight away. But as long as you keep self-harming, your brain has a (ultimately destructive) alternative in place, which it will cling to. Because you control it.

At some point, you just need to stop. That's the deal. There will be void, numbness, emotional silence. But eventually, your brain will realise that there's no more self-harm-sedative coming, no emotional-xanax, and they come.

Big scary process. Lots of painful beliefs, habits, thoughts, that all need to be confronted and upended. But it does happen. Be gentle with yourself - allowing yourself to feel isn't all bad. Yes, you will start feeling the sadness, but you will also start feeling the joy.

 

[Friday]

When I get like that I go for physical *awareness*, which also tends to be pretty blunted. Textures, temperatures, scents, movement. I don't have to feel anything about them I just have to catalogue them, whenever I can think about it.

Rhythmic helps. I used to spend a lot of time on my surfboard, just sitting. Legs in the water. Feeling the swells rise and fall beneath me.

It would take weeks, or even months, for me to start feeling anything about the stuff I was aware of.

I still have a lot of problems wih it. I don't feel hungry until I'm starving. Literally. As in eating once a week. And then the emotions come too, and they're savage. No bueno. I don't feel angry until I'm ready to shred someone. Everything blunts. Even pain.

I very much have to ease my way back into feeling... Anything. And that's always a risk. Because sometimes easing works. But other times it's very much an on/off switch. Nothing to Everhthing. But first I have to pass through so seriously f*cked up rage. :wtf: I'll end up looking like a skipping stone, across the surface of the water, because when I do feel? It's so fierce I pop right back up into Nope. Nada. Bad idea. Not gonna do it. Until I get sick of it, and just go for it.

Feelings. Shudder. Feelings and I don't get on so hot. I feel too much. I feel too little. There's not a lot of in between.

 

[purpleswirled]

i either feel everything at once or nothing......finding that middle ground is hard....