Self harm struggle

[Ncfireguy]

I have been in severe low lately due to a total med cocktail change to battle extreme emotional numbness, I battle cutting or burning myself daily just to feel something. Anyone else struggle with the overwhelming emotional numbness?

 

[saraemerald]

Sometimes emotional numbness is harder to deal with than having strong painful feelings. I've had a difficult time feeling as well. I'm finding working with my therapist whom I trust helps a lot. I'm doing EMDR with her and it's helping me as well. I've been able to figure out my feelings about things that have happened to me that I was numb about before.
When you work with a good therapist that keeps up to date with the latest in neuroscience and psychotherapy helps a lot. The other thing that helps too is when you feel comfortable being vulnerable with your therapist, knowing they won't hurt you. Hope this helps. Hugs

 

[Freemartin]

Oh yes.
It's a bitch.
What sometimes helps me is to try to find a part of my body that actually feels something. Like, hey, I can feel my toes almost normally. Then I focus on the part of my body that's not numb and try to let the not-numbness spread from there. I stimulate the numb area next to the body part that feels things by stroking or gently pinching. Sometimes that results in surprising emotional reactions. So, be ware of feeling things on emotional level...

I get those cutting/burning urges, too. They can be so f*cking hard to resist. It is a quick fix, that's why it's so tempting, I guess.

 

[Butterflies2023]

I found to be pretty successful two things...
1. talking to my T who has been extremely patient as he heard me retell my woes of sex abuse over and over and over again. I was only 3-4 years old. It could have started earlier.
But that was key for me - just repeating what happened over and over - I kept it inside for 40+ years maybe there is some direct relationship here for how many times something has to be repeated.

2. exercising especially hiking outside on trails with some sort of elevation and in ALL types of weather. The cold weather (winter) makes your thighs and face burn, the summer makes you sweat, and the spring and fall the rain and windy weather is terrific. This took my mind off self harming.

some other tricks are placing things so far away that it takes you longer to get to them so you can slow your thinking and divert your attention to something else or just BREATHE. Like placing things you use to harm yourself lower shelf way in the back corner.

Place a rubber band around your wrist and snap it if you feel like self harming. This hurts and does not damage.

Therapy twice a week was needed for a long time.

I am living with a couple long scars that I used over and over again - because I didn't want a bunch of scars all over me.
Even these two long scars are so disheartening to look at now that I have NO DESIRE to self harm.

but I guess they are my battle wounds and I survived!!!

Hope this is helpful

 

[Deleted member 28403]

Most night for me lately.

You need to find something else to do during that time, preferable physical and with your hands.

Do you play any instrument, anything such.

Try to find something you can do, even if its carve a figure with a knife. Doing something with your hands will keep you focused and should help. And might make you feel soemthing (achievement of making something = happiness???)

 

[Sweetleaf]

I suffer from emotional numbing, too. I've only noticed it recently, but looking back it's been there ever since I became more stable post-trauma (at the end of my time being traumatized, and for a short time after, I was in a state of psychosis). It hasn't even been two months since the end of my years of trauma. I still feel negative emotions strongly, but I feel numbed to positive ones. I also have noticed that I feel numbed to things that would usually make me cry. At a support group meeting I was at tonight, there was a girl who was suffering from a condition that could kill her very soon. She had already clinically died and been resuscitated multiple times in the previous year. She told her story and I felt no emotional stirring. Hearing things like that used to make me want to cry. I haven't even cried in at least a month, if not longer, which is unusual for me.

I also feel really uninterested in activities that I loved doing, and just uninterested in everything in general. I often sit around not knowing what to do and not being able to decide on anything because everything just seems boring.