Self-Harm

[Korzic]

Yeah listen to the pshrink in training (she has to defend her profession yo)

[Rusty]

Bethany made some very good points. But like was said, unless someone willingly wants to get help then there isn't a much a counsellor or therapist or whatever is going to do, just add more stress and stuff. If someone actually does want to get help though, then professional help is useful.

[Joey]

okay .. read this
now some of you might understand why 'professionals' aren't that great
sorry it's long but it's a good read:

The human mind can be a strange thing. Anyone who knows me, knows that mine can be considered so, and worse. If I were to be put on a lie-detector test, for example, everything I would say would turn out to be false. For my mind is split - between outward and inward, between truth and lies and reality.

It was sitting in her office that I first fully analysed this capacity of the human brain, whether out of boredom or sheer refusal to listen to the monotony of words she was churning at me. I sat there, in the claustrophobic confines, staring fixedly at the chinks of sunlight glaring through the grey venetian blinds, everything out of focus. Her office was small and simply furnished, housing no more than a cold metal bookshelf, two armchairs, a beanbag on the floor in a corner and a small wooden coffee table. The carpet was threadbare and worn, and there were identical wooden doors at either end of the room - I suppose to offer a sense of security in a fast exit, should a client become violent in their crazed state.

I remember thinking that that's what this double-up must have been intended for. Did that mean I was crazy? I didn't, I don't feel crazy. The voices inside my head - everybody has them, right? - have always been there. I suspect I should go crazy if they weren't.

I removed my eyes after a time from the sunlit beams on the grey carpet and fixed them pointedly on a poster promoting Aboriginal Sexual Health, which featured an outline of the symptoms of Syphilis ("The Pox") in patronisingly simplified English, surrounded by a border of dot-painting and miniature drawn boomerangs. My eyes watered momentarily due to the sudden change in light concentration, and in spite of myself, I stole a fearful gaze at her, blinking furiously, panicking suddenly that she should notice and think this was a display of emotion of some sort. But she continued to read aloud monotonously from the internet fact-sheet identical to the one placed in my own lap, and did not look up.

The human mind is a liar. Before a word can even reach your tongue it is pre-concieved in the brain in an endless string of meaningless feeling, like links in a chain or a convoy of trucks, pushing, rushing incontinently from the mouth and into the air, left to hang sometimes for uncomfortably long periods. Have you even been having a conversation, but only realised so halfway through the ordeal, breaking into the reality like one surfacing from underwater? I will be consumed so deeply in my inner-affairs, poring intently over my most private thoughts and feelings, when annoyingly, a vague set of voices are rudely interrupting my sacred lonliness. Like muffled voices behind a closed door, or the barely intelligible conversations that sometimes invade the phone-lines of first-floor apartment owners. Often, my inner temper threshold will crack and the voice inside my head - the boss, the manager of all voices, my inner-God will exclaim, cross "Who is talking? It hurts," only resisting urges to clap hands over ears as if to block out some shrill whining, because of the fact that an inner-voice has no physical - no hands and no ears. When the conversation outside my head continues and the voices become like the high pitched wail of a banshee, my inner-voice will yell "Argh! Shut up! Fucking shut up!" and my forehead will crease as a searing pain heats my skull. It's all too much, these voices.

Suddenly, blinking furiously, my cheeks heated, I realise that there is a person listening to me speak aloud, around the same time too, I become conscious that my lips and tongue are moving and my own voice comes into precision, and yet I have not the slightest clue what I am talking about, as I stare at this person, as if for the first time. How can I, therefore, insist that I tell the truth, if I have not even a clue what it is I talk about?

I walk into her depressing office and reply "Good, thank you" in a voice slightly effected, not my own, to her question of how I am, how I have been since the last time we had spoken. See, "Good, thank you" and "Fine, thanks" are a lot easier than replying, "I feel like shit. Not that you care though, do you, because I'm just keeping you in a job and paying your bills."

And I know that she doesn't yearn to hear that I cry beneath my bed covers each night, furiously, silently, like a child; It being the only thing I can do to resist recovering the 20mm craft knife hidden behind Famous Five novels I seemingly haven't touched since i was eleven and digging it into my flesh, deep - as deep as I can without crying out, because apparently I've stopped that. I know she doesn't want to know this, and I don't want to tell her.

So she smiles at me - that thin smile that betrays her own true thoughts and feelings, a smile that tells me she's thinking more about what she will have for lunch in twenty minute's time that what I have just told her. I remember the first time I saw that smile, when I told her that I didn't know how much more I could take of this, of life in general, how much longer I could hang on to something so seemingly hopeless that was causing me so much pain - when she smiled that smile and looked at her wrist-watch and replied "I think we'll have to leave it here for today, I'm sorry." She wasn't sorry, I know that, but come to think of it, neither was I, because I realised that from this point I could retreat back into my world of security, of lies, and I could cease to play this painful game of truth.

So she smiles at me and says, "I thought we'd talk about your eating difficulties today." I love how doctors can manipulate what you have told them, into something completely different. I felt like replying, Lady, I have no difficulty eating. I could eat everything in sight, anything I can cram through my teeth and what's more I could probably win a fucking time-trial, I'm so practiced at it. I'm practiced, too at rushing to the bathroom afterward. Same routine - lock door, run shower, kneel in the wet, hunched over, my mouth close to the small, round, rose-patterned plastic drain. My index and pointer fingers crammed down my throat bringing it back up - whole pasta pieces, un-chewed pieces of cheese, it all must go - complete liquidation sale. The water serves a double purpose - overpowering the sound of my vile retching, it also rinses clean my fingers, clearing the stringy mucous from the tips of my fingers, allowing me to work again, jamming those fingers as far as they will reach down my throat until I estimate that I have purged enough, or I begin to draw blood - whichever comes first.

Or on another point altogether - when I feel the need to fast completely, for a few days, a few weeks perhaps, living on a sole diet of water and multi-vitamins, I am not having 'difficulty' eating. Oh no, this is calculated, precise - in the secret place between my mattress and my wooden bed slats lies a thin exercise book that no one knows about. On good days, when I can lie with my head on my pillow and watch my walls, my ceiling spinning, or lift my arm and squint to focus on it, searching it for signs of fat or ugliness, before having to let it drop from the exertion, I reward myself by placing a gold star in that book. I live for those golden stars. I live for that control.

So I nod, and listen to her read, like a teacher or a parent lecturing a naughty child on the perils of playing too close to the road, in a tone of voice that says "I'm paid to care, but even then I hardly give a shit," she informs me of the definition of anorexia-nervosa and tells me that at my lowest weight I was probably putting my heart and other internal organs under undue stress, but that I am in a healthy weight range now and should have nothing to worry about. She smiles. Is this supposed to comfort me? Does she honestly think I care about the risks of dying, much less dying in such a way? Surely I would be less hated if I were to die this way, than by overdose, or by bleeding to death. Then, why should I care, I'd be dead and it wouldn't matter a whole lot, because in the end we're all selfish beings who care solely, exclusively almost, about ourselves.

At any rate, I have my GP, my physical doctor to lecture me about such matters. But as usual, my head doctor tries to take on the physical side of things she can't possibly understand, and my GP, the psychological side and without fail, neither ever gets it right.

I figured as long as he was prescribing me those little white pills to fix the damage I had done to my stomach, that we had a pretty good deal going. I could even handle the ordeal of climbing onto his white examination table, covered with paper not unlike the kind at a fish and chip shop, only in a long, running strip and have him prod my gut with two fingers, saying "Does this hurt? How about here, no?" and even answer his questions about how regular my periods were, among other things - as long as he kept giving me those pills, which I honestly felt were a God-send.

But when, on one of those two-monthly visits he asked me when I was going to "stop this" his question took me completely by surprise. I felt like saying "But isn't this why you're helping me, so I don't have to stop?" but instead I lied, fumbling, "I will... I have." He seemed satisfied with my answer, satisfied too, that his painful prodding of my broken stomach brought not even a wince out of me these days, and so he gave me no pills, no prescription this time, and I ceased to show up for any future appointments.

Just the same, I ceased to answer the calls from my head doctor, who still tries to reach me, every couple of weeks on my mobile, I guess out of some legal obligation or something. I never answer, and she never tries a second time - it is an unspoken agreement between us, and I don't care what she thinks may have happened to me, I only hope she uses a bit of imagination in doing so.

Because I am tired of lying, of pretending everything is fine, whilst furiously willing the lump constricting my throat, choking me, to retreat into my gut.

I wish not to lie to this doctor, to tell her that the anti-depressant medication 'works a charm', when in reality I never had the initiative to even buy it. I had not the financial means, much less the nerve to consult my parents - as they are, without a doubt, the worst adults I know and I simply could not take the shame of asking.

I know - and now you know, that I lie with every breath I take, and every smile I make and that no doctor, no pills can change this, and nor do I want them to. For we are all liars in some way or other, and these lies keep me sane, keep me with friends - friends who don't care enough to even see what is happening to me, but friends none the less. It is doubtful if any of them would want to know me, if they really knew me, that is. So I am happy in these lies, that keep the world from knowing the awful truth and my friends from knowing the real me, because in reality, isn't that all we really look for? To be loved, to have someone - anyone - love us, even if all they are really loving is a lie?

[superboots]

[nelison]

I agree completely.

[Joey]

I guess if you want the help it's worth finding a 'good' professional but most people, from my experiences .. don't want the help to begin with. Especially people who self harm.

[Henrietta]

[Joey]

[happening fish]

[Joey]

[happening fish]

[Cole]

I loved that story..and I agree with you. I'm scared of doctors...I don't want help, for anything. In my experience they either care too much, or don't care at all. I don't know how much one is supposed to care...but they seem to never get it right, even though it's their job.
Anways, I'm studying psychology..like I said earlier...and it would be nice to think that I could have such a job as a psychologist one day, but it's doubtful...but I would care the right amount.

[nelison]

yep, you're the exception. Not one psychiatrist knows the right level of caring but you're gonna fix that and be the only in the world.

[happening fish]

[Joey]

[Cole]

[Joey]

[Korzic]

[mosaik]

[nelison]