Hurting Myself

** This post is about self harm! If this post may trigger you, please skip this one. **

Most days my depression is concocting ways that I can hurt myself without resorting to cutting. Recently I can’t get those thoughts out of my head.

Yesterday I almost caved. I unintentionally distracted myself by cooking and watching YouTube so that worked out. But today I can’t shake the desire to hurt myself.

This past week I forced myself to eat shitty food because I know I shouldn’t. So. Much. Ice cream. Beyond that I have thought about doing things to myself that make me feel like I’m absolutely fucking insane.

Today I can’t stop thinking about drinking myself into a state tonight. I don’t even like drinking very much and getting drunk isn’t something I enjoy either. It usually makes me feel uncomfortable. But today the thought of drowning my destructive thoughts in a destructive way sounds great.

Would these thoughts ease up if I gave in to my desire to cut? Or would they get worse? Is it worth throwing away my clean streak of almost 2 years to find a few moments of relief?

Don’t worry, I’m seeing my therapist on Wednesday.

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Feeling Insecure

Maybe it’s just me but seeing perfect celebrities makes me feel like shit. I look at these women who are totally perfect (whether they are naturally that way, have a whole team putting them together or they had surgery to get there) I feel so much less than.

If somebody talks about how attractive and sexy a superstar like Beyonce or Nicki Minaj are I think to myself, “I’ll never look like that. What can I offer the world if I don’t look like her?”

I shouldn’t compare myself to these superstars but sometimes I do.

For most of my life I have compared myself to my peers in school and university. I would usually envy how thin they were compared to me, how they dress better than me or how naturally beautiful they were without the need for makeup. It was pretty difficult because I didn’t feel beautiful until my early 20s.

It also goes beyond just celebrities. Instagram can be a positive place but also one where perfect people go to show the world how perfect they are. I scroll through on the discover page and see women that I will never ever look like.

It makes me jealous, insecure and feel like a frumpy slug.

I asked myself, “Why can’t I look like that?” too often. It’s really not great for my mental health.

I sometimes think that if I looked more like some of the girls on Instagram that people would like me more. That my boyfriend would love me more if I looked that way. That he is settling for a frumpy slug when out there I’m sure is an Instagram model looking woman that he could be with.

I even consider deleting my makeup Instagram that I have put so much time and money into because I don’t think I’m pretty or talented enough compared to the others out there.

How does the Internet and social media apps like Insta effect your mental health? Does it ever make you feel insecure about yourself?

Next post is going to be more positive! I’ll write a positive rebuttal to this post so keep your eyes peeled for that soon!

Self-Harm by Restricting Food

Self-harm is not limited to cutting, burning, biting, scratching, etc. your skin. In a recent post I saw on The Mighty (a great community for people with mental illness, disabilities and chronic health issues) about how self-harm goes beyond those things.

After reading that (which now I can’t find it anywhere so I can’t even link it for you guys), I realized how many of the things I was doing the author classified as self-harm. Two that I think off the top of my head were restricting food and not acclimating to temperature changes.

Food Restriction

This has been a struggle for me for a few years now. Especially when I’m anxious my stomach gets so tense that I feel like I can’t eat. When I’m like that I can only eat a very small amount of food or I will feel sick.

And even if my anxiety isn’t making my stomach tense but I’m still anxious, sometimes I just don’t want to eat despite my stomach growling. This is happening today. I am feeling anxious and depressed today so I don’t want to have anything to eat. I’m quite hungry but I don’t want to take a single bite.

Am I punishing myself? Sort of.

Is this a healthy thing? Not really.

Being Too Cold

I really didn’t realize that this was a form of self-harm. So what I mean is that if I’m cold, I won’t do anything about it as a sort of punishment to myself. I don’t usually do this as often with being hot because I hate being too hot.

In the winter my office is usually quite cold (the building was built in 1929 what can you do?) and I have a space heater to help but I don’t often use it. Instead I’ll just be cold. I’ll suffer through it just because I can.

This is a strange one to explain because I don’t entirely understand my reasoning for it.

Do you have any trouble with restricting food or letting yourself suffer by being too cold/hot?

I am experiencing PMDD right now which makes me feel every emotion all at the same time. So there’s a lot going on in my head right now so it’s very hard to get through this time of the month. Right now it feels like my swimming upstream in a river of peanut butter.

Stars in a Pitch Black Sky

I’ve always struggled with seeing the positive in my own life situations. If somebody else is telling me about an issue, I can usually grasp on to some sort of positive aspect to help that person feel better. But when it comes to me, I only see a dark sky with distant shining stars.

A few years ago I wrote a poem about how my depression is like a dark night sky filled with faint stars sprinkled throughout. It was to represent how I see the overwhelming bad in my life and see the positive things as so minuscule that they’re nearly insignificant.

I have been reflecting on 2018, trying to find some positives. It’s like the whole needle in a hay stack saying, I’m digging through all these negative thoughts trying to find a positive one.

I close my eyes and see shit like: my car being totaled in August, my current struggles with asthma, fights with my boyfriend, crying in my bed while watching Zootopia because I was so depressed, the numbers on the scale and all of the anxious/depressing thoughts that stick to my brain cells.

I wish I could see the good, I really do. Last week my therapist helped me see that I have made progress this year, check the post out here. I’m trying to see what she sees in me.

As I’m writing this there’s only 45 minutes left of Christmas, my favorite holiday, so I will be positive in this moment for Christmas. Today I felt happy to spend time with my family and show them how much I care for them.

Ok positivity over, back to our scheduled programming.

Do you struggle with finding positivity in your life? How do you find positivity within yourself? Leave me a comment! I would love to read it 🙂

Happy Christmas to my wonderful readers!!

Tonights Meltdown

I’m having one of those evenings where I can’t stop my anxiety and depression from bullying me into a corner. They shout horrible things at me, the words that come from my own mind are like a punch in the gut.

Tonight my depression is reminding me that all of my mistakes make me a terrible person. That my errors are why people hate me.

Anxiety backs depression up by saying that everyone in my life is packing their bags and distancing themselves from me. That my mistakes and flaws make me unworthy of their presence.

They tell me my boyfriend is going to dump me because I am not enough. That I will never be enough. He wants somebody perfect, somebody who doesn’t fuck up the way I do.

When everything becomes too overwhelming I want to hide. That is my natural instinct, I’ve done it since I was a child. I want to hide from the people I have disappointed so they can’t look at me with eyes filled with pain that I caused.

I hope that if you’re struggling you can make it through. More than likely the sun will rise again in the morning.