Inspiration & Ownership

When we start our lives, we are all about surviving. It is not even something we learn. It is an instinct embedded into us. The thing is: as we grow and surviving really happens passively, we are at risk of starting to drift. Since our survival is ensured, there really is no reason to improve. There is no reason to struggle hard and we simply drift through life.

There is nothing wrong with taking a break and enjoying one’s life for a bit. Everyone needs that. But if we stop having a vision, a goal to work towards, we will slowly but surely end up loosing our purpose. And when there is no purpose why would we get out of bed in the morning? Why would we leave this perfectly cuddly world that is so kind to us? It makes me feel depressed. And I end up feeling more dead than alive. When we are at this point is it high time we do something about our lethargy.

The first step is to find inspiration. It is about what we enjoy. It is about listening to podcasts, reading books and watching You Tube videos to figure out what it is we want. Or at least in what direction we want to go. We need to figure out, what makes us happy. We need to envision the life, we would love to live. The kind of life, that would have us be excited to get out of bed at 8am rather than at noon.

But inspiration is not enough. It is very nice to know what we want and then just go off and drift in the comfort of our lives some more. There are many reasons for this. Fear of failure, laziness and a sense of pointlessness to name just a few. Overcoming these is very difficult and every human being struggles. But there is no point in giving in to those obstacles. Because every day that we spend sleeping until 11am has us feeling a little bit worse about ourselves and makes it more difficult for us to actually be able to achieve our goals.

Truth is: we need to take ownership. When we get inspired, we are all motivated and want to go get whatever is the cause of our inspiration, but that only applies while we are in some sort of fantasy about our own lives. The moment we come back to reality, we fall back into our comfort. And this is where we need to be doing some work. We need to take ownership of our lives. We are the only ones living our lives. Which means we are the only one’s in charge. No one will ever do anything to improve our lives for us. No one can. There is this very powerful realization, that we are alone. No one cares. Yes, this can be incredibly devastating. If no one cares, why would I get out of bed? It doesn’t matter. Well… no one cares except us. It doesn’t matter except to ourselves. Yes, if we don’t get to achieve what we wanted to achieve, no one will care, but us. And this is powerful. It means that the relationship we have to ourselves and our lives is crucial. It means that the only person who we ever have to ask forgiveness of is ourselves.

And there is another big misunderstanding: to achieve our goals and take ownership, we need to get out of bed and off our butts. But other than that there does not need to be grand changes. Changing and adjusting our routines little by little will have a major positive impact on our lives. It is mostly the mindset that needs to be changed fundamentally. We need to adjust our mindset to be focused on owning our lives. We need to monitor our thinking. And this is important. The things we think is like talking to ourselves and if we say something often enough we will end up believing it. That can be very powerful if we control the way we talk to ourselves.

More often than not however we are blissfully unaware of what we are thinking at any given moment. There are a few things that can help. One of them is having a conversation with ourselves about what we think and how we feel. No one needs to know other than us. We need to be brutally honest with ourselves. And if we feel like a complete failure, maybe we can redirect our attention to the things that we haven’t failed, or even better find a way to improve. One more very effective way to monitor what we think is journalling. This can be in the form of regular check-ins with ourselves, or just random journalling about anything that is on our minds.

We need to ban negativity from our minds, that often comes in the form of perfectionism or realism and it causes a lot of stress which in turn costs us a lot of energy and has as drift into lethargy which is not what we want. We want to be inspired and take ownership. Never forget that we need regular boosts of inspiration, otherwise we might forget, why we are striving to build a certain life every day. Ownership of our thoughts, our mindset, our habits our daily actions. Ownership of our lives. Living and surviving are two different things. One is inspired and full of deliberation and happiness. The other is purposeless. It is up to us to choose. Only us.

Therapy-Status

I felt like therapy was getting me nowhere. I did talk to my therapist about it. Then my therapist went on vacation. Meanwhile I was supposed to decide how I want to go on about it. I figured out very quickly that I did not want to stay with my current therapist. And I made the plan to go see someone else. However now that I have not been to a therapy session for almost three weeks, I feel like I do not even want therapy at all anymore. There literally is no difference. Sure, there were some times where I thought that it was the worst time to not have regular sessions, but after all: It was so relaxing to not talk to someone for an hour, trying to explain and justify every severe action I did, without anything. Really. I do not think the last three weeks would have gone any different if I had seen someone in that time. I had a few friends who were amazing when it came to listening to me and giving advice.

Yes, I have been cutting a lot in the last few weeks. Yes, it has been an exhausting time. But now I am just trying to re-define myself. Trying to become better. Trying to move on. The topic of cutting makes me so angry. The thought of going to therapy frustrates me a lot and I just do not know if I really should go on in therapy. Sure, I need to fight my cutting. I should. But, do I need the help of a therapist for that? Do I really spend all that time trying to explain myself? I simply do not see the benefit. I do not need a therapist to revisit the things I have done in a week. I do not need someone asking me how much I drunk or how often I have cut. I can do that all on my own. In fact, I do that per default. I naturally check back in with me, and ask myself how I am, reflecting, trying to figure out how I can handle a problem. I do not need someone who is just as confused with who I am as I am.

Here is the thing: I do not want to. Really, my whole being is resisting, but I will go see another therapist. Because as a matter of fact I need someone to prepare me for the exam-time. I need help getting from “I went a day without cutting.” To “I did not cut for a week.” “For a month.” And hopefully months turn into years. But apparently I cannot get there on my own. So, I have to trust another human. Have to allow another person to see me the way I am. I am not scared of it. Just tired. Because it takes so much effort to try make anyone understand. Especially if I don’t really care about how that person sees me. It is like pouring salt into my cuts, because it forces me to walk all those dark paths again. It makes me remember the pain and loneliness, even if I am over it. But on the other hand I cannot be helped, if I do not talk about it to someone who can actually help me.

I wish I could believe

Four minutes. One song. That is how long it took me to write the 8 letters onto my skin. My hands sweaty. And shaky. My eye twitching. My fear is as strong as always. And I feel nothing. Nothing. All I know is that I will always be convicted. That whenever there is someone who is getting close to me I will end up trying to explain. That I will be asked questions. Even after I may or may not have won my war. There will always be those lines and letters on my arm. On my legs. Manifestations of my pain. My addiction. My fear.

Once more I have lost my “why”. I have no clue, why I cut. I just do it. It does not help. It does not change a thing.
“The person you hurt most is yourself.” Maybe. I should care, right? Do you know what I do care about? The fact that I don’t cut deep anymore. The fact that it never actually bleeds. just a few red lines. It saddens me. Scary right? I know. I do not want to protect myself anymore. I cannot stop the pain. Trying to is just a waste of time and energy. I know. I know. I hear everyone’s voices in my head:

“You will make it.”
“It will be okay.”
“I am here for you.”
“It will get better, easier.”
“There are people who can help you.”

Lies. Nothing but lies. Form people close to me. Some of them have an idea of what is happening. Some just really care. Some helpless. But I have known this for years. Known it long before I started cutting: We are alone. And it does not matter. We are who we are. In the place we are. We can do whatever we want.

We do not give up hope. We try to keep fighting. And we want to believe those people telling us that it’s gonna be alright. We want to. But… Until I experience that it is true. That it can get better, I can’t believe it anymore. I trust so easily. I want to believe that there is an end to the darkness. I do want to hold on to the light. But at some point the poet in me dies. Leaving the scientist alone. The scientist that looks at past events to determine the future. And those past events show no sign of light. It is not even about the cutting anymore. It is about what’s wrong inside me. I should get up and fight. I should be trying to find a way. But… I am trembling. I am parallelized.

The vision of who we shall be

I got lucky enough to know that my fear had a deadline. To know that at some point I would have an answer. And I got lucky enough to get the answer I had been hoping for and not the answer I had been so afraid of.

But now what? When we are lucky enough to get the chance to leave our fear behind. What do we do next? When our entire life had been evolving around that fear. (It does not have to be fear. It can really be anything you have been evolving around and now stopped.) How can we move on?

I think there are two crucial parts: One is looking back and figuring out what went wrong. And what went well. This is important, but I think it is quite self-explanatory. It allows us to deal with the emotions and not bury them inside us. But we do not want to live in the past. We shall not be devoured by regret. (In fact this could be the topic for a whole separate blog post.)

The other part is looking into the future. And sometimes, when we have been so caught up in something we need to actively create a vision of ourselves. But why would that be helpful? A vision allows us to measure our actions by. If something makes us more like the person we are in that vision, it is a productive action. But why do we need that?

Because we need a direction. Until this point we have been evolving around whatever it is we are leaving behind. Now it is time to evolve around something positive. Around the person we want to be. In my vision I never say: “I am not a self-harmer.” I say things like: “I am a strong, independent woman.” Such a positive vision, a vision of what we want to be rather than what we do not want to be, is very powerful, because it motivates us to go on. And it gives us somewhere to go. Somewhere we want to go. And every time we are able to take a step towards our vision, we will be able to love ourselves a bit more. Because we did something that made us better.

In the self-harm and self-hate context this is so important. Because we tend to be trapped in all that negativity. And I know I could not even have written this post last week. I think us hating ourselves… as sad as it is: It is part of who we are. And yes, we do have to fight it. But we cannot fight negativity with more negativity. We cannot fight the fact that we hate ourselves, by hating that we hate. That’s… recursive. So instead we need to find something about us, that we can love. And that is why we need a vision: because we want to be like the vision. And every time we get a little closer to who we want to be, we are allowed to be proud of ourselves. Love ourselves a bit more. Trust ourselves a bit more. Experience that we are actually not as much of a failure as we always like to make ourselves believe. And that I call taking control of our lives. Actively fueling our self-confidence instead of letting negativity destroy us.

But how can we create a vision? What inspires such a vision? There are many sources for that: People we admire. Ideologies. Quotes. And more mundane: Books, movies, series, music, pictures. I usually work with 4 categories:

Me and university
Me and my hobbies
Me and myself
Me and others

In each of these categories I determine what is important to me. I write it down and that is how my vision is born. Then I take one or two points in each category and figure out a way to actively improve that point. I make a plan. And most importantly: I try to ask myself on a regular basis: “Is this how the person in my vision would act?” or “Is this bringing me closer to the person I want to be?”. This is not entirely about accounting for the progress we make in becoming the vision, it is mostly about remembering that positive vision. Getting into the mindset of that vision. Because we can so easily forget, what we want to fight for. So reminding ourselves of it is always a good idea.

The Spiral. My Prison

I have become toxic. Not that is a surprise to me. But I just realized it. And… I do not hate myself for it. I just hate the fact that it happened. I hate to put the people close to me through this pain. And the more I say this, the more I wonder if this is even true. I keep saying it. And yet I am toxic. Spiraling down in that panic. I cannot stop it. I can’t. I do not have the strength to do that. Maybe I should prove that I mean, what I say. Should leave. Point being: I do not want to be alone, but I isolate myself (why does it feel like I have written these exact words down before?!).

I am locked up, am I not? In Fear. And Pain. And this self-imposed loneliness. I can try to get out. And sometimes it will feel like I was successful. But I cannot actually be free. I am at that point where I have stopped thinking about whether or not I created this situation for myself. Because now… it is here. It is real. It hurts and I just want it to stop. But I do not have the strength to do that. So I am just letting it happen. Hoping that one day it may end. The definition of giving in.

Just another Darkness

Yesterday I was afraid. Today I dared. I am the only one guilty of this crime against me. But I am not mad at myself. I did not push the blade down. I just let it slide over my skin. Feel the tickle of the metal. My fingers are sweaty. I guess I am still afraid. It is fascinating how such a thin piece of metal can have such a visible effect on a human even if we don’t actively try to make a big impact. I do not know how much harm I would do if I got mad at myself and cut… if I felt unheard and felt like I needed to scream louder. Cut deeper. For now: these cuts… mere scratches are enough.

So much pain comes from such a tiny thing…

I am sliding back into addiction. Why? Because I am so afraid. So afraid that I suddenly just think: I gotta leave. And I walk out and into a bathroom until I feel able to return. Or I start crying in the middle of a lecture. Sometimes I see my chest vibrating with the beating of my heart. I shiver and sometimes my hands tremble.

I know I should be fighting the fear without hurting myself. I know I should just be handling the pressure. Study harder. Trying to distract myself. I should be talking back to the voice that says I could be cutting. But all I really say is that I do not want to be alone. And then again… I want to be alone. And I isolate myself because being around people does not make the fear go away. All it does is drag those people down along with me. Just… seeing that I’m everything but okay… it hurts them. And I still cannot talk. I wish I could.

I have been in therapy for two months now. Nothing changed. Absolutely nothing. Actually… when I started therapy I was better than I am now. I thought… I might learn how to prevent me slipping… but I didn’t. I did not even get started in finding a way. I have no idea what went wrong. I thought it would help. I think I will see another therapist. I am not ready to give up yet. Just another darkness that I need to survive… Another darkness that will leave its scars on my skin.

I am so sorry. This whole thing is such a mess… and I created it. I was fine before I was so incredibly stupid. And then I created this blog to share what would help me get better… and all I am doing is explaining why I hurt myself. And… how it feels.

All that is Hell ends.

The sun is rising again. I am waking up from a nightmare. I’m getting out of the darkness. Leaving that hell behind me.

I am not going to lie. I cried. So much. Actually crying and the support of someone close to me was what helped me. And yes, the person who helped me… was not someone who actually understands what it means to self-harm. But she was able to take away my fear. Make me believe for the first time in days that everything is going to be alright. And I know this sounds so old. Sounds like a comforting lie. But now I am able to believe it again. My life does not magically become easy now. But I am not terrified of what will happen anymore.

And now… as I have left hell behind I realize that I wished for one special person to be there with me. I trusted that person. And that person was who made me feel so left alone. I am mad. My pain has turned into anger. Not just raging anger. But sad anger. Because it is not that I don’t understand. It is not that I accuse that person of what happened. I am just disappointed. So my understanding is not what I deny him now. But my trust. I do not hate. But I wish to protect myself.

I am strong. I can live through a great many things without needing a particular person. Because I have my family. And I have those friends who are doing everything in their power to help me. No matter how badly I need them. Those people will always be there. and that is why I trust them.

I once said, that trust violations are the only real way to hurt me. And I have been hurt. Deeply. But this is not the end. I can go on. I woke up from my nightmare. And I am stronger than I was before. Because I know my value. I know that I can do this. Without destroying myself. Without getting lost in a world of darkness.

The lesson is simple: Trust is important. It can lift you up. Or tear you down. There are people who deserve being trusted. Those are the people who will help you when you cannot see where to go. And then there those who you wish to trust, but if you do they will disappoint and hurt you. And for me… when I have been hurt enough, I stop trusting those people. Not because I hate them. Because the first person I have to protect is myself.

Tortured by Fear

Imagine sitting in a dark room. Alone. Without sound, but the beating of your racing heart. And it does not stop. You try to control your breath. Slow your heart down. But fear keeps rushing it. From time to time you seem to see the walls around you moving. Closing in on you. Maybe they will crush you one day. But there is nothing you can do. Nothing. No sound. No smell. No heat. No cold. Just fear. Parallelizing you.

This is how my days feel right now. I am trying to distract myself. I am trying. It does not work. I cannot speak about my fear. I am not allowed to. I cannot. It will go away. Hopefully. I keep telling myself, it will be alright. And I know I might be lying to myself.

No, I do not want to cut. I want to end it for good. A few months ago this thought scared the hell out of me. I remember thinking, that “I would never do it… but this was exactly what I thought, before I started cutting.” Now the thought does not scare me. Because I am so busy being tortured by fear. I still don’t think, I could kill myself. But… I wish I was faced with the choose of my life and someone else’s. I’d gladly choose to safe the other person.

The people closest to me. The whole world. I am not mad at anyone. I am not disappointed in anyone. These emotions I only have for myself. I still love. The beauty. The people close to me. I still wish to protect them. Who I hate is myself. All I want is to escape the fear. I know I cannot. I know I just have to wait. Be patient. And… When this all is over. I will have suffered enough from this anguish to forgive myself. I will go on with my life.

But for now… for now I am in a dark room. With walls closing in on me. With me trying to distract myself from that very room. Trembling. Shivering. And nothing I can do. Nothing.