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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 4 of 4. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Pandabear on June 1, 2004, at 0:29:45
What do therapists do to help people that self injure....???
Posted by babbgal on June 1, 2004, at 2:05:10
In reply to One more question..., posted by Pandabear on June 1, 2004, at 0:29:45
Pandabear...
I would think that therapists' reactions to self-injury vary with therapist, approach, etc.
All I can report with authority is what my therapist does. We have an agreement that I will report via phone call to him whenever I self-injure. It's up to me whether I simply make the report, or request a call back from him. He has told me numerous times that he does not issue ultimatums -- like, "Stop this behavior or else." When we talk about SI in session, we go at my pace...sometimes I don't want to talk about it, at other times I feel OK to talk. I am finding that as I work harder in therapy, my incidents of SI are rarer. It is tough and difficult to talk about...but my T. has made it safe and I trust him.
Hope this helps...please post again if there's anything else you want to know.
{{pandabear}}
Posted by cubic_me on June 1, 2004, at 6:48:39
In reply to One more question..., posted by Pandabear on June 1, 2004, at 0:29:45
My therapist sometimes asks me if I have cut, and I tell her, and we talk about it for a bit, but other than that she doesn't really do much. For me cutting is just something that I do sometimes to get by, I do it as safely as I can, and quite often I use it as a way to stay alive, so she doesn't concentrate on it too much.
I've always thought that stopping SI will be a by-product of getting better and finding better ways to cope.
Posted by pegasus on June 1, 2004, at 13:01:54
In reply to One more question..., posted by Pandabear on June 1, 2004, at 0:29:45
My T invited me to call whenever I was so wound up that I started thinking about injuring myself. I did a couple of times, and he generally called right back, and tried to help me figure out something else that I could do. I never found it particularly helpful, though. Eventualy I hit on my own solution of writing to myself when I got into that state, and that helped a lot. Especially when I started thinking that I might give my writing to my T to read. So, then it was an actual form of communication. Often it's when I can't communicate that I get wound up and want to hurt myself.
Early on he also had me start a journal of my SI behavior. So I'd record when, what I did, what I was thinking etc. I think, though, that that was a bad idea, as it encouraged me to injure more, so that I'd have more in my journal. I kind of liked having a thick external record of my internal pain; it made it feel more real somehow. Also, I always thought that I'd eventually share the journal with him, which is why I kept recording entries. When I realized that he wasn't going to do anything with the journal in therapy, I stopped keeping the journal.
pegasus
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