Cutting and other stress relief — thoughts from the past

Below is a draft post from 2009 that I didn't realize I had saved as a draft. It was three months after moving to Odessa, Texas, to stay employed as something more than a C-store clerk in the middle of the Great Recession.

Free-flating (sic) anxiety still running in my head.

Did some fairly serious "picking" this afternoon.

(I never did "cutting," but, picking at my fingernails down to the quick, then, picking at the skin until it bleeds, or a hangnail bleeds? Yes.)

That's it.

But, I wanted to think about that more.

The fingernail deep picking I had identified as cutting by that time already. Do I have other such behaviors today, though?

Free-floating anxiety I still have, though less than 10 years ago for sure, and I think less than five years ago. Continuing sober life, continuing acceptance of the dailyness of life and continued aging, to be honest, are probably all factors.

I hurt my thumb

I HURT MY THUMB

For perhaps the first time today,

Something usually semi-conscious

Became fully conscious.

Something usually a free-floating reaction

Was done in response to a specific situation.

I hurt my thumb today.

No, not in the sense of banging a knuckle,

Or something like that.

Rather, this was totally self-inflicted.

I pick at myself.

Call it a milder version of “cutting.”

I bite my fingernails the quick,

And occasionally below.

And when I go that far

(I would say “too far,” but it obviously isn’t,

To at least a part of “me,”

Because “I” keep doing it)

I hurt. And I bleed.

If it’s not biting nails that deeply

It’s picking at the skin around those nails,

Eventually, with the same result.

Why?

Is it a genetic predisposition to anxiety?

Or various abuses of childhood?

Obviously, it’s a mix of both,

And, even on a case-by-case basis,

Who knows which predominates, and when?

I don’t, because I usually

Not fully conscious of this.

Today, at least as to the moment, though,

I was.

I was being yelled at by my boss

For something that was a complex mix

Of who was wrong, or not, and why,

And what background there was.

And I picked.

And then I hurt, and bled,

Even more than normal picking.

No, it didn’t feel “good.”

But, it “felt.”

I “felt.”

I felt the pain of suppressed anger,

Of feeling that whatever I might say

Would only make things worse,

That because of the background there was

Of him, his boss, of me,

Of their perceptions of me,

Of my perceptions of them,

And of my knowledge

Of my coworkers’ perception of them,

That whatever I might say,

Would only make things worse.

He would get angrier yet,

Making me more afraid, more on edge,

More anxious,

More suppressed-angry.

And, given the situation, the relationships,

And the power dynamics,

That, if not even that,

That what I might say

Wouldn’t change things anyway.

So, I picked.

A small psychological victory, perhaps,

To be fully conscious, fully in the moment,

Of why I was doing it, when I was.

And, another small victory, perhaps,

To see that I had done it worse than usual,

And to make me wonder

If I really, really, feel that way.

– Feb 28, 2012

'Picking' as 'cutting lite'

I've never been a "cutter," but I have been a "picker" in the past. Picking at scabs. Picking at fingernails, or biting, until I strip them down into the quick and they start bleeding.

I've gotten kind of bad at it since my recent move. I have a spot on top of my balded pate that got a bit sunburned this summer, and I've been picking at it a lot. I want help!

A stressful last couple of days

Free-flating anxiety still running in my head.

Did some fairly serious "picking" this afternoon.

(I never did "cutting," but, picking at my fingernails down to the quick, then, picking at the skin until it bleeds, or a hangnail bleeds? Yes.)

Not quite "cutting," but ...

Skin pulling, excessive fingernail biting, etc., ain't much better. Especially not after a long weekend of too much wrongly used time online, plus an apartment A/C that isn't working very well right now ... in SE Texas.

Cutting

I never really “cut” myself, except for one fairly minimal suicide attempt.

However, I often did equivalent actions to myself.

They included:

• Picking at partially-healed scabs until they bled, or even pulling them all the way off. (One brother, both abuser and abused, did the same.)
• Biting and picking at my fingernails until I peeled them back below the “quick” line, which is pretty painful, as well as producing a certain amount of blood.
• Pinching skin almost hard enough to produce blood blisters.