Self harm honesty.

I'm trying to evaluate shouting at Service User yesterday, telling him in no uncertain terms that he is damaging himself further. Conventional theory states that it could make him hate himself more because it is a horrible experience to be shouted at for doing something you can't help. Or is it positive, demonstrating my belief that he can help himself, and that he should help himself, because he is precious and worth everything both to himself, and to us?

I don't know.

I think I'd have wanted my parents to get angry with me if I was hurting myself habitually, and mindlessly. Being fierce demonstrates that what is happening is serious, I think that I'm showing that I have confidence and trust in the person who is self harming, and I know that he is strong enough to cope with the anger his actions provoke.

Basically that when people are angry the sky doesn't fall down and the sun go out!

I'm not convinced though, everyone says stay calm..
I can't justify my anger.
I don't know any theory that justifies it!
But I do know why remaining calm and rational when I'm watching self harming behavior, doesn't seem right to me.

When I was in my twenties, my dad died of alcohol, as a brain-damaged alcoholic.
For the decade it took for him to damage himself sufficiently...
We remained calm and carried on..
As he drank.

In retrospect I don't think that we should have tried not to notice, and in effect, lied...
Being calm and appearing to be OK was a lie.
After all, I didn't feel calm, I didn't feel that I could carry on watching him self harm.

I simply didn't know what to do.

As he sat in the car swigging brandy from the bottle...

I told him on one sad, rainy and cold afternoon as he gave me a lift home from work -  that he didn't need to stay with us, that he should leave us, find a better life somewhere, that I wanted him to be happy...I assumed that he drank because being married to my mom must have been awful...I assumed he was sacrificing himself by staying, and using drink to enable this, for our benefit.

The back-up I would have wanted, was impossible, just a fantasy.
It would have meant my sister (who was probably only 12!) and my mom both making it clear that his self sacrifice is noble and awful, but that it cannot help anyone at all.

When his drinking got worse I went to see his GP to say, surely to goodness there must be something you can offer a person who wont stop drinking? And of course the GP said 'he has to want to change'...and I thought, how is that right...?

Back-up would have been if the doctor had said, 'you are right, I will frighten the bejesus out of him by telling him what will happen, and if he doesn't stop drinking he will be sectioned!'

What if I'd sobbed when ever he drank, what if I'd reacted as I felt?
I'll never know.
But the older I get the more I believe that to act with integrity demands more courage than I ever imagined, to dare trust in my heart.

Alcohol was the ticket my dad bartered his life for, as a way out of the pain he felt after losing his job and the death of his mother, and that ticket -alcohol - took him 'away from himself' helped him to have fun, to be sociable...He told us that his death would arrive with anesthesia and passing out into an alcoholic oblivion...nice idea. Would it have changed anything if my dad had seen where the ticket was taking him? His movement impaired because of the nerve damage, oesophageal varices leading to choking on his own blood while dying with a mind full of hallucinations because of brain damage.

If he had known the destination, I have no doubt that after a month of abstinence he would have pushed the knowledge way out of his mind because the reward of drinking was too great...after all, he had managed to stop drinking for a few months when he was told for the first time about his liver damage..

...and then he just forgot and continued.

So I may as well have screamed and shouted out my rage and pain when witnessing him deceive, lie and cheat. 

Why are we supposed to be calm?
There is I believe, no benefit what so ever in being calm.

In fact I am angry that 'calm' could ever be is seen as an appropriate reaction when someone is self harming.

This false calm benefits who?
And yet this false calm is requested by convention even as the funeral car and procession leave the home of the deceased and onward into the fire and is scattered to the four winds alongside the ashes.

Is this so we can, as a society maximize anxiety and denial?
And if alcohol was a negative feed...
Negative feed one way or the other is normal.
I think it is very normal, though I find it unbelievable when I see it.
Whenever people justify suffering I guess.
Diminishing the importance of their own past trauma..
Saying that they are OK when they are not..

My husband's mom who had severe arthritis for over thirty years (so very used to ignoring pain) continued to walk on a dislocated ankle. When her ankle literally slipped over she continued to walk as a sore developed, as the skin wore away and even after bone began to show through the skin...but she kept on walking...saying that it would stiffen up if she didn't keep walking.

Getting a hit of something...
From 'conquering pain'...
To continue, really she was self deluding and lying.
To herself and to us.
It must have hurt, to the eye - even if she couldn't feel it -  it was obviously very wrong.


It makes zero sense.
Emergency settings switched on all the time, as if she were Joe Simpson having to crawl down a mountain because the alternative was death...
She wasn't in that situation so?
Her behavior only makes sense when it is looked at as the behavior of an addict.
Covered in a shell of 'I'm being good'.

Endorphin morphine..

What negative feed does Service User's aunt get just sitting in bed in a constant hyper-vigilance?
Actually I don't know what state she is really in.
She certainly isn't showing fear

What makes a person just sit?

I believe anxiety is the crucial issue. The research families all have a low tolerance for anxiety. They operate on a “peace at any price” principle. They quickly compromise important life principles to relieve anxiety for this moment. Of course, this “peace at any price” policy immediately causes greater anxiety for tomorrow, but they continue the compromising attitudes to relieve the anxiety of the moment.
[Bowen, Murray; Bowen, Murray. Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (p. 63). Jason Aronson, Inc.. Kindle Edition. ]

Well, having seen full psychotic rage, I have a lot of sympathy for those families and I'm not sure if Bowen realized quite what he was expecting of them.

Or perhaps he is right?
'Peace at any cost' fits Service User's Granddad who acts as if anger is sadness, or a threat, but also exciting...Nevertheless he feels uneasy when his daughter goes on about demons and shouts, and generally he appears to prefer her to be calm and quiet and invisible.

Is Bowen saying that if he could just maintain a sense of humor his daughter would 'get over it'?

Murray Bowen would have said I think, that she went 'off her legs' (I don't imagine Murray Bowen saying off her legs) because her mom (of the broken ankle) had her leg amputated and then had to stay in bed (no there are hoists and ways to get help...) and so died of septicemia from bed-sores (which she didn't complain of...).

He would say that Service User's aunt was so caught up in a strange empathy-gone-wrong with her mom, so undifferentiated, that she has no option except to suffer the same fate.

So why is Service User following exactly the same path as his aunt?
Still doesn't make sense!

Back to the subject of fake calm...
How did my staying calm help my Mother-In-Law, I mean if I'd had to have been manhandled out of the house, swearing and yelling that this is insane, that would have been truthful; more appropriate than smiling and being kind, because actually I now believe that I was caught up in something I have no name for, and colluding in a devastatingly horrific insanity.

Back to my question:
Does being shouted at cause a rush of opiates in the same way as self harming does?
I wish I could answer...
I want to know.
--
Last point.
I'm not convinced showing anger is right. I just know thinking about my other experiences of seeing self harm, that I don't see any good in remaining calm in the face of outrageous and lethal self deception and lies...so my choice in taking the opposite path seems worth a go!