COVID-19: Not touching your face!!

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Oh ok. That makes sense. Do you mind my asking what kind of self harm? I head bang but I have developed a technique that gets the job done without causing injury. I have also developed a technique of virtual cutting so that I get the release of cutting without actually physically cutting.

It's a long list. I'll PM you when I get a chance. I'd be curious about the virtual cutting too!

I am concerned about how disciplined I can be to avoid touching my face. I have always thought that is why I get a lot of colds. I may start wearing a face mask as a reminder. BTW, face masks do help if you use an N95 mask and fit it properly. They are saying they don't work to keep people from hording, I believe. I still have a bunch of them from an former pandemic scare. H1N1, I think.

To Isabella:
Yes, that would be good.
Virtual cutting is very easy for me and I have done it often. It feels so real that I even "feel" the blood dripping down my arms. It's all done mentally with mental visuals. I think I do it instinctively. This is one thing that I am always telling Autism parents. I am not against meds and therapies and if they help and people want to use them I am totally supportive of that. But I tell people all the time that I NEVER take meds of any kind to help me to cope with anything. Even after surgeries, I refused to take the pain meds. The reason I stay away from those kinds of things in my own personal life is that staying away from them forces me to develop my own instinctive coping mechanisms to deal with the trauma that I endure every day. This is why I can survive things like death cycles.

Without ever having the luxury of interventions and therapies or meds growing up, I had to figure out how to survive so I developed the instinctive coping mechanisms unique to me and to my ability to survive. When I explain them to my therapists, they are amazed at how sophisticated and complex they are and they cannot even comprehend how I was able to develop them on my own. But that is the key, I developed them on my own. They are the results of an incredibly strong instinctive survival mechanism.

What I have learned is that whatever trauma I go through, I must embrace it and not try to diminish the pain in any way. I had no way to diminish the pain growing up so the only alternative was to embrace it. Once you learn to embrace the pain, your survival instinct kicks in and allows you to figure out unique ways to balance and release the pain that you are experiencing. So during a virtual cutting, I am always physically laying in my bed. It always happens when I am laying in bed because my brain knows that that is a safe place. These virtual cuttings are actually involuntary responses. I don't control them. They happen whenever my brain needs to feel that release.

So I am always lying down. Then I visually see myself in my mind's eye on the bathroom floor with the razor blades. It's like I am watching myself from above but the whole time I am lying safely on my bed throughout the whole experience. I am actually unable to get up because my brain has redirected my volition so that I do not take physical action. But I see everything as if I were watching someone else. I see the blood all over the bathroom and I feel it on my arm and I feel the emotional release. It is an incredibly fantastic way to have that release because I experience it as if it were physically real and I am perfectly safe, I have no scars, and I never have to clean up the bathroom! I have only had it happen a few times because it takes a lot for me to get to that point. But I love that I can have that release in a safe way.

If you get a lot of colds, also consider your ears. Many colds come into the body through the ear. If I feel a cold coming, as soon as I feel the very first symptoms, I put hydrogen peroxide down my ears and wait until it stops sizzling before I take it out. If a cold virus is coming in through the ears, if you kill the virus before it reaches the inner ear, you will stop the cold. But you have to act fast at the very first sign of it. I also take a qtip and swab some hydrogen peroxide into my nostrils. You can also swish it in your mouth and gargle it but be very careful because you must not swallow it.

Also do lots of lemon water every day if you can. Use fresh organic lemons if you can afford them. I also like to add a dash of cayenne pepper and apple cider vinegar with the mother. You can also do raw wild flower honey with it. It's super delicious. But all that will help you.

I sure chose a bad time to develop a stim that involves putting the end of my thumbnail in my mouth

Actually, I'm not really trying not to touch my face any more than usual because it's really hard, I'm not in a high-risk group, and I'm pretty much socially isolated already (except for my family, none of whom fall into a high-risk group). So if I get it, I will most likely be perfectly fine and I won't be going around spreading it to people who won't.

Last edited by dragonsanddemons on 13 Mar 2020, 4:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Wear a hood and scratch through the hood

In some jobs you can't wear hoods, I know

But you are not always at work

Funny!

I wonder if one could get away with wearing one of those bank robber ski mask things in order to scratch one's face all day!

The doctor told me Eczema or Contact Dermatitis

Flare ups itchy and rapidly getting worse

Frequency intensity duration s**t

Trying to refrain from scratching takes a lot of energy and time. Even when successful (not often), it takes so much energy that I can't do anything else except try to not scratch

That might be allergy based. You might be able to correct it with the right foods.

Just avoid eyes, mouth, and nose. Virus enter through mucus membranes.

is that safe?

Thus far, flare up triggers:
Rain
Polyester
Carpet
Stress
Rolando
Dojo
Morning bowel movement in house
Sweat

With the exception of kit Kat and frozen banana in the morning, it doesn't seem to matter much, what I eat. (For the purpose of flare ups. For the purpose of energy it matters). (On the other hand it could be a delayed allergic reaction but it is hard to imagine.)

In any event, food stamps are only about four or seven bucks a day and Fodmaps or other expensive diets don't seem worth the energy. Without extreme measures, like soup kitchen, coupons, gardening, dumpster, cooking, free samples, Fodmaps is not practical financially.

Yes some people make it happen but it takes too much energy and the result is not guaranteed

It's hard not to touch my face because I have a blocked tear duct and my eye constantly leaks tears, especially when the outside air is dry. If tissues aren't available, then I touch my eye with my shirt.

But how will I manfully stroke my beard?