today is Self-Injury Awareness Day

Glad to hear it, asala.
I've never experienced it, but have gone through it with friends, and I can tell it's not an easy thing to overcome.

i tried it once. i dont like pain, so that brought my little fit to an abrupt end.

"It makes me feel relaxed and in charge of myself. The physical pain of hurting myself helps override emotional pain. Most of the time I do not realize I'm hurting myself until after I'm done."
"It is a release. From everything. If my day sucks or I think I screwed something up - it can make it OK and I can stop beating myself up in the head about whatever I thought I did that was so terrible. Or, if I'm having a good day, I don't quite know what to do with that either. I guess it's how I feel things."

Quotes from
self-injury.net

It hurts so much in my head. No matter what I say, how I say it, who I say it to ... the pain is indescribable. It's a pain that makes no sense. It's something that asprin doesn't cure. I don't understand it, and I don't know how to stop it.
The only time I can understand it is when I can equate it with physical pain. Physical pain ... that's *real*, that's tangible. That makes sense.
That makes the faceless emotional pain fade to the background and cease being so important.

Quote from me, about 5 years ago.

Cutting is more common than most people think. It's a very real condition, and it is treatable.
Thanks to MC for starting this thread, and for everyone else for sharing their stories.

-B.

you're welcome, Banshee I'm so glad this thread didn't turn into another mental illness flame war. thank you to all that shared your stories...you find you're not alone in even the most unlikely places.

I don't think anyone's mentioned power as a reason to cut. I thought of cutting as a powerful act; it scared people when they found out, it scarred me like a battle survivor (goodbye short sleeves, though ), and I feared no pain. if someone hurt me, I could replace the pain they caused me with pain I caused myself. actually, it's just another manifestation of the control thing, I guess. it's tough as hell to find healthier coping mechanisms, though.
I also felt like the only person that ever cut. if nothing else, I hope the awareness day lets a few people know they aren't alone. I recently found out that two of my close friends from high school were also cutting/burning, and none of us knew what the others were doing until we talked about it about 8 years after the fact.

Cutting is indeed a lot more common than people think. I've know at least seven cutters besides myself in real life, at least a dozen more on the net. It's hard to get past. It's almost an addition. There's a rush - a big one - that comes from cutting. I'm glad I got out before things got out of control. It becomes natural. At one point, I called it beautiful. I had delusions of scar tissue running along my fingers up the the nails, elaborate patterns up and down my arms...it was sick. I'm glad most of my cutting was superficial.

The problem is that cutting has a way of worsening itself quickly. Cuts become deeper and longer. People stop noticing until its too late. I've had two friends almost bleed out from accidentally cutting too deep. It's usually hard to spot, too - thighs, shoulders, chest, and stomach are fairly common places to find scars. However, some people don't hide it. I have about a half-dozen small scars on my hands from my experiences. I've seen people with just laticeworks of scars going up their arms.

This isn't an easy issue to cope with- trust me, I got shoved into dealing with cutters by grade 8, been trying to help them since, despite having taken it up myself. It's hard. If anyone needs help, jsut drop em a u2u. I'm always willign to talk.

DE

How did this one pass me by???

Cutters don't 'get off' on the cutting! That is just an ignorant statement.

The act of cutting is actually the act of transference. It transfers deep emotional pain that can not be resolved into physical pain that, even if for a short time, is something that can be tangible and physically treated with bandages (because you can't just slap a band-aid over your soul). It is a momentary solution for an ongoing problem.

Most cutters have very low self opinions of themselves for one reason or another. Cutting also adds as self-punishment because the cutter believes that they are a bad person.

Tattoos, piercing, S&M activities, etc have nothing to do with the reason that a cutter does it. Those people enjoy physical harm because it gives pain where as cutters do it to relieve pain.

For anyone that has experienced extream mental anguish in their lifes, you know that no physical pain could ever compare.

People that get off from the pain are masochists and not cutters. They are two completely different things!

I'm a former funeral directing student, and i'm gonna share a story that still makes my tough ass cry all the time:

I got a page at about 2 a.m one morning, so i called the funeral home i was working for at the time, and was told of the call they had received, and what i needed to do.

the call was for a 19 year old male who had commited suicide.

that alone hit me hard, because it was someone my age, whos life was cut so short.

from what i gathered, the boy was a cutter, his parents tried to seek help, and the boy would see a therapist off and on, but would have bouts where he wouldn't, and would go off his meds. well, the parents didn't know that, they fought about grades, or something trivial, and it turned out to be the icing on the cake for the young man, who cut himself- from my count, at least- 98 times before he bled to death.

i felt a strong connection with the family, especially the boy's 20 year old sister. once the funeral was over, and the funeral home stopped following up with them, i continued to call once or twice a week to offer my support, and make sure they were holding up. the parents brought up the fact that the sister was taking the death very hard, and asked if she could meet with me- they were very afraid if she saw a therapist, that she would go through what her brother did, but maybe by talking to someone close to her age it would help.

I took her to lunch one day, very casual- the first time i had ever met anyone that i had performed a service for outside of work, and without wearing a suit, too- and noticed right away what she was wearing- long sleeves, and all black- a 360 from the beautiful short sleeved dresses she wore when i had seen her at the funeral home. we made small talk for a while, then we started to talk about her brother- she got really emotional, and then i noticed her hand- there was fresh blood in it.

I immediately asked what had happened- thinking she had cut herself- but she just ignored the questin. i kept on it though, and she admitted that she was a cutter. we had a long discussion about why she did it, and i explained the usual- that there were other ways to deal with the pain, etc- but she said that she felt uncomfortable with the conventional routes.

i understood, as it isn't easy for everyone to go to therapy or whatnot.

we talked for well over two hours about everything, and she said she felt much better after talking to me, saying she felt she related better to me than to a therapist. we made a pact that i would be available any time, any day- especially holidays, which were the hardest for her- to talk if she needed to.

i still get calls in the middle of the night, when she sees something on tv, or something else will remind her of her brother, and she feels like cutting, but then she remembers that she can talk it out.


it really broke my heart seeing the pain she inflicted on herself, but what got to me even more was the fact that her parents couldn't understand why she did it- they thought it was rebellion, not a serious illness.

she does speak to a therapist regularly now, along with calling me once a week or so, and hasn't cut herself in over a year.

so it just goes to show that if everyone is educated a little- as i was, only from psychology class at school- it can help someone a lot.

a cutter, a bolemic an anorexic a sex addict and an alcoholic...all before the age of 18

One day she cut too deep and that cured her..

She saw the light after this incident, and proved to herself that this was-- in her situation --a way to get attention and not attempted suicide.

The doctor that treated her demanded a reason for her cutting before he would treat her. This scared the hell out of her, fearing she would bleed to death in the meantime.

When she went home, her mother was a mess and so was her room for that matter. There was blood everywhere.

She sought counseling and realized that her issues were a symptom, not addictions--Just ways to distract her from problems, and a call for help that went unnoticed for some time.
Lucky for her, finally the outcome of this terrifying experience was the help she desperately needed all along.


[Edited on 12-4-2004 by xxKrisxx]