"Cutting" or Deliberate Self-Harm

Why do People do this?

I suppose that from an outsider's view, the likely response might be to say, "Oh they are just doing it for attention."  Actually this is usually the furthest scenario from the truth.  Most people who engage in self harm try to hide their actions from others.  Quite often the cutter will choose areas on the body hidden from view by clothing.  I know one woman who would cut her upper thigh or behind the knee.  There are many people who self injure who keep it a secret.  There can be a feeling of deep shame and guilt involved. 

There are times when it is used as an act to cry out for help. 

When I was a teen and young adult, I was living in a very traumatic home situation.  My mother was raising me by herself and she had a severe mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia.  I am not sure when I began to cut myself but it was definitely in my early teen years.  I would do it in response to stress, usually brought on by my mother's wild and sometimes violent mood swings.  In a chaotic world where I could not control much of anything, the cutting gave me a means of power and control. 

It was my way of stopping the world.  When I felt that physical pain, it brought everything else to a screeching halt.  The world was reduced to those thin red lines.  It was a release for everything inside of me, the perfect symbol for my emotional pain.  When I was numb, it was a way for me to feel something and to know I still existed.  And when I didn't want to feel the magnitude of my anger or despair, it was a way to project those feelings outward into this small but controlled act. 

I didn't wish to kill myself.  I simply wanted the emotional pain and trauma to stop.  And I didn't know how to ask for help.  I didn't know how to cope with what was going on in my world, so cutting was a secret refuge.  I did not truly want to do it.  But it was all I knew how to do.  It became a ritual behavior that I engaged in when I was feeling great stress.

Over time I let my secret out.  I tested the waters to see if someone might help.  I remember I had this poetry class in college.  I wrote some rather dark poems about cutting and my elderly teacher was both disturbed and frightened by my writings.  She even told me not to come back for the subsequent poetry session.  Sometimes you take the risk of exposure and it doesn't work out.

Later, when I sought therapy, I did share my secret with my therapist and this was ultimately my salvation and road to recovery.  The trick here is to tell your secret but to someone you can trust and who will help you.

Five Primary Reasons People Self-Injure:

• The physical pain is used as a distraction from great emotional pain.
  
  
• It is a way to feel something when you are feeling emotionally numb.
  
  
• There is a psychological release one feels which may come from the endorphins released due to physical injury.  These endorphins are natural pain killers and are a way to reduce stress.
  
  
• Even though it is usually done in secret, it may be a way to communicate that you need help.
  
  
• It is a way to deal with great anger by directing it at oneself.