Why in the world do people cut???

[Brittney2008]

I thought I would never cut thought is was for stupid emo kids. But then I started and kinda was addicted, If I was having a bad day It made me feel better to know I could go home and do it. I havent cut lately but I know I will start again sooner or later. I cut because It makes me feel better temporarely

[prizmpyxis]

the above is actually a really well written piece from someone who has both the perspective of someone with the same problem, as well as the perspective of someone who doesn't (currently) do it, and I'd say that's pretty inspiring, and a good view for anyone to understand both why people do it and why you should stop

 

Thank you so much, I really appreciate that.

[Cletharin]

A few years ago, I didn't understand why people cut either.

 

But not too long ago, an incident happened, that took me so hard emotionally I could barely stand it.

 

I cried for days, and finally, I was tired of my heart being in pain. Some part of my mind told me that if it hurt much longer, I was going to go crazy, so I had to do something about it..

 

So I cut my arm. The physical pain made me forget about the emotional pain for a while, and it didn't hurt as much. I guess I would've rather have had physical wounds than emotional ones.

[Ttom Red]

It almost seems to me that if we were to cut in the moment of something drastically devastating, like whatever it was that was bothering you, it would be OK because you'd cut once to calm down and fix that problem and be done for then. But once you start it during a bad time of your life, the rest of your life is gunna rely on this. Like some people crave a cigarette, we crave our sharps. Except instead of cigarettes releasing stress, it's releasing a step worse than stress, it's almost literal emotional pain

I cried for days, and finally, I was tired of my heart being in pain

[Sxc_Gobby_Lil_Gal]

i hadnt cut for a while, then did, it kinda relseses all my anger and makes me feel a bit better for the time! but then i do regret it afterwards

[katieanne]

i like to see myself bleed. it keeps me intact with reality. i get really out of touch when i get emotional. idk. it also makes me feel like all my bad feelings are flowing out of me too. i get so stressed out and mad and sad and everything, i just feel like i can't handle my emotions. i feel like i can't control anything. i start losing myself and i feel like i'm dreaming. then my whole body will shake and tremble. i can't hold my emotions in but i can't let them out. soo idk. cutting is what helps me. it calms me down.

 

idk, it's a feeling you can't describe.

[confuzedgirl]

i started cutting myself after my parents divorce...b/c i wanted attention i wanted my parents to notice i needed help. to notice i was in pain...then...when i didnt get any attention...i found myself doing it...but hiding it...i would cut just because when i did it i could finally concentrate on anything but my problems...all i was concentrating on was that blade...and where it would go next...i dont know. it just felt like any physical pain was better than my emotional pain i had to go through. I dont do it anymore...ive realized that i needed to find other ways to express my self...and that i was too strong to do something so weak. but i have to admit. it was difficult to stop...but its true...if youve never done it...you will never truly understand..

[aNnAeLiZaBeTh]

if you have never had a true desire to cut, then my guess is that you will never really understand it. but i'll explain it to you like my doctor explained it to me when i started--

 

cutting IMMEDIATELY releases endorphins (as their purpose is to reduce the feeling of pain in the body) and they physically give a person a feeling of calmness that was not there before. basically, people cut (whether they know it or not) for the endorphins release into the body. it is a very very very mild form of a natural high that takes away pain from the body and relaxes/eases the mind.

 

and just as a piece of advice, don't EVER tell someone (whether you really think it or not) that they're cutting for attention. some people do cut for attention, but those with a true disorder do not. just take my word for it. i only cut in places that no one can see so that i don't get asked about it. well i don't cut anymore, but when i used to cut, i made sure that no one knew about it except my doctor. so please, with all do respect, keep your "you do it for attention" theories to yourself unless you have actual knowledge on the subject (which i hope i have taken a part in enlightening you on the matter).

[Pelagic]

You will never know unless you feel the urge to. It's not for attention, regardless on what you think. It's a coping meathod, not the healthiest, but it helps temporarily.

[Pasha_000]

I have to agree with all reasons as previously stated in this thread, For me I can not cut anymore as it would be quickly noticed by friends, family and colleagues.

 

When I have cut previously it seems to give me some sort of satisfaction, again trying to add somethin new and not to echo too much of whats been said (although ^^^ pretty much sums it all up) Its a release, a release of some of the emotions that otherwise are stuck malignat;ey festering inside of you.

 

Its like a pan that boils over. Cutting is not the only form of self harm. Nipping, burnin, slapping, punching, scratching... and many other forms i am sure. Its to me: that the pain inside is hurting me... so I hurt myself... its a different type of pain that numbs you for a while... satisfaction.

 

Hope this is in some ways imformative to you. And thanks to alll those who ave gone to more effort to explain this properly.

[worldfallsup]

when seeing a psychologist I learned that for me it was a learned outlet for my anger...

 

I never dealt well with anger, either my own or someone being angry at me. Apperantly, this comes from my father, who had a terribly bad temper. He never beat me but he beat my brother, either for misbehaving at school or usually after my brother and I would argue or he would bother me I would tell my mom (who would tell my dad) or my dad and this resulted in my brother getting beaten at times, which resulted in my guilt.

 

As I grew up I associated anger with pain and then guilt.

 

thereforeeee when I was angry, or someone was angry with me, pain in the form of cutting emerged and then the guilt of cutting myself set in.

 

It seems like a weird learned mechanism but now that I know it my cutting subdued. It was never a matter of me wanting to die which some people didnt understand. If anything it was the way I managed to keep living despite emotions I was not comfortable with.

[Beginningandend]

Well the reasons have been put up at this point, so I will just share my experience with it.

 

I didn't express emotion well when I was younger(still have difficulty doing it, but far better than what I was), and like everyone else I eventual came to a point where there was more stress in my life than I could really handle.

 

Rather than find someone to talk to, I tried to find another outlet. I was having a hard time finding anything that helped, and one night I cut myself by accident making myself something to eat. One thought came into my mind..........

 

That felt good.

 

I kept doing it when I was tired of feeling how I was feeling, and this was a good escape. I was replacing emotional pain with physical pain. It got out of control(I have a large scar on my right hand as a reminder), a family and friends started to take notice. With their help I recovered, but the desire to do it sometimes I admit is still there.

 

In fact I relapsed last month. I made a previous post on the forums about my wife leaving me. At one point I couldn't stand dealing with those flood of emotions, and cut up my legs for about 20 minutes. I have gotten lots of help since(this website included) and havent done it since.

 

Like I said though, the thought of doing it still goes through my head sometimes.

[eminemisbeast]

look if you dont know body that cuts then dont ask why, but heres an awnser it makes you know that your in control of at lest one thing in you life and people who cut,like me, dont know how to talk to people bout it because they where told never to cry to get out emotions or tell people about there prombles cuz no one cares, its a way of letting out emotal pain,and you probly do know someone who cut they just dont know how to tell anybody cuz there afraid that people will make fun of them or theyll be asked why every second and if youve never cut you wont cut ,never try it cuz its not wroth it.

[Chrissie18]

I cut because I can't talk to anybody about my problems. Councillors don't work with me... I just get frustrated with them. Have hardly any family to talk to and the ones I do talk to I either don't want to upset or are so drunk most of the time that they don't give a * * * * .

The husband is usually the reason for being upset in the first place and refuses to talk about anything.

So, I cut because it lets it all out.

[stephiegd]

People cut for so many reasons. Personally I cut because my parents have split up, many failed relationships and friendships and most of all because I dont have faith in myself at all and currently have no self esteem.

I find it okay to cut.

[SunnyHours]

I actually never cut myself but I have resorted to other means to provoke pain so that in turn I would concentrate on that pain instead

My mother is very impulsive so when there was a problem or a fight she'd harass me for hours. I couldn't escape from the aggression so I resorted to different methods to deal with it...

For your pleasure here's a list

 

Stabbing myself in the arm with a knife

Breaking my ribs with a baseball bat

Breaking my knuckles by hitting something hard

Breaking my hand (metacarpal) with a heavy object

Stabbing my hand with something pointy (still have a pencil lead in my hand)

 

I'm writing about it cuz now I'm a happy person now but it was a tough time...

Things actually get better (even though I'm a ton of debt now

[sunset sun rise lover]

well i normallie do it in result of a break up with my girlfriend to realive my pain it makes me focus on that pain instead of my heart being shatterd

[Monki]

I started cutting when I was 12. I think it was a learned behavior from a friend of my brother's - he's the only source I can think of where I would ever have gotten the idea. I first did it with copper wire I picked up when my dad was re-wiring the basement and only gave myself surface scratches. As a kid I'd always been bullied and teased, not only in school but from cousins, my brother and his friends, and growing up I'd always lived in my brother's shadow, I'd always felt hated and unappreciated, and I grew up with the notion that anything I said was valueless and stupid. While I know every kid gets bullied and that it's not that big a deal, I did grow up feeling like I deserved to be bullied and that no one would care about me if I spoke up. I grew up feeling worthless and hated.

 

My mom noticed my first few scratches and told me to talk to her about my problems - something I felt I couldn't do because I couldn't put my feelings into words and was more ashamed of those feelings than anything. The fact that I felt bad was embarrassing, so I punished myself for it. A friend noticed and teased me about it, which only added to my shame. I stopped for a couple of years and started again when I started grade 9 in a new city. I didn't know anyone, took a long time to start socializing, and self-harm became my only means of dealing with rejection and anxiety. I became depressed and often thought about suicide. During the summer before grade 11 I came to terms with my sexuality, came out at school, and made friends with a lot of other gay and gay-friendly people. It was also that year that I started drinking and doing drugs. I stopped cutting though! lol. The fact that I was a lesbian and drank, skipped class, and got high became the only means for me to identify with others. I stopped cutting because for a while I felt like I belonged somewhere, until I started dating someone who got me out of that lifestyle and all of those 'friends' lost interest in me. After that girl I dated another. Only a few months after we started dating my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer. I tried to leave her but she insisted on staying with me and I became dependent on her to avoid thinking about losing my mother. It was when this girl started becoming detached and started sending mixed messages about loving and hating me, that I started cutting again. My mom died Christmas Eve 2009 and the girl I was dating left me, came back to me, started seeing someone else while with me, and then finally dropped all contact with me. It was then that I fell back into SI and started thinking about suicide again. I dropped out of college and that December I went through a serious identity crisis where I cut off my hair, changed my name, moved to a new city and dropped contact with pretty much everyone I was relatively close to. I had been fine for about a year until everything came rushing back. This past December I cut myself deep, twice, during a crisis in which I seriously contemplated suicide. I had two bleeding cuts and held the razor over my wrist for an hour, hyperventilating and trying to convince myself to cut through the thin skin and bleed out. I had spent several days before that thinking of ways to off myself. I guess you can either say I chickened out, or grew the balls to live another day. I've since reestablished my actual identity, am working on changing my name back, returning home and trying to set my life back on track.

 

Either way, the past ten years or so have been confusing, traumatic, frustrating. For me it's all normal. I've never really had a firm grasp on reality, I've never been completely stable, and self-mutilation has always been a means of dealing with this. I've never had words to explain it to anyone until now, when I'm able to look back at it all in hindsight. I know it seems like people who cut are doing it for attention and that it makes no sense at all to want to feel pain. But you literally cannot understand it unless you do it yourself. And to be honest, every person who does harm themselves has different ways, different reasons, different feelings, different thought processes, different explanations. Everything I just said was y own experience and I explained it so that I could draw the point that my reason was because I was never able to talk about it - I never had words to explain it, and I was embarrassed about it. Those feelings may not be the same for everyone who does it. Hell, in grade 9 when I first started cutting deep, it became an addiction. I loved the feeling, I did it to feel good. I actually liked cutting myself. In the past couple of years I've only done it when I was at breaking point, when I was sobbing, hyperventilating, wanting to die.

 

Anyway. That's my story.

 

TL;DR: People do it for their own reasons and attention is hardly, if ever, the motivation for it.

[No One]

Sometimes, it just lets me know that I live.

[Wistful]

Its different for everyone, I guess. When I was about 12 I used to do it everyday, so much that there was barely any normal-looking skin on my arms and legs. I saw counselors but they either didn't make me feel like my problems mattered, or made me uncomfortable by getting too personal too fast, so I stopped trying to get help. I've helped myself, and now I only do it every month or so when I get overwhelmed.

For me and a lot of people who injure themselves, its a very old habit that's hard to break - and its easier to focus on physical pain than emotional pain.

I'm proud of how little I hurt myself now...maybe one day I'll be able to stop all-together.

[tnmom66]

I have had the urge and actually have cut/scratched/stabbed to just somehow try to give my emotional pain some physical release. I have also had suicidal thoughts. I have only done this when in acute pain while in abusive relationships. I have no "self loathing" but it is just kind of a desperate attempt to stop the pain. It doesn't make sense. I also think it is a way to show other people how distressed I am. I can only take so much. I know I would be horrified to see that I was mistreating someone so as to cause them so much pain they were considering murder or suicide to escape. Some people don't care, or just enjoy having that kind of power over weaker people.

[drmcsugar]

I had been cutting myself since I was 11. It wasn't just a crass decision. I actually sat down, contemplated, and stared at a knife or razor for days. Then one time, a catastrophe happened, I felt helpless, and it snapped, I grabbed for the knife to slit my wrists. It made me feel like I had some kind of control of the situation, calmed me down, and made me feel better. So that became a habit everytime something awful happened to me; I felt an explosive pent-up anger and unjust that I couldn't find a way out. I didn't even feel any pain, for that mere physical agony was nothing compared to what was in my chest at the moment. Cutting provided relief, simply as that.

[Stay_home]

Saw a guy once after he had cut himself, but he had cut too deep and was missing a chunk of flesh from his thigh. Couldn't believe it.

[shygirl87]

I began to cut in my first year of university. I was EXTREMELY alone, my friends were all busy with their boyfriends/girlfriends, where away at school and my grandmother had just passed away. I constantly felt numb and it was the only way I actually felt something. I would cut in places people didn't see, because I wasn't doing it for show. I cut for a number of years, but stopped about a year ago. Some recent things I've gone through have really tested me, but I'm happy to say that I haven't cut again.

[samimumba18]

Half of the time I do it because I get angry and I feel like I need to hurt somebody. But I've never been that sort of person (who just hurts people) so I take it out on myself. The other half is because I don't want to live anymore but I'm too afraid of ending it, so I cut in hope that I will die from blood loss but it's never enough.