Tell me about "Cutting", please...

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I used to cut. I was homeless and clinically depressed. I found it therapeutic to be able to put my pain out of my head and onto my body. I could then look after my physical wounds (clean and treat them) in a way I couldn't look after my problems.

I only cut on parts of my body that people couldn't see and I made sure that my family never found out about it.

If anyone was thinking about self-harming, I would suggest using an elastic band around your wrist (which you can flick), or placing ice cubes against your skin. It still hurts, but the damage is minimal.

it's controllable pain.

the pain is MY pain. i cause it, i control it.

and i can cope with it. i can't cope with the other pain. but i can make this pain and make it what i want it to be.

if you know someone who is cutting, then cutting isn't the real problem. cutting is the way that they have found to cope with the real problem.

I cut myself regularly in my late teens, and there have been a few isolated occurrences in the last few years, but I try not to resort to it. There have been occasions when despair took over though.

Upon examining my thought processes regarding it, I think for me, it was a way of outwardly manifesting my inner grief. Nobody took my lifelong struggles with depression seriously, especially as a teenager, because I seemed ok on the outside, and the people who should have seen the signs just dismissed them because as far as they were concerned, young people don't get depressed. I cut myself as a way to show them that I really was hurting badly, because no-one was interested in hearing about how I felt. I had to adopt a shock tactic to get help. However, by the time it got noticed, I had built an association between cutting and catharsis, as I began to equate it with purging my sadness. Therefore, when I am in deep despair, I still get the urge to do it, but can usually get through it without acting on it.

for those of us whose expressions are unreadable to others, cutting may have served the purpose of speaking our grief in a language no one could fail to understand.

I would try cutting if I lived alone. But I live with my parents, and they would see the scars and get very, very, very worried.
I wouldn't do it because I'm depressed - I'd just want to try it for the physical sensation. For some odd reason, I like some forms of pain
I did, however, once, when I was teenage, scratched a small part of my upper arm so much it bled, on purpose. For the same reason as above. It was enjoyable, but more enjoyable than the original scratching was tearing off the, uhm, I don't know the word really. But when blood dries and forms this thing over a wound - what's the word! - but I really enjoy tearing at them and after a while, off. Dunno. I just like the sensation. This mark I had made was very enjoyable because it was bigger than random little scratches. *shrug* Well, I was a bit careless and my mother ended up seeing it, and she was very conserned...I tried to lie that I hadn't done it myself. But I really don't know whether she believed...seemed like she did not. But it was very distressing for me.

I've not cut but can see why I would have or possibly even will. I've attempted suicide three times, and I binge eat which, according to mainstream research, has similar psychological roots. Look into some of my recent posts if you want to hear my horror stories of coping with an eating disorder.

I'm a 29-year-old heterosexual male but sometimes I feel like a lost teenage girl.

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When the inner pain becomes so big that you can't handle it, that you'll feel nauseous because of it, you'll try to find another pain for your body and mind to focus on. Cutting is one of those pains for the body. The guilt afterwards is one of the pains for the mind.
Attention always has something to do with it. The inner pain mostly is loneliness, the feeling that no one likes and understands you. You want someone to notice you feel bad, that you can't handle life the way it is; you want someone to care.
I did it for about two, three months. I was twelve back then. The reason I quit was because I found other things that turned to pain around that felt better.

Now that I'm older, there still arethose times that I feel so bad that all I want to do is hide myself and cry. Calling a friend who makes me laugh helps, going outside for a run or walk helps, listening to music and jumping around on it helps. Cutting feels stupid, because it won't help me, it'll only make me feel worse.

All cutters I knew told me that in the end, it came down to attention.

i'm sure it does not always have something to do with it.

even though i said above it may be a way to communicate grief, i do not think it would need to be an attempt to communicate with anyone else necessarily.

i may have wanted help, but i did not want attention. largely i hid my cutting and i know some others do so as well.

attention is a tricky thing. there is no point in someone offering you words of sympathy when you can't feel the sympathy or care anyway.

I cut when I can't find a way to communicate my emotions. I'm 29 and have been cutting since 13. It's like I feel emotions like sadness and depression but I can't put it into words the gravity to which I feel it that other people can understand so I suffer in silence and cut myself. No-one ever sees the marks even though I'm not shallow about it. I just don't tend to show skin cuz I have a sensitivity to the sun. My mother once saw the scars and said I did it for attention which I find interesting since it took her a decade to see them.

At least 3 folks in this thread got it in one.

The physical pain, an event that happened under your own control, distracts from the other pains, the ones you react to that you couldn't forestall. If your endocrinological controls are a bit out of whack as mine probably are, the physical pains fading away feel good (think endorphin rush; that's just my guess as I've never brought this to the attention of a doctor). It's addicting, like most things that can be used to short circuit pain running its course. I'm probably one of the unreported "minority" of American males who tried it as a teen.

There's a number of reasons why one would do it, my personal reason was the mindset of hoping i'd "accidentally" cut too deep and oops, I died.

That's really the mentality alot of people have who are too afraid to actually suicide.

Either way a 13 year old doesn't have the mentality to do it and justify it, they're just mindless and seeking attention.

I stopped because I didn't really get anything beneficial from it, except a bunch of ret*d scars that force me to wear long sleeves in every situation.

In any case, if you're considering doing it, don't. There's no beneficial gain. 5 years later you'll look at your arms and go what the f**k was wrong with me?

I disagree with that.

When I did it for that one year I did cut myself, it was kind of a release on a bunch of pent up emotions. I've always been terrible at expressing anger, and it usually led to me hitting my head, biting my arms, cutting my legs, punching something or kicking something. But then I stopped the biting/cutting/hiting because my parents threatened to throw me into an asylum or send me to West Virginia.

Now I sit and fume quietly while resisting the urge to hurt myself or punch a wall in.

I do it mainly for two reasons.
1.) as a punnishment when I done something really wrong.
2-) to connect more easily to the world

It feels like a giant sigh of relief. Or the feeling just after you take the biggest dump in history.

I haven't done it in years. But it was great.

Sometimes i miss it.

I'm not a cutter, but I do know there's a bit of biology behind it. When you get hurt, your body releases endorphins to help cope with the pain, and when you cut yourself, you trigger that endorphin rush, and that's what makes it addictive.

Here was my thought process when I did it.

Oh God f**k f**k f**k f**k I need to escape this moment but there's nothing ahead but more of this I need to do something I need to destroy myself

I need to jump out of the window, I need to just smash through the glass

but no that would hurt I'm too afraid

Well I'll get a knife and stab myself in the stomach

no that would be hell

I'll just take the knife and slice it against my skin

There I'm doing something I"M DOING SOMETHING

Goddamnit it stings God I can't think of anything else right now

My mind is blank my mind is cleared

The slate is clean I can breathe I can move forward now