Self Mutilation is Fun.

[Bob Hubbard]

So, I came across this comment, slightly modified for anonymity.

PLEASE STOP...

to those of you people who feel the need to try to tell me and make me stop cutting.. DON'T. it's not gonna work. it doesn't matter what you think or what you say... i'm not going to stop cutting. i'm not suicidal and i'm always careful when i do it. PLEASE STOP trying to tell me ****.. i don't care if you're trying to help or if you're concerned. it's my life and it's completely pointless to try to make me change my mind. i'm not going to stop.

Now me, I don't get this. Cutting I mean. I've never felt the desire to slice open my skin and let my life blood out. Then again, I never felt the desire to shove a needle in my veins and inject poison, or suck hot burning toxins into my lungs, or ingest large enough quantities of alcohol to render myself incapable of walking either.

What's the point of this, this slicing your self up, of scarring your body? I don't get it.

 

[RandomPhantom700]

Bear in mind that I'm only speaking from anecdotal experience from talking to a cutter (allegedly ex-cutter), but in some warped logic, it's a thing of control. Her experience was that she had so much stress going on, with so many obligations pulling her different directions and no coping mechanism to handle it reasonably, that cutting gave her a sense of control and autonomy.

This next part is only my own speculation, but I imagine the controlled pain was also a bit of stress relief. However, that's my speculation, not her statement.

Like I said, it's warped, and nobody ever said it was logical. But if you're curious about the irrational, there you go.

 

[Omar B]

Yeah, it's a power/controle thing for people who feel powerless. I used to hang out with a girl when I was like 15 who was taking her mother's remarriage really hard and felt as if the whole world was moving on forgetting what she wanted. So she cut herself on the arms.

I wonder whatever happened to her? I'm so bad at keeping in touch with people.

 

[celtic_crippler]

Perhaps some self loathing is involved?

Perhaps they're just masochistic? Being a martial artist I can understand this to some extent... I mean I must have this trait to some degree in order to keep training! LOL

Self-injury usually occurs when people face what seem like overwhelming or distressing feelings. Self-injurers may feel that self-injury is a way of:

• Temporarily relieving intense feelings, pressure, or anxiety
• Being real, being alive, or feeling something.
• Being able to feel pain on the outside instead of the inside Being a means to control and manage pain -- unlike the pain experienced through physical or sexual abuse
• Providing a way to break emotional numbness (the self-anesthesia that allows someone to cut without feeling pain)
• Asking for help in an indirect way or drawing attention to the need for help
• Attempting to affect others by manipulating them, trying to make them care, trying to make them feel guilty, or trying to make them go away

Self-injury also may be a reflection of a person's self-hatred. Some self-injurers are punishing themselves for having strong feelings that they were usually not allowed to express as children. They also may be punishing themselves for somehow being bad and undeserving. These feelings are an outgrowth of abuse and a belief that the abuse was deserved.

More

In all seriousness... it seems like it's related to depression and anyone that claims they don't need help, is probably wrong.

 

[Flea]

Any particular reason why you're asking?

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Topic starter, curiosity, and I'll add a bit of disdain for the act as I can't understand it. Scarification, I can understand, this....I can't.

Someone on a friends list on another site referenced someone who stated the OP. It's no one I know.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

To my mind, banging your head against the wall is less 'permanent' in damaging and seems to serve the same purpose.

 

[MA-Caver]

Yeah, it's a power/controle thing for people who feel powerless. I used to hang out with a girl when I was like 15 who was taking her mother's remarriage really hard and felt as if the whole world was moving on forgetting what she wanted. So she cut herself on the arms.

One of our (former) members here was a cutter... I wasted hours trying to talk her out of doing it because she was just so depressed and adamant about how much better she felt after cutting herself.
I don't understand the act either but know that eventually they may go TOO FAR and go TOO DEEP and be TOO LATE to do anything about it.
Depression sucks.

I wonder whatever happened to her? I'm so bad at keeping in touch with people.

You're not alone my friend... I would love to be able to keep touch with friends but I don't do as well. FB has helped me reconnect with a FEW but not enough.
As John Lennon said... "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans".

To my mind, banging your head against the wall is less 'permanent' in damaging and seems to serve the same purpose.

Concussions are pretty damaging so one shouldn't be bashing their head against anything.

 

[Jade Tigress]

I've known two "cutters" in my life. One never gave an explanation, in fact, denied she was doing it despite the obvious evidence. The other told me she did it because her emotions had become so numbed by abuses she suffered that to be able to feel anything, even self-inflicted pain, was better than feeling nothing at all.

IMO, people who cut have serious emotional issues going on and need help.

 

[Gordon Nore]

Some of the anecdotal examples above seem to be about cutters who discuss cutting -- not something I'm familiar with. My missus is a former social worker -- she's encountered cutting among homeless youth, people who've been incarcerated, people with a history of physical/sexual abuse. Cutters report a feeling of release and some short term gratification.

There is a very chilling scene in the film Shake Hands with the Devil, based on the memoir of General Romeo Dallaire's experiences leading UN forces during the Rwandan genocide. In the film Dallaire is depicted cutting himself in his quarters, taken straight from his book. Dallaire went through a difficult time psychologically after the experience in Rwanda.

 

[teekin]

Very good Movie, even better Book. If you read the book you can get an idea of waht his mind was going through. Pressure, guilt, pain, numbness, longing for even more numbness, then more guilt and the cycle of that. Being helpless to prevent slaughter when you have the means to do so almost drove him mad, he was looking for a way, any way to dump pressure before he cracked completely. Keeping your humanity intact in a place like Rwanada was allmost super human. I can not believe this soldiers moral fortitude. What a huge heart he has, what a weight he carried for so long.
lori

 

[Tez3]

I have an 8 year old boy in my martial arts class who is so distressed that his father is deployed to Afghanstan in a couple of weeks he is biting chunks out of his arms. All his mother has been told by the army doctor is not to tell him off for it. It's very distressing for all of us as we feel unable to help him, we can't reassure him that things will be alright, he knows that kids at school have lost dads. We usually wear t shirts and Gi bottoms but his been wearing his Gi top to hide his arms. Anyone has any ideas please please pass them on, his mum is a close friend as well as a student herself and we will try anything.

 

[Jade Tigress]

That's hearbreaking Tez. The poor kid. I'm surprised all the Army doc said was not to tell him off for it. The child needs to speak with a counselor/therapist, he needs to learn how to express his emotions in a healthy way. Ignoring it will not make it go away.

 

[jks9199]

I agree with Jade Tigress; the kid's obviously expressing a lot of stress and anxiety, and he needs professional help to deal with with it. Meanwhile, be supportive and try to give him outlets for that anxiety. I don't like the doctor's advice; I hope it was severely truncated for your post. His mom shouldn't be discipling or punishing him... but they need to stop him from hurting himself and help him find a better way to handle that anxiety!

 

[Tez3]

I agree with Jade Tigress; the kid's obviously expressing a lot of stress and anxiety, and he needs professional help to deal with with it. Meanwhile, be supportive and try to give him outlets for that anxiety. I don't like the doctor's advice; I hope it was severely truncated for your post. His mom shouldn't be discipling or punishing him... but they need to stop him from hurting himself and help him find a better way to handle that anxiety!

With most of our medical staff away on deployment the families med centres have been staffed by locum civvie doctors employed by the MOD on lucrative short term contracts, they are often European. They don't know the patients and frankly don't really care. To get professional help families have to be referred by their doctor or pay for private help which is hard to know who's good or not.
I'm trying to research what help there is, his mum has two other, younger, kids so has her hands full at the moment.

 

[Flea]

In the US, there are lots of charity agencies that will either subsidize mental health services or offer it themselves. If you're poor you can also qualify for it at a very low cost. Is there anything like that in Britain?

I'm not a cutter myself, but my understanding is that once the habit is entrenched it's harder to quit than smoking. And it can be a fatal habit if you get too close to an artery, or use a dirty or infected blade. The sooner he gets quality intervention, the better. I wish him peace ...

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I don't know if this is similar or not, but I can identify with the people who get tattooed over and over again, who decorate their entire bodies. In addition to whatever statement they're trying to make, the process itself can be somewhat intoxicating. Tattoos hurt, but there is something that happens when the burn goes on and on; I suppose something involving endorphins. I don't know if 'cutters' experience anything similar in a physical sense.

 

[Gordon Nore]

I don't know if this is similar or not, but I can identify with the people who get tattooed over and over again, who decorate their entire bodies. In addition to whatever statement they're trying to make, the process itself can be somewhat intoxicating. Tattoos hurt, but there is something that happens when the burn goes on and on; I suppose something involving endorphins.

I can relate to a lesser extent. My one tattoo is martial arts-related. I got it the day after I graded for my black belt, so it marked the fulfillment of many years of work, as well as a new beginning. I was aware of the discomfort -- to me it felt like scratching a sunburn -- but I relished in it somewhat, as if I had earned the pain.

I don't know if 'cutters' experience anything similar in a physical sense.

Cutting seems to come from a very dark place. I don't know if cutters plan for cutting in the same way that many people think long and hard about a tattoo, researching it, finding the right artist, doing the design. On the other hand, there are those who walk in and pick a piece of flash off the wall and have that done.

I wonder about scaration, which is offered by some tattooists. I wonder what appeal that holds for people.

 

[Flea]

http://www.essortment.com/articles/self-injury_100006.htm

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Why Do People Self-Injure?[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] This problem is not completely understood by health care professionals or psychologists. It seems to be most common among people who have been sexually abused as children, molested as children, or by survivors of incest. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Whatever the context or reason, self-injury seems to function as a coping mechanism. "Cutters" use self-harm to feel calm, "in control," or just to "feel something." However, self-injury is not a healthy coping mechanism - it is a self-destructive behavior that probably reflects deeper, more complicated mental health or personal problems. (See the end of this article for some quotes and "stories" of people who self-injure).[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Some Common Factors of Self-Injury[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

Age of onset between 10 - 16 years old

There was a major change in the teen's life -- parents divorce or death

There is a history of family violence, abuse or sexual abuse

Intense feelings of fear, hurt, anger, rejection or abandonment

Feelings of loss and or need for control [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Some Common Reasons Why People Cut Themselves
[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]These are some of the reasons our readers who "cut" shared with us.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

They find it soothing:

To feel pain on the outside instead of the inside

To cope with feelings

To express anger towards themselves

To feel alive and real
[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

[/FONT] A way of communicating what they can't say with words:

To tell people they need help

To get people's attention

To tell people they should be in hospital [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

An attempt to get people to react to their actions:

To get people to care for them

To make other people feel guilty

To drive people away

To get away from stress and responsibility

To manipulate situations or people [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Triggering Events Reported by Young Adults Who Self-Injure:[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

Being rejected by someone who is important to them

Being blamed for something over which they had no control

Feeling inadequate

Being "wrong" in some way [/FONT]

 

[Flea]

I found another article, a little more technical than the one above. It's longer than the last one so I won't quote it, but the author turns to poetry at one point:

In an interesting theory that combines all three categories, Miller (1994) posits an explanation for why such a large majority of peep who self-harm are female. Women are not socialized to express violence externally and when confronted with the vast rage many self-injurers feel, women tend to vent on themselves. She quotes the feminist poet Adrienne Rich:

"Most women have not even been able to touch
this anger except to drive it inward like a
rusted nail."​

Miller says, "Men act out. Women act out by acting in." Another reason fewer men self-injure may be that men are socialized in a way that makes repressing feelings the norm. Linehan's (1993a) theory that self-harm results in part from chronic invalidation, from always being told that your feelings are bad or wrong or inappropriate, could explain the gender disparity in self-injury; men are generally brought up to hold emotion in.