Why do people cut themselves

Many of these individual hide the resulting scars with long shirts and bracelets. Charlotte did not always hide her scars. She thought her scars were a badge of honor and set her apart from her peers. As I got to know Charlotte, I understood that she really wanted to stop cutting, and that showing her scars was also a cry for help.

Cutters sometimes cut in secret. The more hidden the scars are, the more severe the problem of self-harm tends to be. Individuals with self-harm issues also cut their breast, thighs, back, hips, and legs.

The cutting can be random or very ordered and sequenced. There can be large cuts, or small marks grouped together i. One severe cutter I worked with described a precise system for her cutting. She would cut herself four times, two inches apart between cuts. Cutting for her was a ritual that was reinforced by her struggle with obsessive compulsive disorder. Another prevalent form of self-harm is branding or burning.

Rubbing an eraser against the skin can also cause a friction burn. This form of self-harm is often seen in the adolescent population. When a cutter does not have a sharp object they may use a fingernail. Many individuals that struggle with self-harm have experienced some sort of trauma in their past.

This could include childhood sexual, emotional or physical abuse, real or perceived abandonment or neglect by a caregiver, death or divorce. As mentioned above, self-harm is a coping strategy to deal with emotional pain. Individuals that self-harm dissociate from the emotional pain by feeling physical pain. Others who self-harm feel that when they self-harm, they have a sense of control over their emotions. Some believe they deserve to be punished for past issues; others use self-harm to re-enact abuse.

She felt like she needed to release the poison by cutting herself. She had experienced sexual trauma. Although it is difficult to say what makes one person self-harm and another not, there tend to be individuals who are at higher risk for developing self-harm behaviors. These include:. Most people who self-harm start at around age Some continue to self-harm into their twenties.

While self-harm behavior worked as a coping strategy in their teens, some individuals find that it is not as helpful or as socially acceptable when they get older. If the individual does not resolve the issues behind the self-harm behavior, then self-harm behavior may morph into other addictive behaviors, such as drugs, alcohol, and promiscuity.

I used to wonder why you cared so much, but now I am just thankful. The best treatment for self-harm behaviors is helping the individual express and talk about their pain. As they talk about their pain, they are able to gain perspective and understanding of it.

Some individuals have difficulty expressing themselves verbally. Or their coping skills may be overpowered by emotions that are too intense. When emotions don't get expressed in a healthy way, tension can build up — sometimes to a point where it seems almost unbearable. Cutting may be an attempt to relieve that extreme tension. For some, it seems like a way of feeling in control. The urge to cut might be triggered by strong feelings the person can't express — such as anger, hurt, shame, frustration, or alienation.

People who cut sometimes say they feel they don't fit in or that no one understands them. A person might cut because of losing someone close or to escape a sense of emptiness. Cutting might seem like the only way to find relief or express personal pain over relationships or rejection. People who cut or self-injure sometimes have other mental health problems that contribute to their emotional tension. Cutting is sometimes but not always associated with depression, bipolar disorder , eating disorders, obsessive thinking, or compulsive behaviors.

It can also be a sign of mental health problems that cause people to have trouble controlling their impulses or to take unnecessary risks. Some people who cut themselves have problems with drug or alcohol abuse. Some people who cut have had a traumatic experience, such as living through abuse , violence, or a disaster.

Self-injury may feel like a way of "waking up" from a sense of numbness after a traumatic experience. Or it may be a way of reliving the pain they went through, expressing anger over it, or trying to get control of it. Although cutting may provide some temporary relief from a terrible feeling, even people who cut agree that it isn't a good way to get that relief.

For one thing, the relief doesn't last. The troubles that triggered the cutting remain — they're just masked over. People don't usually intend to hurt themselves permanently when they cut. And they don't usually mean to keep cutting once they start. But both can happen. It's possible to misjudge the depth of a cut, making it so deep that it requires stitches or, in extreme cases, hospitalization.

Cuts can become infected if a person uses nonsterile or dirty cutting instruments — razors, scissors, pins, or even the sharp edge of the tab on a can of soda. Most people who cut aren't attempting suicide. Cutting is usually a person's attempt at feeling better, not ending it all. Although some people who cut do attempt suicide, it's usually because of the emotional problems and pain that lie behind their desire to self-harm, not the cutting itself. Cutting can be habit forming.

It can become a compulsive behavior — meaning that the more a person does it, the more he or she feels the need to do it.

The brain starts to connect the false sense of relief from bad feelings to the act of cutting, and it craves this relief the next time tension builds. When cutting becomes a compulsive behavior, it can seem impossible to stop. So cutting can seem almost like an addiction, where the urge to cut can seem too hard to resist.

A behavior that starts as an attempt to feel more in control can end up controlling you. Cutting often begins on an impulse. It's not something the person thinks about ahead of time. Shauna says, "It starts when something's really upsetting and you don't know how to talk about it or what to do. But you can't get your mind off feeling upset, and your body has this knot of emotional pain.

Before you know it, you're cutting yourself. And then somehow, you're in another place. Then, the next time you feel awful about something, you try it again — and slowly it becomes a habit. Natalie, a high-school junior who started cutting in middle school, explains that it was a way to distract herself from feelings of rejection and helplessness she felt she couldn't bear.

I guess part of me must have known it was a bad thing to do, though, because I always hid it. Once a friend asked me if I was cutting myself and I even lied and said 'no.

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