Self Injury Stories

The Life of a Cutter

“I am nowhere close to quitting cutting. It is the hardest thing to do ever. This is why I wanted to get my story out, so that no one will ever start. I hate thinking that I thought it was a way out, and I hate thinking more that I still do.”

Spread throughout the nation today is a group of teenagers, each with individual dreams, fears, and pains. The one thing that they have in common is that they have been trapped in a cycle of exchanging one pain for another, and the only relief that they find for the many emotional pains in their lives is the destruction of their bodies.

Take a look into the life of one of these teens. More than likely, you will find a young woman (although many young men also struggle with cutting). She has probably been sexually or physically abused, comes from a broken home, or has parents that are emotionally absent. She sits in her room today and cannot suppress the urge to drag the razor blade across the skin on her wrist once more.

Cutting Resources Understanding Cutting Introduction to Self-Injury A Young Girl and Boy Defining Self-Injury Who Self-Injures Common Misconceptions Why People Turn To Cutting Why is it so Addictive? Steps For Overcoming During Times of Temptation A Word of Encouragement Exploring Deeper Roots Action Plans Creating a Plan of Action Action Plan Questions How to Help Scripture List Sources and Credits

She is not sure why she does it, and she hates more than anything else the fact that she has no idea how to stop. Ensnared by an enemy that has left her mentally defeated, she chooses again to do the thing that both pleases and disgusts her the most.

How it Started

For many who have never struggled with the impulse to cut themselves, there seems to be no logical reason for it. However, there is a common motivation among those who have turned to cutting. In each of their stories, there is a yearning for a release from tension and anxiety. The pressure has become too much.

Riley was thirteen years old when she began cutting herself. She was hysterical after her parents had been yelling at her. “Searching for some way to calm myself, I found it in a pin… After I had done the deed, I looked. I examined my handy work at every angle. I started to cry, not because I was hurt, but because I had finally found something that helped me cope, which helped me forget what was going on… Cutting was a different kind of pain, a release pain, and a happy pain.”

Others, like 19-year-old college sophomore Lissa, wanted to escape negative feelings about themselves and their own bad habits. She says, “I didn’t cut myself a lot and usually only did when I ate too much.” Struggling with an eating disorder since her freshman year in high school, Lissa cut to escape the guilty conscience and negative emotions she experienced because of it.

As these young women trained themselves to ease pain, guilt, or pressure in their lives, it is likely that they went to great lengths to continue to nourish this addiction.

Feeding the Addiction

Many young women who cut themselves find that they turn to this addiction regardless of the emotions that first triggered the behavior. Cutting is extremely addictive because it helps to express and suppress emotional pain in a way that doesn’t require words. As Riley said before, it also allows them to cope by reducing the level of emotional arousal. They are able to escape from emptiness, depression, and other painful feelings, even if only for a moment.

Regarding her addiction, sixteen-year-old Richelle comments that “cutting is the only way I find to get away from life. I cut when things around me get too much or I just feel really down.” As she began to escape from life, she says, “It got too much; my writing in my diary wasn’t helping. I wanted to run away. But how could I run from myself? I only want to be pretty and be loved.”

This is also true for one young lady who identifies herself as Miss Jane online. She explains that cutting herself was her escape route from the sexual abuse she experienced as a pre-teen. “Well,” she says, “after every incident, I would cut myself up with whatever was available. Razors, knives, soda cans, whatever.” She even cut herself in school in eighth grade with “one of those rulers with the paper cutter edge,” which she believes was her most obvious call for help.

Holly, a 21 year old student in Texas, cut from the age of fifteen until she was nineteen. She has successfully overcome this temptation but explains that even after she had been through counseling she would do it in smaller ways, “like with a box-cutter knife at work.”

For one moment of control over these overwhelming emotions, or to be able to forget about them for just a short time, these young women would turn to any household object sharp enough to pierce the skin. Running away, each woman knows no other way to escape, no other way to cope with feeling unattractive or unloved.

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