Cutting: A cry for help
When I was in high school I knew kids who drank heavily. I knew about kids who took drugs and in my Grade 9 year someone committed suicide. But I did not know any students who cut themselves. Fast forward to 2010 and ask my niece about cutting in her high school and she’ll tell you in a quiet voice, “I know a lot of kids who do that.”
Teens and young adults have always walked a treacherous road of new experiences, changing hormones and very little experience. It is often overwhelming, sometimes for a few days, sometimes for a few years. I can only imagine what it’s like to be a teen now with your whole life on Facebook, open and vulnerable to the world. Everyone finds a different way to deal with the pain, some that are healthy, many that not. More and more teens are turning to cutting.
When I first saw Dena Yohe’s article “Understanding Cutting” my first response was, “I don’t want to know.” Cutting is a painful reality and I didn’t want to think about these beautiful kids taking a blade to their own body. I didn’t want to think about a line of blood and a scar forever. But I’m the grown-up now, which means I should not turn away. Where possible I need to educate myself so that if I’m ever faced with this situation I can help.
Yohe’s article is excellent primer for anyone who knows someone who is cutting or may know someone in the future. Mistakenly I thought cutting was a dark obsession, like a love of horror movies taken too far. But that’s not it at all. As Yohe explains, “People cut to deal with difficult problems or feelings they cannot verbally express.” Cutting is a cry for help.
Her advice on how to help is clear and straight forward. She writes:
If you have suspicions, go ahead and ask them about it. Friends with cutting problems are often glad to be able talk about it. If you bring it up and this person isn’t self-injuring, it won’t start just because you said something about it. If they leave their wounds uncovered so that you can see them, they want you to ask them about it. Offer options but don’t tell your friend what to do. If someone’s using cutting or some other kind of self-injury as a way to feel in control, it won’t help if you try to take control of the situation. Helping someone see ways to get help – like talking to a parent, pastor, teacher, school counselor or mental health professional- may be the best thing you can do.
If you or someone you know is struggling, we have mentors available 24/7 who can help. Just use this form to send in your question and a mentor will email you back, usually in just a couple of days. If you’d like to learn more about healthy ways to deal with anxiety try our free Life Lesson: Dealing with Anxiety.
Hi Naomi,
Thank you for being so honest about what is happening with you and how deeply you are struggling. I want to say that I completely understand how difficult it is to throw away all the things you use to self-harm, for they represent the very things that provide you with relief from your deepest emotional pain – or at least they did to me. However, I also want you to know that the more time I got in without cutting, the better I felt about myself, and the easier it became NOT to return to self-injury as a resource. In the meantime, I focused on prayer and Scripture-reading and any positive way of expressing my emotions that I could find to avoid cutting my body.
Naomi, if you feel you need to go to the hospital in order to avoid hurting yourself, then I encourage you to do so. You are worth protecting. Also, I want to say that it is very brave and courageous to consider going to the out-of-state program in order to receive help and healing. Although I know it will be tremendously difficult to be away from your husband for an entire year, it is so important that you be able to heal from the inner wounds that are causing you to want to injure yourself. It is equally important that your husband learn to deal with his own emotional issues and develop a support system of his own that allows you to receive your healing while he gets help for his personal issues. In that way, Naomi, you will both be stronger and healthier for one another and much more likely to be able to support each other in a positive manner.
I will certainly be praying for you, Naomi, and I will also be praying that, as you attend Christian counselling, you will not feel pressured to reveal or share anything before you are ready to do so and before the Lord guides you to do so. I know that when I received Christian counselling, a big part of what made it successful was my counsellor’s ability and willingness to pray with me and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit each and every appointment so that we were moving at the pace the Lord set for me, not the pace the counsellor, or I, myself, set for me. The Lord Jesus knows you best, Naomi, and He is the One Who knows what you most need, as He is your Healer. I encourage you to turn to Him on a regular basis; over time, you will learn to hear His voice guiding you.
Also, I am sorry that you did not get a response from a mentor the last time you tried on this website. That is very unusual, but it does happen that, on occasion, an email will get tied up in the system or in cyberspace. Please feel free to try again if you feel led to do so, as I know that our mentors care deeply.
Naomi, please know that you will be covered in prayer, and my thoughts are with you, my dear sister in Christ.
Thanks Brenda and Barbara for your comments.
I do have a very loving and accepting church where everyone means
well and a lot of people are trying to help me,I have a lot of emotional issues
that i am trying to deal with and i am overwhelmed.
Some people make comments meaning well like Promise me you won’t cut
and want to force me to throw everything out at once.
I can not make that promise that i won’t cut becausei am not well enough
to make that promise and keep it right now,and i can’t throw everything out at once
i thrwe most things out and only have 2 things i used to cut left.
i am not ready to give them up yet but i feel like even though people try and mean
well they don’t understand how hard it is to just stop or throw everything out.
I am going to start Counseling tomorrow but i am really anxious.
i was recently at the hospital and when i left the doctor wrote he thinks
i have ptsd on the discharge papers.I felt like i was getting a little better when i was there
but totally overwhelmed and started cutting again when i came home.
I am thinking about maybe going to this Christian Based program that would be able
to help me a lot better its a recovery place for a lot of different issues,i have to fill out application
and be accepted but i am not sure about it because if i went i would have to be away from my husband for a whole year in another state.
but that program as everything that could really help me,i am going try couneseling
but last time i had couneseling the memories coming up where way to much for me to deal
with and when i started to cut again.
I am honestly still struggling am going to talk to both my pastor and Counselor tomorrow
we may talk about maybe going to this place and filling out application.
Other people suggested i go there to without even knowing that i was already been thinking about it. but it would be hard for my husband to go a year without me he is loving but really needy
he has a disabilty not physically but otherwise anyway please pray about it
i am trying to figure out if its Gods will for me to go there or not its hard to tell
because my husband would have a hard time without me but everyone inculding my pastor
thinks it would be good for me and that my Husband should allow me to go.
I don’t know what to think i would like to go but not if i am there worrying about him the whole time.
but it could really help me this program.anyway bye for now please pray
i did try the mentoring thing before but then i did not hear back but maybe i will try it again sometime,I am not feeling that great so i might have to go back to the hospital if i get any worse.
thanks bye for now.
Hi Naomi,
Barbara is completely right in saying that you are not alone in relapsing in your recovery. You are also very correct in saying that it is not only teens who cut. I was 19 when I began cutting, and I continued well into adulthood. Today, I know that I did so because I was deeply shame-based, and I believed that I deserved punishment when I did something wrong. In addition, I thought I had to perfectly perform in every area of my life in order to receive the love of others and of God. What I did not understand at that time was that Jesus had paid for all of my sins on the cross at Calvary, so I no longer had to pay for them myself. It was through going to Christian counselling and getting involved in a very loving, accepting church, that I learned that Jesus loves and accepts me unconditionally just as I am right now! I do not have to be perfect or try to be someone I am not. As I poured my heart into getting to know who He is and who I am as His precious child through His Word, I grew less and less interested and driven to harm myself until, finally, I no longer desired to do so at all.
Naomi, I encourage you to seek out a Christian counsellor with whom you can relate well and who can teach you the unconditional love of God. He does love you, Naomi, and He accepts you right where you are today. He also wants to heal you so that you no longer desire to harm yourself, and so that you see that you are just as beautiful as He knows that you are – inside and out!
Please be assured that, like Barbara shared with you, there are mentors here on this site who would love to talk with you privately and confidentially if you would like to fill out the link she shared with you. I am praying for you, Naomi; also, please know there is wonderful hope for your recovery and your future free from cutting with healing from the deep pain that is driving you to do so.
Hi Naomi,
How are you doing today? Thank you for sharing that additional information and awareness regarding cutting taking place at various ages. By you opening up and sharing that information will allow others to be on guard should they overcome cutting and the possibility of falling back into it again after years of recovery. It is similar to those that may use drugs, alcohol, food, or whatever other means to soothe the discomfort that is brewing within them instead of dealing with the real issues/root of the problem. Like you, many of these individuals overcome these wrongful coping techniques and maintain recovery for years but sometimes when something takes place in their life and triggers certain issues within, they may perhaps fall back into their old coping technique/behavior.
Realize that you are not alone in this relapse of your recovery…it happens even to the best, strongest individuals. That is why it is so vital that you stay connected to good, safe people that you can open up to and share what is taking place within you. Do you have your appointment scheduled yet with the Christian counselor? Would you like to connect with one of our private online mentors that can encourage you along through this recovery process too?
Here is a link if you would like to have one of them contact you via email: http://powertochange.com/experience/talk-to-a-mentor/
not only teens cut. I started then and then i stopped for a long time
then painful memories came up again and really bad overwhelming stress and anxiety and i started cutting was doing it for a few months,i went to the hospital recently because of it,severe depression and Suicidal thoughts. I messed up once since being home from the hospital due to the same overwhelming emotions,but i am starting to get help with everything and I just threw out everything i used to cut.I am just saying its not something that just teenagers do even though it might be more people who do it or start to do it in that age group its not just a problem teenagers have. it makes me feel more ashamed about myself cutting because i am to old to be struggling with that problem it just always sounds like makes it harder to talk about just like i am not normal or something.But i just hurt a lot and never handled my emotions well.I am trying to do better now i threw everything out that i cut with but my anxiety is really bad still and i am thinking when i start up counseling again i am going to have to talk about all the hard stuff all over again and i don’t know how i am going to deal with it.but i am trying to be better now..i am struggling though.
Thanks for the great vote of confidence Columbus Mandy! Glad you found our site and that you found it so helpful!
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Shawna, I have to disagree with your comment that “if someone is cutting than their parents aren’t doing their job of keeping their kid out of depression or sadness”. Sometimes good, loving, attentive parents have no idea that it’s going on. In my own battle with depression as a teen I went to ENORMOUS lengths to make sure my parents didn’t know what I was going through. I didn’t want to talk about it and so I made sure they had no reason to think that anything was wrong. If you’d asked them during that time they probably would have told you that I was just a little quiet. It wasn’t until years later, long after the danger passed that I ever admitted to them that I had been suicidal. I’m sure there are some parents who miss the signs but there also other parents who never get a chance to see what’s really happening.
I feel a load of compassion for those who cut. I think that if someone is cutting than their parents aren’t doing their job of keeping their kid out of depression or sadness. For those who cut… there are other ways to ease the pain. In case you didn’t know… Cutting is very serious. If you are someone who cuts please let someone know so they can help you. If you don’t do it for the people who care about you at least do it for yourself…;)
I was a cutter back in 1991. Yep, long time ago. Felt gr8 to relieve myself from the pain in my heart to my leg. Sillyness now, but realit5y then. God healed my <3 n i trust God now. God heals n help us through every trial we encounter, n i totally have compassion on those crying out for help. :)