The Addiction of Self-Injury
WARNING: This post is graphic and may be triggering.
I used to be a cutter. I started in April of 2003 and stopped a month later. I started cutting myself again in October of 2004 and continued though June of 2005. I have scars on my arms that my husband calls my "ladders of pain." I also have some on my legs. Many of the scars have faded, but the worst ones remain.
I can tell you why I did it, and some possible answers as to why others may injure themselves. Obviously I can't answer for everyone. I am not a medical professional. This information should not be used as a basis for treatment, as a substitute for treatment, or as any type of diagnosis.
I have struggled with mental health issues since I was fifteen. I was diagnosed with clinical depression and manic-depressive tendencies. Basically, the doctor knew I was bipolar but didn't treat me for it. I pulled out of the depression, and things went well for years.
When I was 19 and in my sophomore year of college, I knew something was wrong. I started getting counseling at the student center on campus, but they couldn't do anything useful for me. In April of that year I began having panic attacks. Then the mood swings started in earnest, throwing me around like a boat in a hurricane. I had no idea what was happening to me. My counselors couldn't tell me. They didn't even recognize it when I went to them to figure out what was happening to me during my first panic attack.
I had been in a relationship for about five months at the time. The young man was just that, very young, and my breakdown scared him. He broke up with me when I was falling apart. I would have married him if he'd asked me. But instead he left me when I needed him the most.
I wanted to die. But more than that, I wanted to hurt. I wanted to hurt to relieve the pain. My room mate was a burner, and we had a friend who was a cutter. I don't think I would have thought of it had I not known these two women. But I wanted to hurt. I wanted to bleed. I felt that if I could let just a little bit of me out, it would help the pain.
I planned for nearly a week as to how to get something to do this with. It was the only thing I thought about. I was obsessed with the need to hurt outside, like it would help the pain inside by letting some of it out.
I went home for Easter about a week after he broke up with me. I wanted to bleed so badly. I stayed up, awake in my bed until everyone had gone to sleep. Then I got up and tested all the knives in the house, trying to find one that worked. None of them did.
I became almost crazed with the need to try this release. The next day I walked nearly a mile to the nearest drug store and bought some razor blades. That night after everyone went to bed, I sat on the bathroom floor and bled for the first time.
It worked. The pain was less. I felt relief, like someone had lifted the heavy load I was carrying. I bandaged myself up and went back to school the next day, bringing my new addiction with me.
I didn't want to die anymore, but I couldn't function without my razor blades. Having a burner for a room mate didn't help: we enabled each other endlessly. I became so addicted that I couldn't make it through the day without cutting several times. And the more I did it, the more I needed it.
One thing I was very meticulous about was keeping myself clean. I always rubbed myself and the blade with alcohol before and after. I didn't want to get an infection. I wasn't trying to die. I was trying to stay alive.
I ended up dropping out of school right before the end of the semester and moving to my mom's house, where I stayed for a year. My stepfather made it extremely clear that cutting would not be tolerated in the house, but getting out of the situation made my life a lot easier.
I was then diagnosed with bipolar disorder and began medication. It was like seeing the sun for the first time. I didn't feel the need to cut for over a year.
In the Fall of 2004, I went back to the same college. I roomed with a really nice woman, a couple of years older than me. We became fast friends. We went out bar hopping every Friday and Saturday night, but all that "fun" couldn't stop the train wreck.
I began an enormous, spectacular downward spiral that lasted for eight months. In October of that year I began cutting again. It continued to get worse and worse. I dropped out again and moved home after overdosing on anxiety medication. Within a month I had my own apartment and a job. I lost that job and two others before I became unable to work, and soon after that, completely unable to care for myself. I just didn't care. I didn't care about eating, bathing, clean clothes, or sleeping. It got to the point where the only time I would bathe was to cut, because the water made it bleed more.
The only way I didn't die was by cutting. I'd cut many, many times a day. It was the only way I could cope. I started to believe that I had a poison in my blood, and I would get better if I could bleed it out. The only way to get rid of the poison was to bleed.
My downward spiral was punctuated by three inpatient hospital stays in the psychiatric ward. The first stay was after my overdose, just before I moved home to my mom's house. I was released Christmas Eve. The third stay was at the end of my eight-month spiral. I checked in to the state hospital, where I remained for six weeks.
When I checked into the state hospital, I was homeless. Everything that belonged to me had been placed in a storage unit while I was in the hospital. They wouldn't discharge me until I had somewhere to go. I was released into a residential program that saved my life. In that program, they taught me how to be human again, and how to live with mental illness.
I only cut twice after that, and the last time was over seven years ago.
I've been asked many times since then how in the world hurting myself could possibly make me feel better. How does drinking or drugs help someone feel better? It numbs the pain.
A comment in a television show equates well with why someone would cut. It is from an episode of the sitcom "M*A*S*H" that aired in the 70s and early 80s. It is an episode in which Radar O'Riley is upset and goes to his friends B.J. and Hawkeye for a drink.
Radar starts drinking his drink and says, "I thought this stuff was supposed to make you feel better."
B.J. replies, "It's supposed to make you feel nothing."
There were two instances in which I would cut. One was to feel nothing, the other was to feel something. That makes no sense, I know. To make sense of it you'd have to know what was going on in my head.
There were times that I was numb. I felt nothing. I didn't care about anything: eating, bathing, dressing, clean clothes... I didn't care whether I lived or died. There were also times where I was on sensory overload, only the overload was inside my head. My head felt like it was getting scrambled. So many thoughts moving through so fast. They moved so fast I couldn't even grasp them before they were gone. The thoughts in my head would turn into a blur and my head was so busy that I couldn't function on any level, because I couldn't think outside of that blur.
The pain of cutting would help both of these scenarios. Some pain would wake me up when I was numb. I could be alive again. I could do more than sit in bed staring at the wall. When my head was in a blur, the pain would focus my attention. It felt like the blur would settle around the cut, and the cut would focus it until blood came out. After that I could function to do more than rock myself and cry, hitting myself on the head because it wouldn't stop.
What I didn't realize at the time, was that the cutting was an after effect of the abuse I suffered as a teen. I didn't tell anyone for years afterward that my father had been taking me to his bed every night after my mom moved out. After it was over, I refused to acknowledge the event's existence until over five years later. No one knew. And by the time I told anyone, the Statute of Limitations had expired. It was entirely coincidental, but it had expired only a few months before I finally told someone.
I've known many people over the years who have self-injured, men and women. Most of them had been sexually abused. Because of this, if you know someone who self-injures, it is important that they get help. This likely means that either someone is hurting them now, or has hurt them in the past. Help them. Help them help themselves.
But there are other concerns: the physical safety of the self-injurer. Someone who cuts is addicted to cutting. Like a drug, the person will need more and more over time to get the same effect: having the drug more and more often, and needing bigger doses to have the same effect.. This translates to the cutter as not only more instances of cutting, but also cutting deeper. This can mean accidentally cutting into veins or arteries, nerves, muscles, or tendons. All of these can cause serious, sometimes permanent, injuries. A cutter will usually not pay attention to these warnings. It's not necessarily that they don't care, but that the cutting is more important. This is an addiction, like drugs and alcohol. The drugs and alcohol are more important than the possibility of overdose or illnesses like HIV, liver disease, heart problems, or kidney disease, all of which can be fatal.
This is another extremely important reason to get help. To die accidentally from something they are doing to stay alive is one of the ultimate ironies. Help for people who self-injure needs to be help for addiction as well as help for the causes of the self-injury. One hospital I was checked in to put me in a special ward for eating disorders and self-injury because they are addictions. Our treatment included addiction counseling with different groups for each category of addiction.
I've known a lot of people who self-injure, and what happened to them was not their fault, in any case. Help your loved ones. Help yourselves. It will get better if you let it.
I used to be a cutter. I started in April of 2003 and stopped a month later. I started cutting myself again in October of 2004 and continued though June of 2005. I have scars on my arms that my husband calls my "ladders of pain." I also have some on my legs. Many of the scars have faded, but the worst ones remain.
I can tell you why I did it, and some possible answers as to why others may injure themselves. Obviously I can't answer for everyone. I am not a medical professional. This information should not be used as a basis for treatment, as a substitute for treatment, or as any type of diagnosis.
I have struggled with mental health issues since I was fifteen. I was diagnosed with clinical depression and manic-depressive tendencies. Basically, the doctor knew I was bipolar but didn't treat me for it. I pulled out of the depression, and things went well for years.
When I was 19 and in my sophomore year of college, I knew something was wrong. I started getting counseling at the student center on campus, but they couldn't do anything useful for me. In April of that year I began having panic attacks. Then the mood swings started in earnest, throwing me around like a boat in a hurricane. I had no idea what was happening to me. My counselors couldn't tell me. They didn't even recognize it when I went to them to figure out what was happening to me during my first panic attack.
I had been in a relationship for about five months at the time. The young man was just that, very young, and my breakdown scared him. He broke up with me when I was falling apart. I would have married him if he'd asked me. But instead he left me when I needed him the most.
The Desperate Anxiety by Naypong
I wanted to die. But more than that, I wanted to hurt. I wanted to hurt to relieve the pain. My room mate was a burner, and we had a friend who was a cutter. I don't think I would have thought of it had I not known these two women. But I wanted to hurt. I wanted to bleed. I felt that if I could let just a little bit of me out, it would help the pain.
I planned for nearly a week as to how to get something to do this with. It was the only thing I thought about. I was obsessed with the need to hurt outside, like it would help the pain inside by letting some of it out.
I went home for Easter about a week after he broke up with me. I wanted to bleed so badly. I stayed up, awake in my bed until everyone had gone to sleep. Then I got up and tested all the knives in the house, trying to find one that worked. None of them did.
I became almost crazed with the need to try this release. The next day I walked nearly a mile to the nearest drug store and bought some razor blades. That night after everyone went to bed, I sat on the bathroom floor and bled for the first time.
It worked. The pain was less. I felt relief, like someone had lifted the heavy load I was carrying. I bandaged myself up and went back to school the next day, bringing my new addiction with me.
I didn't want to die anymore, but I couldn't function without my razor blades. Having a burner for a room mate didn't help: we enabled each other endlessly. I became so addicted that I couldn't make it through the day without cutting several times. And the more I did it, the more I needed it.
One thing I was very meticulous about was keeping myself clean. I always rubbed myself and the blade with alcohol before and after. I didn't want to get an infection. I wasn't trying to die. I was trying to stay alive.
I ended up dropping out of school right before the end of the semester and moving to my mom's house, where I stayed for a year. My stepfather made it extremely clear that cutting would not be tolerated in the house, but getting out of the situation made my life a lot easier.
I was then diagnosed with bipolar disorder and began medication. It was like seeing the sun for the first time. I didn't feel the need to cut for over a year.
In the Fall of 2004, I went back to the same college. I roomed with a really nice woman, a couple of years older than me. We became fast friends. We went out bar hopping every Friday and Saturday night, but all that "fun" couldn't stop the train wreck.
I began an enormous, spectacular downward spiral that lasted for eight months. In October of that year I began cutting again. It continued to get worse and worse. I dropped out again and moved home after overdosing on anxiety medication. Within a month I had my own apartment and a job. I lost that job and two others before I became unable to work, and soon after that, completely unable to care for myself. I just didn't care. I didn't care about eating, bathing, clean clothes, or sleeping. It got to the point where the only time I would bathe was to cut, because the water made it bleed more.
The only way I didn't die was by cutting. I'd cut many, many times a day. It was the only way I could cope. I started to believe that I had a poison in my blood, and I would get better if I could bleed it out. The only way to get rid of the poison was to bleed.
My downward spiral was punctuated by three inpatient hospital stays in the psychiatric ward. The first stay was after my overdose, just before I moved home to my mom's house. I was released Christmas Eve. The third stay was at the end of my eight-month spiral. I checked in to the state hospital, where I remained for six weeks.
When I checked into the state hospital, I was homeless. Everything that belonged to me had been placed in a storage unit while I was in the hospital. They wouldn't discharge me until I had somewhere to go. I was released into a residential program that saved my life. In that program, they taught me how to be human again, and how to live with mental illness.
I only cut twice after that, and the last time was over seven years ago.
I've been asked many times since then how in the world hurting myself could possibly make me feel better. How does drinking or drugs help someone feel better? It numbs the pain.
A comment in a television show equates well with why someone would cut. It is from an episode of the sitcom "M*A*S*H" that aired in the 70s and early 80s. It is an episode in which Radar O'Riley is upset and goes to his friends B.J. and Hawkeye for a drink.
Radar starts drinking his drink and says, "I thought this stuff was supposed to make you feel better."
B.J. replies, "It's supposed to make you feel nothing."
There were two instances in which I would cut. One was to feel nothing, the other was to feel something. That makes no sense, I know. To make sense of it you'd have to know what was going on in my head.
There were times that I was numb. I felt nothing. I didn't care about anything: eating, bathing, dressing, clean clothes... I didn't care whether I lived or died. There were also times where I was on sensory overload, only the overload was inside my head. My head felt like it was getting scrambled. So many thoughts moving through so fast. They moved so fast I couldn't even grasp them before they were gone. The thoughts in my head would turn into a blur and my head was so busy that I couldn't function on any level, because I couldn't think outside of that blur.
The pain of cutting would help both of these scenarios. Some pain would wake me up when I was numb. I could be alive again. I could do more than sit in bed staring at the wall. When my head was in a blur, the pain would focus my attention. It felt like the blur would settle around the cut, and the cut would focus it until blood came out. After that I could function to do more than rock myself and cry, hitting myself on the head because it wouldn't stop.
What I didn't realize at the time, was that the cutting was an after effect of the abuse I suffered as a teen. I didn't tell anyone for years afterward that my father had been taking me to his bed every night after my mom moved out. After it was over, I refused to acknowledge the event's existence until over five years later. No one knew. And by the time I told anyone, the Statute of Limitations had expired. It was entirely coincidental, but it had expired only a few months before I finally told someone.
I've known many people over the years who have self-injured, men and women. Most of them had been sexually abused. Because of this, if you know someone who self-injures, it is important that they get help. This likely means that either someone is hurting them now, or has hurt them in the past. Help them. Help them help themselves.
But there are other concerns: the physical safety of the self-injurer. Someone who cuts is addicted to cutting. Like a drug, the person will need more and more over time to get the same effect: having the drug more and more often, and needing bigger doses to have the same effect.. This translates to the cutter as not only more instances of cutting, but also cutting deeper. This can mean accidentally cutting into veins or arteries, nerves, muscles, or tendons. All of these can cause serious, sometimes permanent, injuries. A cutter will usually not pay attention to these warnings. It's not necessarily that they don't care, but that the cutting is more important. This is an addiction, like drugs and alcohol. The drugs and alcohol are more important than the possibility of overdose or illnesses like HIV, liver disease, heart problems, or kidney disease, all of which can be fatal.
This is another extremely important reason to get help. To die accidentally from something they are doing to stay alive is one of the ultimate ironies. Help for people who self-injure needs to be help for addiction as well as help for the causes of the self-injury. One hospital I was checked in to put me in a special ward for eating disorders and self-injury because they are addictions. Our treatment included addiction counseling with different groups for each category of addiction.
I've known a lot of people who self-injure, and what happened to them was not their fault, in any case. Help your loved ones. Help yourselves. It will get better if you let it.
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