Letter to the Rest of the World, From Those of Us Caught Up in the Addiction of Cutting

Letter to the Rest of the World, From Those of Us Caught Up in the Addiction of Cutting

Dear world,

We know that you don’t understand us: the pain we’ve gone through and the thoughts that pass through our heads when we do something as seemingly unthinkable as hurting ourselves. And yes, we see those looks you give us. The ones that convey your disgust, confusion, horror.

We know you don’t understand that there is deep, intense emotional pain that drives us to commit these acts, or the fact that, to us, any type of physical pain is far more preferable than emotions.

Despite what you may have heard, we’re not crazy, suicidal, or desperate for attention. We’re just trying to deal with our problems in the only way we know how. Many of us have already tried to self-medicate with other things: music, food, drugs, sex, pornography, alcohol….. whatever we could get our hands on. but we’ve discovered the accessibility of cutting, and the calm feelings it brings.

Although there are exceptions, most of us don’t want to kill ourselves. In fact, our technique becomes more honed and practiced as time goes on, so that we know exactly how deep is too deep, and the places not to cut. We cut to cope, to regain control of pain, and learn how to go on living.

Furthermore, cutting is not a cry for attention. People who cut generally try to hide it and keep it a secret. When you try to force us to talk about things we don’t feel comfortable talking about, or tell us to just stop doing it, you only leave us feeling more alone, isolated and alienated. Telling us to stop cutting is like telling an alcoholic to stop drinking: most of us can’t just stop, and for the few that can, we’ll only replace it with something else. What you haven’t realized is that all your probing questions and demands for us to stop aren’t helping! In fact, they’re making it worse.

Nevertheless, there are things you can do. Asking us how long we’ve been injuring ourselves, with what, how often, if there is anything you can do – these are helpful, less invasive questions that may open up the door for further conversation. On that note, do ask, but ask us gently. Despite the fact that this habit helps us control (or at least helps us feel like we’re in control of) our emotional pain, it is still a sensitive subject, because we realize that this is not normal.

When you question us, here is something else you can ask. However, please be very careful, and consider all the effects that this question may have on both you and the injurer before you ask it. In regards to asking us to show you our injuries: the first thing you need to know is that the lines on our skin are a picture of the pain in our hearts that we’re trying to release or control. Some of us even carve letters or words on our skin that represent specific things.

Before you ever ask a self-injuring person to show you their injuries, please consider the following. First, what kind of effect will this have on you? Are you prepared to see a gruesome, graphic representation of someone’s pain played out on their skin? And second, what kind of relationship does this person have with you? (Please be careful here not to let your own feelings get in the way of answering this question honestly. They might feel differently about you than you feel about them.)

If you are confident that this person feels open with you, and you have seen that they frequently come to you for help or advice, then they may feel open enough to share their pain, and that can be a beautiful thing.

For us, if someone sees our pain and doesn’t reject us, that can be very healing. However, please respect us if we don’t want to share our pain that way. If you ask and we decline, forcing us into it will just make everything worse. Forcing someone to share their heart with you never results in a deeper closeness in the relationship.

We do realize that some of you will be desperate to see our injuries just so that you can see for yourself how bad they are. Please realize that, as I mentioned before, cutting is very precise. Unlike alcoholics or drug addicts, we rarely get out of control. Almost all of us know exactly how far we can go before we make a cut that requires medical attention.

This doesn’t mean you should leave us alone or give up on us. Now, we understand that you might have questions: Why? Why do we do this to ourselves? How could cutting possibly help? What made us do this, anyway?

There are a lot of different reasons people cut. The point of cutting is ultimately to cover deep emotional pain, far beyond the scars we are hiding. Please understand: cutting is just a symptom of something deeper and more painful going on inside us. It is the treatment of one pain with another. It can be how we regulate strong emotions, temporarily calming our nerves when we are stressed. It can be a way of controlling our bodies since we feel like our lives (or people in our lives) are controlling us.

It can be a way of releasing anxiety, as the emotional pain slips away into the physical pain. It can distract from emotional numbness by forcing us into feeling something. Cutting can express things that cannot be put into words.

It can also express self-hatred. Sometimes we feel really guilty about things in our past; self-harm is a way of punishing ourselves for those things. It can be the only way we express how we feel like we just want to tear ourselves apart.

Those of us in painful or abusive relationships feel stuck, imprisoned, powerless. Our rage and fear scream out at us to be released, and cutting is how we do that. When we feel alone or isolated, cutting provides a sense of purpose and something to make us feel better in light of our isolation or rejection from others.

Some of us have been through traumatic experiences. We become emotionally numb, shutting down our emotions so we don’t have to re-live the pain. Cutting helps make us feel alive, to wake us from this emotional “death” we imposed upon ourselves. It’s as if we’ve got no more tears to cry, so cutting does it for us.

No matter how much our reasons for cutting vary, we always cut for some type of relief. We – like everyone else – just want to be happy. One thing that most of you don’t realize or may have never heard about cutting is that, when a blade slices the skin, chemicals called endorphins are released in the brain. This is a natural bodily function that happens whenever the body’s pain receptors are activated.

One of the functions of endorphins is to produce hormones that cause feelings of euphoria and calmness. Have you heard it said that cutting produces a “calm euphoria”? As soon as the blade slices through our skin, we actually experience these feelings of happiness and peace. It’s a very effective way to get an emotional high, of sorts.

The disadvantage to these hormone-producing endorphins is that the body’s pain receptors can be desensitized, which is why cutting becomes a vicious cycle of addiction in which the injurer must cut deeper or more frequently to get the same results.

You also need to know that many of us have grown up in families where showing your emotions is not allowed, and therefore are unsure of what to do with strong emotions. A lot of us also have a limited support network, due to family dysfunctionality or shame about our habits.

The most important thing we need you to understand about cutting is that it is an addiction: one of the cruelest and most difficult to break. It is extremely accessible; after all, we already have our body and the tools we need to do the damage. We don’t need to leave the house, and it doesn’t cost anything. We already have everything we need to get the calm euphoria cutting offers us. The very reason this habit is so accessible is the same reason it is so hard to break.

There is nothing quite like it. Most of us never intend to become addicted. For us, cutting is like a drug: we want it all the time; we don’t care where we are – it’s as if we can’t go on without it. It can easily become compulsive, meaning the more we do it, the more we need it.

Cutting is a dangerous thing to fall into, and often, when we get to the point where we want to stop, we just don’t know how to begin. We desperately need your understanding and reassurance. We just want to be loved, not condemned.

Sincerely,

Just normal people who want to be loved (even if we do happen to be cutters, too)