Payne

I started cutting at age twelve and continued from there, I was cautious and controlled enough that no one knew I did it until late highschool. Without their knowledge I had found friends with the same problem. Out of my friends in highschool 4 out of 6 of us cut. I never really tried to stop until I was about seventeen. I found that the first time I wanted to cut and decided not to my body began to shake. From my stomach out, I tried breathing deep, focusing on anything else. By the end my whole body would tremble from morning until night. When it would get bad I would find myself vibrating going about my day until I finally got sick. The first couple times this would last for two days then go away for a week.
At first I would make it through one out of three of these moments without support and without cutting. As time progressed I found that the more times I managed to push through these two days the longer I would go before it came back. It wasn't until I was about twenty two that I began to go long stints, six months, a year before I would hit a moment I couldn't control myself. By this point I had shared my problem with all of my friends, it's part of who I am and not something I'm ashamed of just something I'm working on. Only a couple of my friends see me when I'm like this as it takes a remarkable amount of trust and comfort. Everytime it starts I now attempt to identify if there is a stress or problem that is now pushing its way to the surface, lately there has not been, but by keeping record I have found it comes every 3-4 months like clockwork. At this point I haven't cut in almost two years but I still find myself shaking uncontrollably for a week and doing everything within my support system and personal power to assure it doesn't happen.

Where I'm going with this long winded statement is, has anyone else had a continued affect. Sometimes cropping up even when they can't identify any emotional strain for the feeling. I have worked very hard to improve my mental well being and oftentimes when this happens it annoys me more that its happening than any problem in my life.

theuncertainty

Hi, Payne. I don't cut, though the temptation/compulsion has shown up a couple times lately. I've been dealing with anxiety attacks and working towards figuring out what my triggers are. It's been really easy in some cases, but incredibly difficult in others. One in particular comes to mind: I get very anxious at one point in my drive to work. It took forever to realize that I was more likely to see moving trucks turning onto the road there (their warehouse/office was just down the road). And I had generalized location on drive - specific moving company - general moving co.s - XAH's former business - XAH.

Like you said, it 's really annoying to not be able to figure out the trigger.

Payne

One thing I used to say to people all the time was, "you will never understand it unless you have been there, so I pray you never get me" it's hard and rough, one thing that was important in stopping from cutting, and may help you never start. Is creating a support system, even if you aren't comfortable telling them what they're supporting. A friend or family member I truly could call anytime to get me through that first fifteen minutes. It didn't become an all day thing until I was addicted to it, so the first fifteen minutes should be the key early on. Call someone, run, hold ice cubes, snap a rubber band.
On top of that, as weird as this sounds, I'm dog trainign and one book I read was informative and directed towards dog so it didn't feel like I was learning about me but in the long run I did, it's called "Don't shoot the dog" it helps discuss how you can change responses to a stimuli, it can give you a non direct approach to learning how to do that. And if you're anything like me, indirect is best.

louis

Hi Payne

I really understood what you wrote and thankyou for sharing with us here.
Cutting is something that people dont really speak about and i have known people that say it isnt an addiction... well to me it is.
I also believe for me it is not self harm... others struggle with that too.

I have been cutting since the age of 13... someone taught me how to do it when i was in care. They taught me how to do it in hidden places and in ways that would cause limited damage with the effect i needed. It was a way for me to stop feeling the hurt and confusion i felt at the time.
I did it alot at that age and going through my teenage years into my early 20's. I later became addicted to other things but cutting has always been my primary thing i fall back on when i couldnt cope. The only time i ever believe i lost control of it was when i drank at the same time... once ending up in hospital... but i signed myself out as i felt they didnt understand me.

I am 38 now... and over the last 10yrs the limes i have cut have lessoned... and as you said the times between cutting have grown wider.

I have a sponsor and they help me with my other addictions but also help me with this. I have spoken to them recently about feelings of wanting to cut when i am not in distress.
Sometimes its like i miss it... I miss the feeling.... I miss that feeling of control it gives me... I miss having my parahanalia (cant spell :o)) around me..
I used to have the things i used and first aid stuff together in a special container and used to look after them very well.
My sponsor likened it to a drug user keeping the items they use around them to feel safe.
I guess that it correct because sometimes its like when i dont have them round me or when i first threw them away it was like not having when i did the same with drugs and alcohol.... as soon as i throw them away i wanted them... does that make sense?

Can i ask... are you male or female?

The reason i am asking is i found alot of my urges to use recently were affected by hormones. At this time the urges were very strong and talking over these urges with my sponsor did help but for me alot of it came down to distraction till it passed.

Anyway... ive waffled enough but i just wanted to let you know you are not alone... even though you probably know this.

Take care and be well

Zencat

I almost never talk about my cutting...but I'll say something now. Cutting accompanied other symptoms of my personality disorder (PD). Now this is just me but I have rituals...evolving rituals that have overtaken my life. I'm most certain you may relate. They can control my very being...almost forcing me to comply. And if I comply...I end up totally out of control...submitting to what I feel to my PD. I have fought long and had to not summit.

For me knowing why and how my cutting and other acts that brought me embarrassment and shame, was the first step in healing. How to be aware of the underlying emotions that triggered my cutting behavior was the second step for me. Theirs no third step for me...at best I recognize a need to change after the action has taken place. I for one have come to the conclusion that arresting my maladaptive behavior is one of hit or miss. It is the awareness as with the practice of no matter what, I can return to recovery practices. Leasing the incidents of relapse and mitigating the damage is better than nothing.

Payne

Yes I used to do this a lot at first, it drove my friends nuts. One friend I trusted very much towards the beginning of it listened enough to understand that completely removing it would make it worse. When I first started I was known to throw knives and razors, just to get them away from me. After a while I found that rubbing my hand horizontally and lightly across the blade would help to calm it down a bit. She would allow me to do that while I sat in the same room I by no means am suggesting that if you want to do it you should play with knives, that was a very dangerous game I played. p.s. I'm female Louis and I generally don't want to cut when my hormones are raised, oftentimes i'm too irrationally depressed to do anything that active...st. johns wort, cinnamon, and spicy foods have helped that a lot without the need for drugs!

Oddly enough I never felt I did it for control or pain...Blood, calmed me, the feeling as it ran down my arm the look of it. Always makes me think of the phrase "you bleed just to know you're alive." Probably because that's how mine started. I had a basketball game right after I broke my ankle and it healed on my birthday. My whole family forgot my twelfth birthday and that day I came home pulled off my ankle brace and blood poured down (the brace had broken the skin through the sock) I remember sitting on my bedroom floor just watching it. For those couple minutes until it healed that was all I saw. For those minutes I wasn't twelve with a forgotten birthday who had to ask the coach for a ride home who didn't have any friends to remember that it was my birthday. For a minute I was just alive and human and bleeding. I believe thats why it continued.

Now when I get the urge I can often identify the problem then immediately stop the urge because I can deal with it. However somedays I'm perfectly content and it will surface (usually worse than ever)...I would assume there is some unconscious pathological fear of mine that if things are going good inevitably they will go wrong soon. The only other times it breaks through is if I accidentally get cut, I learned years ago if I feel my skin break to immediately cover it so I don't get the high of seeing it.

The accidental cuts and urges when I'm upset don't bother me. However the days on end that I shake drive me nuts, you would think after all these years I would be done with withdrawals!

Louis my best advice from my experience...cutting isn't a terrible shameful thing, and most people have come across it at some time, find someone you trust and share it. They will almost always offer to be there..use it! And if you can't find that just keep busy contact someone anytime you want to. It gets easier as you begin to understand it.

ha! long winded again, guess I don't get to talk about this much either.

Kassie2

Have you read anything about neurotransmitters and the pathway process?
When certain pathways develop in reaction to certain situations, they continue unless we work to change the neuropathway. That work is very hard but possible. It explains the ongoing urge. It is much like the PTSD experience - long after I put the experience behind me - the reaction(behavior) continued - the more I understood and changed that reaction - the less it occurred.

Just a suggestion to do futher homework. Seems you are making progress - look further and keep it up.

Payne

Awesome Kassie thanks for the advice, I'll learn up on anything that may help. Sucks to kick the mental problem but still have the physical lingering around poking at the wound.

Zencat

I am more the surgical type. I have had a 'kit' like for ever.. from.day one. The release I can feel draws me along the running line of... I feel so special because I can draw pain and release it at my will. The control is in my choice of instrument. I control the flow, the depth, the length, the experience...its all mine to regulate.

What emotions, that revolve about other people seem like a waist of my cutting control. Petty people with their sad wants. Spinning around never ending drama only to plague any trite resemblance of serenity. Soul suckers be them.

It is detachment that brings comfort. Detachment from my self-important tripe that would have me believe the self-eccentric lushness of my own importance mattered for sh!t. Ha Ha what a screw into the mind that the dribble I flushed out with impunity mattered to anybody that could type.

Payne

Everyone always thinks that the same thing draws people too it and motivates them. It's always amazing how many different reasons and releases for it there are. However Zencat I can hear the romanticism in your typing and I have certainly been there. I hope that's due to remembering it (because I know I can go there when I do it), but I also hope you're on the road to recovery for it. It can be a great release and an terrible captor.

Pandora1

I understand Payne. I"m also 38 and have been cutting since my teens. I stopped for a very long time and restarted this past year. It is my way of dealing with feelings. It is very hard to stop. It is the easiest of my addictions to hide also.

Payne

Yep, for those of us who do it as a way to control things or to calm down instead of the classic "they all just do it for attention" hiding the cuts is remarkably easy. And almost an added fun game when you're doing it. Not only do you control the situation, but yourself, and the people around you.

I am by no means advocating that cutting is good, I'm very proud that I have been able to stop myself it has now been almost two years for me. The way I always saw it was that any addiction is the removal of the ability to make a choice. By giving up cutting I regained my ability to choose to not do it. Some days are easier than others but everytime I choose not to. One thing that always stopped me was remembering a friend of mine showing me hers once. I nearly blacked out she had so many, to see that she had hurt herself like that was so painful to me that i always attempt to remember that pain when I want to cut, because though I may relieve some of my pain, I'm causing that to the people i love.... what gets me through I guess. Anymore I'm mostly just annoyed at my body's urge when my mind is saying no.

Zencat

Your right the romanticism dose come out when I am recalling my cutting experience. Its strange how something that can cause so much emotional suffering gets recalled without mentioning all that that put me in treatment in the first place.

sleepie

Most of my cutting was infrequent and began in my early teens due to an abusive environment. It went later into my early 20's when I was feeling bad about myself. And then rarely after that. It is an easy thing to fetishize as it is a life affirming activity- especially if one's feelings, experiences and very self have been negated repeatedly throughout life. I always felt as if I counted somehow, at the sight of my blood. Sometimes though, I felt I deserved punishment for being an ugly failure.

Payne

Romanticism seems perfectly logical to me...maybe not "normal" but logical. During our worst times cutting was an escape a release and a friend. What is romance besides that? Guess it's just like learning that what we thought was "normal" is actually destructive...sheesh, anyone else ever a little jealous of "normal?"

theuncertainty

Thank you for this, Payne. It has been really rough lately, and I've been terrified of telling the people who have been supporting me with my anxiety and depression. I will have to try to find a way to do it without freaking them out in connection with my prior issues with suicide thoughts. Because it is not about that all. I know that, but I'm not sure they'll see it as different. ? But thank you for pointing out that I need a support system for this too.

AdAstra

I am 34, and have been free of SI for around 2 years now. I did it to break out of the dissociation...the ritual and vision of the act "woke" me up from the emotional numbness I felt with my PTSD/PD. The scars are permanent, and I've learned to accept that they are there...they are part of my life story...I still wish at times that they were not there of course.

Payne

I felt inclined to post on here, since I'm having one of those nights. I tend to always think they're just physical, however I am going through a damn near frontal lobotomy with my best friend while she pokes my mental wounds to explain that it is because i'm keeping stuff in. Tonight is one of my hardest in probably a year, but I know I'll make it through because about four people in my support system keep randomly poking to check on me.

Payne

Last night as I did my evening ritual I found myself lingering over the razor blade, running my thumb back and form, my breath catching and the urge to use it was stronger than it has been in years. It's odd that I stumbled on this old post today. Ironically I ask for my support system to be there less than ever now because usually I'm fine and today I was berating myself for not being stronger. Reading my own advice was a good idea, I poked my friend today and let them know, and already am doing a bit better.

Hammer

Do not be too hard on yourself.

You may have heard some variation of this . . . .

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” - Maya Angelou

You were correct on your observations that it may "calm" you, and Cassie's comments some years, ago, now were quite correct, as well. Here is some of the typical research findings that Cassie may have been talking about >>>

Hurts so good: Neural clues to the calming effects of self-harm -- ScienceDaily