I cut for 5 years as a teen. I never told anyone and kept it well hidden. Even when I cut too deep once and had to have stitches, I made up a plausible story about how I came to have that cut. I was very ashamed of all this and felt I was highly deviant. (In these pre-Internet days, I had never ever heard of anyone else in the world doing this, and thought I had invented this and that it was very strange and wrong.) I didn't want anyone to know. But yet cutting helped me cope with the problems in my life. It helped me deal with emotional pain. It didn't help me solve the problems, but with this coping mechanism, I was able to get by. Looking back, I wish I could have somehow worked on solving my problems instead of just withstanding them. But I did what I could. If I hadn't cut, it probably would have been something else, like drugs or anorexia. A lot of my problems stemmed from my family. When I was 17, I moved out and went to college, far away. I never cut again. I had removed the problems from my life, so no longer had a need to cut. As an adult, I look back and view it now as an immature coping mechanism. I try not to beat myself up about it. I was young and did the best I could.