Skittles, thanks to you I just remembered something I didn't think I still remembered!

When I was a little kid, we lived across a very small creek (so small it was jumpable from one side to the other) and around a fence from my elementary school. My mom was a stay at home mom (till I was in 5th grade), and so since we lived so close I would go home for lunch every day.

Even as a 6 or 7 year old, my mother never took me seriously -- one day I told her my knee hurt, and she yelled at me for faking it so I didn't have to go back to school in the afternoon, and I said my knee hurt, so she got all pissed off and called the doctor and took me in. The doctor looked at my knee and promptly admitted me to the hospital. HA! Showed HER.

Anyway, sometimes to get her attention, I would draw on myself with red crayon to make it look like blood, just to get her to ask what I did to myself and get her to pay attention to me.

I have never before correlated that with my then-future cutting, but maybe it really did start that early.

In any event, over the years several mental health types have suggested the same thing to me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I find a lot more help in cutting a piece of 8x11 paper into itsy-bitsy little shreds. You can take out your emotions on the paper instead of on yourself and it takes care of the anger, too.

Good luck.

Candy