Jenn,

Your reasons sound very familiar to me. Cutting wasn't my primary method. I started when I was 5 years old with biting myself. I had pretty nasty-looking bite marks all over my arm that my mother was afraid somebody would think was ring-worm (which doesn't look like that, but that was what she said). I did it without even thinking about it when my emotions got to be too much for me to deal with and there was no other available outlet. Through the years I did various things - head banging, depriving myself of food/water/sleep, getting a really bad sunburn on purpose, walking on the sides of my feet so that it would hurt my ankles. I have just been generally self-destructive. I did try cutting too (I thought at first that it was a suicide attempt but that I was too weak to go through with it all the way). I also had no idea that other people hurt themselves on purpose until seeing it on some TV dramas, including ER, but there were a couple I saw it on before that too.

My reasons have had to do with being overwhelmed and at my wit's end. I'm angry or frustrated and other solutions are not available or not working. I hold my feelings in until they get explosive (growing up, if I tried to talk about my feelings I would just be ridiculed or criticized). It's also communication. I appear to be so in control that people don't believe me if I say I can't take any more. They might tell me to calm down - it isn't that bad. Oh yes it is - here, I'll show you! Or I feel inadequate - can never be good enough - sure that "everyone" (more accurately a specific person or handful of people, but to me it seems like everyone) hates me. Or I'm mad and if I don't do something I'm afraid of what I might do (so it's to stay in control and not yell at or severely punish the kids). Going back to communication as a reason, I've had depression ranging from mild to severe for my whole life, but have functioned anyway. People didn't see that there was anything for me to be depressed about or figured that was just the way I was since I never was any different, so I never got adequate treatment. My parents refused to admit that I had any problem, so I was 19 before I ever had any therapy. Then I was told that I was just homesick. I didn't start to get any real help for the depression until I was about 30 and was using blades and making permanent scars. So maybe attention seeking was part of it, but it was because I was forced to demonstrate a need before anyone would help me.

Sorry if that is too much detail. Over the last year or so I have lost my inhibition about talking about this kind of stuff. Sometimes I don't even recognize my own feelings until they reach that critical mass and start leaking out. My kids go into some stuff again that I discovered missing on Monday but was surprised to find that I wasn't that upset about it. Asked them about it and they all denied knowing anything. This morning wrappers are showing up, and here I am with several new cuts. I don't know what else to do.

Wendy

<font color=orange>There is an easy answer to your problem that is neat, plausible, and wrong.

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