I had been a steady self-cutter for the last couple of years until my relatively new therapist got so scared about my increasing and more severe cutting along with increasing suicidality that he laid down the law, saying the cutting (and self-hitting) had to stop for the therapy to continue and to be of any benefit to me.

I listened to him. It was and is incredibly hard. After being cutting-free for a few weeks, I was all set to return to it tonight. But I stopped short, put the knife down and didn't cut. Even though I had similar emotional turmoil as to what led me to do it before, I didn't have it in me to release all of that by cutting anymore.

So what I thought were the myriad benefits (all mentioned previously) had been actually contributing to me being stopped up and not being able to express fully in therapy.

In the end, there are no benefits, just a continuing delay in becoming truly emotionally healed. It definitely serves as emotion regulation for those (like me) who do not know how to do that in a healthy way. But stopping the cutting is a big step toward developing true emotional regulation.

The best way to achieve this milestone is to not start cutting in the first place.