Head help: What is it with cutting? - Help.com

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Ah helpbot… my vigilant friend!

Because it’s in fashion.

Xeno Dragon wrote:
Because it’s in fashion.

As i suspected!

I’m not a cutter, mind you. But it’s not difficult to tell.

I was hoping some cutters could explain this to me!

I used to cut, because people always talk about it, like you said. I normally wouldn’t actually cut though, I punch ssomething until my knuckles bleed…I’m getting better though, I haven’t self-harmed in a while. Also, when you are thinking of suicide, cutting your wrists is an easy way to do it, so cutting your wrist/arm comes to mind.

So just out of curiosity, why are you anonymous?

An interesting question.
Perhaps because I have friends on this who have spoken about cutting, and i don’t wish to alientate them.

Also, possibly because I am removing some of the observer effect from the post.

Ok, thats cool.

Also, I am more curious about why people cut for the sake of cutting!
I realise some people do it as a suicide attempt. But I also hear people say things like…. it felt really good to cut myself!

I don’t understand how that kind of pain could feel good!

It hurts, but its way better than emotional pain. When its emotional, its intangible. When its cutting (or any other self-harm) you can actually feel it, which feels like it helps, even though it doesnt.

i gotta go, ill talk to you more on sunday if you want.

I used to cut.
1 - It was cool
2 - It made me feel better
3 - I used to enjot the pain. I didn’t think I was worth living…

it’s hard to understand unless you’re actually doing it but its like “question_mark?” put it…. emotional pain can sometimes be so unbearable that you need to feel real pain in order to kinda take away from emotional pain…..substitute
emotional pain isnt “real” however physical pain is ..ya i dunno if im makin sense lolol its complicated

Kind of!
I believe emotional pain is very real.
We feel emotions in our brains.
The brain is an organ, a part of the body.
I sometimes get headaches from being upset or anxious.

I find when I get angry it hurts my head.
And all of those things I have described are a form of physical or ‘real’ pain as you put it!

I was going through I really hard time. My grandfather was dying of liver cancer, I had exams, My parents were putting amazing aamounts of stress on me and I had just lost my other grandfather and I had no friends at that time…

ya sorry thats not the way i meant it… i just didnt know how to put it lol

anna515 wrote:
ya sorry thats not the way i meant it… i just didnt know how to put it lol

Its ok! I understand.
I apologise if i sounded condescending in any way.
I am trying to get my head around the concept.

Because I would like to help people who do this.
But to help them, I first need to understand them.

And I’ve never really seen this subject discussed before, other than people admitting they do it, and that it makes them feel good.

Neither of these things gives me the answer to whY?

personally as a person who when i was a small child would dig my nails into my arms… (as cutting was not heard of back then).. feeling the pain and seeing the blood was a way for me to control a pain with in me… the pain that i felt from living was so brutal and emotional.. i couldnt handle it… but with the pain that i inflicted upon myself, it was a pain that i felt i could control… and it took away a bit of the internal emotional pain that i was feeling inside…

sorry, thats the best that i can describe it..

Actually, when I did it (I don’t do it anymore…at least not as badly), It was like taboo. It would get me labelled as a freak, a weirdo, even a stupid b*tch in some cases. Now though, it seems to be like a trend or something, I don’t get it.

I never did it to get attention, I never did it to look ‘cool’ like I’ve seen and known some people to do it today (I actually have had people admit it to me ‘because it’s ‘cool’”…they’re 14.) It was a stress relief for me. If I was upset, or angry, or whatever else, it seemed to be a way for me to release it in bursts instead of show it emotionally.

I was taught that crying made me weak, some even told me it made me look more ugly, so instead of crying I focused the pain elsewhere. I also, did not just cut myself, and I won’t mention anything else like the OP mentioned, because it might give some people ideas.

But yeah, I don’t see how it’s so “popular” these days. If anything, the people who do it out of genuine pain, aren’t getting the help and support they need because of this whole thing.

If you ask me, a lot of people I’ve seen say they don’t do it for attention or that they’re not emo, but honestly, I don’t believe half of them. I knew a small group of people when I was a teen who used to say the same thing, and they DID do it for attention.

When I say small, I mean the ammount of people who did it…like I said, it was taboo in my years. I was one of the only people in any of my schools that did it. Nowdays, I see/know about 15-20 kids in every school, and even then I’m just guessing when it might be a larger number.

I cut because I knew a lot of people who had and they kept saying how relieving it was and helpful and stuff and I had actually been purposefully burning myself and hitting myself for a long time, also, I don’t know if this counts a self harm but I used to specifically fight with my dad so I would get hurt.

Anonymous wrote:
I cut because I knew a lot of people who had and they kept saying how relieving it was and helpful and stuff and I had actually been purposefully burning myself and hitting myself for a long time, also, I don’t know if this counts a self harm but I used to specifically fight with my dad so I would get hurt.

anything to intentionally get you hurt is considered self harm… its a way to control pain to ignore the real deep pain that you are feeling down inside.

with some people it is a fashion.. with most people (on here at least) its seems to be the real thing.
i cut and i do it for multiple reasons.

1. it gets my mind off of my problems, lets me focus on something else for once.
2. it has a way of relieving my stress and problems
3. it is one thing in my life i can actually control (in a way..)
4. (this is gonna sound really depressing) but another reason i do it is self hatred… i feel that i deserve the pain almost.

however i do self harm in other ways as well… i only talk about cutting because thats the one that people seem to understand more than anything (cause its more common). there are many forms of self harm but some people just dont see it as a “problem” so figure theres nothing to talk about.