I cut the most I ever have last week since I started about a year ago. - Help.com

Re assess the people you are keeping as friends if you seem unable to keep them.
Everyone puts on a bit of an act around others, thats not abnormal.
Cutting will isolate yourself from ppl more, nothing good can come of it & i promise you you will regret it in a few yrs.

You cut to distract yourself from anxiety.

The body is a chemical machine driven by anxiety. Recognize this. Your feels have nothing to do with reality.

You can constructively distract yourself with exercise, cutting the sugar and caffeine, and socializing with people. You’re only as fake as you allow yourself to be. You’re putting out a fake persona then beating yourself up about it.

So change. Change is as easy as the first step. Change, commit, keep it up.

If you really want to feel differently, join a running/biking/swimming group/class and keep going. You’ll develop new skills, new friends, and you’ll feel a lot better.

Change is easy.

After I told the doctors to stop trying to resuscitate my wife of 11 years because she’d be a vegetable, I changed a lot. All because I decided it was the only path out of misery. And change was so much easier than I ever expected.

Feelings lie all the time. Recognize this and you’ll free yourself from treating your anxieties as if they are real threats.

bookworm16 wrote:
I’ve changed friends so many times, it must be something wrong with me rather than my friends.
I know that cutting isolates you, and I already regret it, but it doesn’t mean that I can stop.

Maybe your choosing the wrong ppl to be friends with, find something else to do instead of cutting

Change is as simple as walking through a different neighbourhood, going into a different store, signing up for a different class, eating something from a different culture, listening to different music, committing to the new things over and over. All those experiences change you. The people you meet change you. The experiences change you. You’ll be so intrigued by what’s going on around you that you’ll have no interest in cutting.

Cutting is just a means of dealing with anxiety. Address the root problem and cutting will no longer interest you.

I think people who don’t want to see people who are down and upsetting and are less fortunate than others just have a hard time seeing the reality of life. & that’s a lot of people. People who wouldn’t like you are people you shouldn’t care about if they do or don’t. I think if you were independent and stopped what makes you weak, than you could get up and start feeling like an individual should- and that’s full of love. If this doesn’t help I’m sorry. But I want you to know I’m someone who care’s about you & i have never met you. I guess that makes me crazy, but I just know that you’re here for a reason… and you may need to start doing things to do what you should be doing.. that makes you happy. Other than that.. I know how you feel.

bookworm16 wrote:
Change isn’t easy when it’s all you’ve ever known, when what you’re trying to change is as much a part of you as your eyes or your hair, when it’s your only coping mechanism where others would turn to friends, you turn to cutting. It is not as easy as simply changing.

Feelings may lie, but they can also tell the truth, and I don’t want to take a chance that they might be lying and get hurt even more.

I think you’ve really figured a lot of this out yourself, book. You can’t really change until you develop other coping mechanisms. Those are very hard to do, but if you put half the energy into that that you have to cutting and covering it up, you’ll be there in no time. Why don’t you talk to your counselor about this and see if you can really put it all on the table?

Sorry. I gathered from another post that you had; however, this might be a good time to resume? Someday, your arms will thank you.

Chase up the counciling, get it started again, you need to!

AND, if you don’t mention it, you’ll keep cutting and cutting until *everyone* knows things are worse. By that point, your arms will care, as I suspect, will the rest of you. A huge part of this is accepting yourself, Book, and accepting that things are maybe not going OK - and that’s OK.

It is OK not to be OK! Failure is a sign that you’re still human, which by all accounts, is a good thing. Pretending that things are all rosy when they’re anything but is not a good thing. It helps no one - most especially you. People spend more time trying NOT to solve problems than would take to actually sit and solve them. It’s really easy once you’ve started, so all you’ve got to do is try. Good luck, Book!

No one is too far gone. It’s never too late to change or start over. You can do this. Even if you fall down, you can still get up again. Persistence is the whole key to overcoming anxiety.

Oh puh-lease. What are you like 16? You’ve a whole world ahead of you. You should read the “Big Book” for alcoholics and check out Bill W’s story. Bill was the guy who founded AA and, when he did, he was literally inches from death. The guy had quit drinking about 1000 times and had lost just about everything a man can lose in his lifetime. By the end of his days, it was just him in a hospital bed counting down the hours. BUT not only did he somehow live, he also sobered up and went on to from one of the largest organizations in the world, one that’s saved countless thousands of other lives. And he did all this only AFTER he had given up on everything…including himself. So you see, it’s never too late as long as you’re still moving forward.