Why People Cut

I hate to put myself in this category, but there you go. Since I have little experience in this, I thought I would try to learn some information about it. One woman that I know personally who cuts herself said that she uses a rubberband that she snaps so that she can still feel the pain without actually cutting herself. I might try that, but for me it might actually be the markings that I am going for. Since I have no signs of pregnancy, either on my body or in the house, maybe sometimes I feel like if I have some marking on my body it will be a reminder of the pain I feel for Toby.

And then somedays, that's not it at all. Some days I just feel terribly numb and want to feel something.

On other days, I am overwhelmed and want to feel in control and that is something that I have complete control over.

Other days, I keep seeing images in my mind that I can't get out and the pain of cutting helps erase them.

There is no one answer. But this article might be helpful for some...

Taken from: http://helpguide.org/mental/self_injury.htm
Cutting and Self-Harm: Self-Injury Help, Support, and Treatment

Whether you’re dealing with a past trauma or facing overwhelming issues in everyday life, you may have turned to cutting yourself or other self-harm as a way to cope with your problems. Whatever the reason, there is help—and hope—available. Cutting and other self-injury may make you feel briefly like you’re better able to handle life again, but then the pain returns without any permanent recovery.

You can end this dangerous cycle by learning safer, more healing ways to deal with your problems. There are professionals who can provide treatment, and ways you can help yourself. You have the power to find healthier ways to manage your pain.


Understanding cutting and self-harm

Cutting and self-harm are often ways to express deep distress and cope with painful memories. And although you may want to stop, you may not know how to begin. Understanding why you self-harm can be a vital first step toward your recovery. If you can figure out what function your self-injury serves, you can learn other ways to get those needs met—which in turn can reduce your desire to hurt yourself. Once you better understand why you self-harm, you can learn ways to stop self-harming, and find resources that can support you through this struggle.

Myths and facts about cutting and self-harm

Because cutting and other means of self-harm tend to be taboo subjects, the people around you—and possibly even you—may harbor serious misconceptions about your motivations and state of mind.
Myth: Self-harm is a suicidal act.

• Fact: Although people do die from self-harm, these instances are accidental; in general, self-harmers do not want to die. In fact, self-injury may be a way of coping, of regaining control of pain—in order to go on living.

Myth: People who self-injure are crazy.

• Fact: Those who self-harm are usually dealing with trauma, not mental health problems. There are exceptions, but by and large, you are probably trying to cope with problems in the only way you know how.

Myth: Injuring yourself is a cry for attention.

• Fact: Friends, family, and even healthcare professionals may think that if you hurt yourself, you are seeking attention, but the painful truth is that people who self-harm generally try to hide what they are doing—rather than draw attention to it—because they feel ashamed and afraid.

Self-harm and your emotions

You may find yourself more likely to self-harm after an overwhelming or distressing experience, or series of experiences. It’s possible that you never learned how to identify or express difficult feelings in a healthy way. Understanding your emotions and how they may make you want to self-harm can be another important step toward recovery.

Emotional reasons behind cutting and self-harm

When emotions feel out of hand and you can’t cope with your pain, you may turn to cutting yourself or other self-harm. Self-harm may be how you:

• Regulate strong emotions. If you are experiencing high stress, self-harm can—temporarily—calm your nerves.
• Distract yourself from emotional pain. You may feel emotionally “numbed” by past traumas and need a way to force yourself into feeling something.
• Express things that cannot be put into words. Self-harm may be the only way you know how to display anger or deep sadness.
• Exert a sense of control over your body.  You may imagine that hurting yourself will prevent something worse from happening.
• Self-punish or express self-hate. You may have a childhood history of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse and erroneously blame yourself for it. Self-harm can be a way to punish yourself.
• Self-soothe. You may not know any other means to calm intense emotions.

Common emotional traits of self-injurers

Although everyone’s story is unique, if you cut or self-harm, chances are you have certain emotional issues in common with other self-harmers.

• Magical thinking. You may believe that your physical wounds prove your emotional pain is real, or that if you harm yourself, no greater harm will come to you.
• Growing up in a family where emotions weren’t allowed. You may have been discouraged from expressions of anger while growing up, and as a result be unsure what to do with strong feelings.
• Other emotional problems. You may have co-existing problems with obsessive-compulsive disorder, substance abuse, depression, or an eating disorder—all conditions primarily about control.
• Limited support. You may have a limited social support network, perhaps due to family breakdown or shame about your self-harm.

In Your Own Words

It can be difficult to understand the motivations behind cutting and self-harm, even when it’s your own. But a clearer picture may develop when you hear the common explanations people give for self-injury:

• “It expresses emotional pain or feelings that I’m unable to put into words. It puts a punctuation mark on what I’m feeling on the inside!”
• “It’s a way to have control over my body because I can’t control anything else in my life.”
• “I usually feel like I have a black hole in the pit of my stomach, at least if I feel pain it’s better than feeling nothing.”
• “I feel relieved and less anxious after I cut. The emotional pain slowly slips away into the physical pain.”

A little overwhlemed

I got a little overwhelmed today. I’ve gotten several freelance jobs this week and almost of them are due tomorrow. However, we’re taking tomorrow off to go to Court Day which meant that I really needed to have the majority of the work due today. They’re not difficult jobs. Landing pages and general website content for one guy, hotel descriptions for another client, and legal articles for another. Things that I typically don’t have any trouble with. These clients usually pay on time, too, and that’s nice with the holidays coming up and everything.

Still, I’ve been moving a little sluggishly lately and I’m not working at 100%. They’ve screwed up Sam and Toby’s medical card (again) and I keep getting bills from doctors’ offices. I need to call and straighten them out but there are so many and the thought of calling them and even just giving them their number and talking to someone freaks me out. I’m not usually like this, but I am getting to be more and more of a procrastinator.

I did cook supper two nights in a row though and both nights we had steak. Tonight we had sirloin wrapped in bacon, mashed potatoes, peas, corn, and pasta. It was a nice meal. Pete was saying that he doesn’t feel as healthy as he should because he hasn’t been eating right and I know that’s true because as cook of the house I have hardly been doing anything lately. And we’re usually used to having nice meals with a variety of things.

Mom and I were also planning Pete’s friends’ arrival and the activities that we will do with them. Pete will be working everyday that they are here and there are two days when he has night class and doesn’t get home until around 9:30 so they will mostly be with me. Karen suggested that we just have some days where we don’t do much, but that gives me even more anxiety. I can’t just stay at home and have people sitting around my house. It drives me insane. We have to be doing something. If we’re just sitting here then I have to entertain them by talking or something and I’m not sure how long I can keep that up. That’s not a grief thing, either. I’ve always had that problem. Whenever Bobby Sue used to come over and spend a week with me, but the time she left we were both exhausted by all the things that we did.

So we’ve been planning activities and meals and such for while they’re here. And then there’s all that cleaning. Karen said that she doesn’t worry about doing a lot of cleaning, but that would make me a nervous wreck. I don’t know if it’s my family or if it’s a southern thing because all my life, whenever company was coming we always stayed up late every night the week before leading up to their arrival, cleaning like we were preparing for the Second Coming. There would be dusting and polishing and vacuuming, and moving things around and buying groceries and flowers…I mean, seriously. Our house would be attacked from top to bottom. I remember being in the 6th grade and staying up til 3 in the morning on a school night dusting off shampoo bottles in the bathroom because my aunt and uncle were coming in.

One time I tried NOT to do that and it made me a nervous wreck. Couldn’t do it.

So yeah, between that and the thought of not getting my work turned in on time and the thought of not getting paid on time (which I really shouldn’t worry about since these clients are usually pretty good) I got overwhelmed. And then I cut myself. Again. Only this time it looks a little nasty. My practical husband asked me to try to at least stay away from my wrist the next time in case the thing slipped and I cut something by accident.

I feel very alone a lot and he thinks it’s because on days that I see him coping better I automatically feel like I am grieving by myself but that’s not true. I don’t think that at all. I know he’s grieving; it’s just that he has a different way of showing it. I feel alone because I don’t feel like I can talk about things with him. I guess that’s normal. We just watched a movie last night called “The Greatest” where the couple had the same issue. I just don’t see a lot of people and the ones I do see don’t seem to be able to communicate that well with me about these things and he’s one of the few people that I feel like he should understand that I should be able to talk to. But I feel really limited. Like when I tried to talk to him the other night about how I was feeling I got a big long lecture about how late it was and how he needed to grade papers and how he “guessed” he could stay up until 3 to talk to me but that would mean that he would have to get up at 6 and that wasn’t much sleep. And another night that I was having a bad night and was upset he kept looking at his watch or looking at the clock on the television, watching how late it was and sighing and talking about how he needed to get up in the morning to go to work. And I don’t want to keep him from work and I don’t want him to be tired all day. That’s just the only time that we see each other anymore.

I felt alone during the pregnancy, too. Pete’s afraid that he’s going to come home and find me dead because I killed myself on purpose or by accident, but I could have hemorrhaged while I was at home, too, when I was pregnant or had a seizure or fallen down the stairs and he didn’t seem to be particularly concerned then. He didn’t keep up with my doctor’s visits, he only went to a couple because it would have meant missing work a little bit, and I felt silly bringing up any times that I felt bad because there were other things to talk about. So I just stopped talking.

Just another thing to brush under the rug, like moving to Nashville.

I slept all day Monday because it was his day off and I didn’t have him to have to be bothered with me or feel like he had to talk to me or take care of me. So I stayed up late Sunday night and then just slept all day Monday. That gave him the chance to get the computer and do stuff.

Sometimes I feel like I have to be my own cheerleader. I sit there and give Pete a laundry list of all the good things I’ve done this week like work and cook supper and done laundry and gotten out twice and played with Sam and he neither confirms nor denies that I have done these things which makes me think that maybe they were pointless to do begin with and just silly. Instead, he just tells me that he’s worried about me.

Karen came in one day and wrote Pete’s name on one wrist and Sam’s on the other. I guess to keep me from slicing them the next time I thought about it. (I don’t think about it, by the way. They’re not carefully executed plans.) Instead, it made me feel worse because every time I looked down at Sam’s wrist I was reminded of what a lousy parent I am being to him and every time I looked at Pete’s I was reminded of how unhelpful I am to him as a partner. But she tried. It was a good idea.

I haven’t been taking my Zoloft regularly and I have to get my Klonopin refilled. I haven’t had it in a couple of days. That would definitely help. I am trying a lot. But it doesn’t always feel like it, especially when I keep getting pushed back down.

It makes me not want to talk about it and just keep things to myself which might be for the better anyway. If I pretend that I’m having a good day and a good time then maybe eventually I will and even if I don’t it will at least make the people around me feel more comfortable.

I’m going to a yardsale and to Court Day tomorrow. I am nervous about all the people and being that far away from home. Even an hour is far away when you have trouble leaving it. But I do want to shop.