Cutting

This is a subject that unfortunately I know too well. I'm not a cutter. My sister is. I spent 7 hours in the ER with her last night before she was admitted to a mental ward. This is her 8th admission in 12 weeks. Monday, I have to attend a meeting with psychiatrists, counselors, and social workers. This is our third meeting. The first two they have talked about committing her long term. I'm sure we'll be talking about it again and this time I don't know that there will be any choices given. As you can tell by what little I've said she is a very serious cutter. Self harm, whether by cutting or other means is a way to relieve stress and it is addicting. You mentioned depression. If it's depression that you're dealing with that leads you to cutting I would highly recommend that you get the book: "The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself From Chronic Unhappiness" by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindal Segal and Jon Kabat-Zinn. It comes with an Audio CD to guide you through the exercises in the book. You can get it new from Amazon for $14.00 I'm currently reading another one by Jon Kabat-Zinn called "Full Catastrophe Living. Using the Wisdom of Our Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness." also about $14.00 Both are excellent books. The practice of "mindfulness" is a type of meditation (not the sit on the floor cross legged and empty your mind and say "Ohm" kind) that teaches you to live in and fully experience your present moments, rather that dwell and worry and kick yourself in the past and future. To recognize that your thoughts are just that, thoughts and not necessary the truth. Studies done on this type of meditation are pretty awesome. It has definite physical effects on the body, effects that can help you resist and possibly stop those urges to hurt yourself. Take care of yourself. If you want to PM me, I'd be willing to talk more.

I used to cut a bit and burn myself with lighters. It realeses endorphins. So my best suggestion would be to do something that realeses them too. I know that exercising is an activity that may help. I would strongly recommend you seek out some form of counseling. Be it with a school counselor or therapist. Talking to someone about this problem will surely help. I went to some counseling when I was younger and that really helped me. Hope this helps.

I was never into cutting but I have this friend who used to cut herself for totally silly things..like a bad grade. How terrible is that! Anyway, it took a lot out of the school counselor to get her out of it. She still has scars left..

No, I'm not a cutter. I never have been. It's just something that i never got into, for some reason. As far as I could see, I'm really the only one I know personally who has dealt with these types of problems.