YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I cut myself from time to time, not as a precursor to suicide or anything, but as a form of self-punishment or even release. Sometimes it even seems to be in an effort to feel real. I know I'd do it more often if I thought I could hide it, but I can't so I have to be careful.

Anyone else cutting themselves now or in the past?

I never have, but understand it as much as one can understand. I watched my old girlfriend do it right in front of me when she was angry at me. She had a number of issues that I believe were related to sexual abuse at a young age. Hang in there and thank you for your honesty. I hope you get a benefit of someone engaging in this topic with you that can shed some insight.

I used to cut myself every Sunday night for about a year when I was a teenager. I was extremely anxious about the school week starting again.

I stopped cutting myself completely after I left high school, although I still had to fight off the thought of doing it. It became a lot easier to fight as I got older.

Michigoose wrote:I used to cut myself every Sunday night for about a year when I was a teenager. I was extremely anxious about the school week starting again.

I stopped cutting myself completely after I left high school, although I still had to fight off the thought of doing it. It became a lot easier to fight as I got older.

If you don't mind me asking, how bad did you cut yourself, and how visible are the scars? Like a dope, I cut myself on my arm and now anytime I wear a short-sleeve shirt people look at me like I'm crazy.

I cut myself on my arm. I never intended for anyone else to know about it, nor did I really want to die (crazy, I know), so I didn't cut myself deeply enough to warrant stitches. I had a perpetually scabby/itchy/stinging area about 2" by 2" on my left inner forearm for that year. Once my sister noticed it, but I told her that our new puppy had scratched me there. She never said anything else about it.

As for scars, that area looked dark and a bit sunken for the next couple of years, but it looks pretty normal now (that was almost 20 years ago). I lived in a cold part of the country and never liked showing my arms anyway, so it wasn't much of a bother.

A co-worker of mine just had orthopedic surgery on his wrist. When his cast came off, he saw that he was left with a weird-looking zig-zag scar on his wrist. I know that he had surgery because he told me about a month beforehand that it was going to happen, and I know he didn't have the scar before surgery. However, some co-workers who didn't know where he got it and then found out that it was from surgery sounded very relieved -- like "I saw that scar, but ... I didn't want to ask." I think the crooked scar put people off. I wonder if it had been a straight scar, if it would look more innocent to them. I probably wouldn't have guessed it was from surgery.

My point is that people have scars for all kinds of reasons. If people are really looking at you like you're crazy, maybe they should keep their eyes to themselves. They're just being rude, and that drives me crazy. Do these people know what the scar is from? If it eases the tension, you could always say that you were wrestling with your cousin and your hand went through a window. Or it was a woodshop accident. Or car accident. Or you had orthopedic surgery to repair an old injury. Or you were abducted by aliens and that's where they inserted the tracking device -- just to keep them all guessing. I'm not normally a proponent of lying, but I'm definitely not a proponent you being uncomfortable because people don't know it's rude to stare at someone's scar either. Unless they're 3 years old and can't help it.

I'm not trying to make light of your situation though. It must be painful to feel like you're going to have to carry this mark around forever. It almost reminds me of gang members who have tattoos that they they feel need to be removed in order to leave that life behind. Have you looked into scar reduction at all? I don't know much about it (or you, for that matter...) but it might help you feel less self-conscious.

It's my understanding that cutting, suicidal thoughts, and suicidal behavior are 3 different psychological things so it's not surprising to me that your cutting had nothing to do with suicide. Thanks for sharing too, I don't really know anyone else who does it and I just wonder how others who do it more frequently deal with it. The main people who look at me crazily are my coworkers and family so I can't really blame them. I usually make up some excuse as no one will understand who hasn't been through it.

I have been cutting off and on since i was about 14. For me it would seem to go in cycles. I would go through a period where i cut myself several times in a week or month, then it might be months or a couple of years before i would do it again. Last fall my wife left me and i spent the winter in a cabin with no water and minimal heat. October was a tough month....one night i went to sleep to the sound of blood dripping on the floor from some pretty serious cuts on my forearm. The night before Thanksgiving i screwed up and cut myself deeper than i intended and waaaay too close to major veins and arteries,and hit a good sized vein. It took me about 15 to 20 minutes to get the bleeding stopped. It scared me because i had never lost control like that before. I should have gone to the emergency room but I didn't for several different reasons....I didn't want to get put on a psych hold, didn't want to explain to my kids why i was in the hospital instead of eating Thanksgiving dinner with them. The upside of the experience is that it scared me enough that i don't think i will ever cut myself again.

I have a lot of scars on my left forearm, probably 30 minor ones and 6 or 8 that are pretty serious. I never worry about covering them. It is part of who i am. I also think that maybe another cutter will see them and know that they aren't alone.

I used to use cutting as a way to relieve panic. I'd get so anxious and so freaked and feel like my body was seizing up, something needing to escape, and just picking up a pair of scissors and shortly and sharply slashing myself anywhere seemed to relieve that feeling. I also think a bloody cut, in hindsight, acted as a visual representation of an otherwise non-visual pain.

"I cut myself on my arm. I never intended for anyone else to know about it, nor did I really want to die (crazy, I know), so I didn't cut myself deeply enough to warrant stitches. I had a perpetually scabby/itchy/stinging area about 2" by 2" on my left inner forearm for that year."

This is really similar to what I've done in the past, too. I hid my cutting under clothes and didn't want to be found out, and it was never deep enough to be dangerous or to need stitches. I only have really faint scars from any of it, because it was quite light (though frequent for a year or two). I did very much want to die during part of the time when I was cutting, and I definitely didn't and was mostly satisfied during a large period of time when I was cutting, so I'm glad someone mentioned that wanting to die and cutting aren't necessarily the same thing.

For me, cutting myself actually became a ritual that was vaguely satisfying and, after a while, pretty unemotional. I would carve things in my skin around my hips and ribcage/chest (and eventually my [more noticeable] inner upper arms, right before I quit) that would hardly bleed, but would leave wounds and designs carved into my body temporarily. They'd fade and I'd think, "Oh, I'd better maintain those," and go and freshen things up. I hid it from people, so once I started dating and being sexually active (I was a late bloomer in that department), they were apparent and I was embarrassed for doing it, so I stopped.

But I liked the control it gave me over my own body, to cut it. I liked that I could instantly change my body. I preferred how I looked with visible wounds; I really liked being marked up. It was self-punishment, but it was also somewhat fetishistic, actually. And - with a disclaimer that I'm aware this is definitely not for everyone, and is specific to my experience, and does not apply to most cutters or kinksters - I think that was linked into some of my personal kinks. Once I started having sexual partners I trusted and playing around with some BDSM, I found that I could have some physical pain inflicted upon me, get temporary minor wounds, and have someone else be in control of it. And I think the last part was especially useful, because that person cared about me more than I cared about myself, and would set and respect limits as to how much I could be hurt. There were more clear boundaries with what was appropriate and what was unhealthy, so it never veered into dangerous territory. And, again, that was around the time I stopped cutting myself. I guess I had somehow unconsciously linked self-harm with my long-term sexual repression (hence primarily marking up sexualized parts of my body), and cutting was partly an outlet for that repression. So it makes sense, in that light, that, for me, cutting was partly alleviated by being intimate with people, having someone appreciate my physicality (rather than just dwelling in my own mix of body-loathing and occasional extreme vanity), and having the ability to ask for someone else to respectfully and carefully hurt me on occasion. Ha. So that's all pretty pathologized. But there we go!