Cutting
Some time ago I encountered a young woman who had cuts all over her forearms. She had been wearing long sleeves to cover the evidence but had pulled the sleeves up to wash her hands and another girl noticed who encouraged her to get help for the issue. In talking she revealed that she had started cutting herself over a year earlier and the reason was shocking to me. She shared that her parents fought all the time at home, and each was constantly trying to get her to take their side. She didn’t know how to cope with the constant conflict and felt like she was a rope in a tug of war between her parents. She began coping by going to her room and listening to loud music to cover the sound of arguing. One day when she went to her room to escape the battle in her home, she accidently cut herself and when she saw her own blood, she passed out.
The innocence of this initial event is striking because it was certainly unintentional, however the next time she retreated to her room she cut herself on purpose to achieve the escape that she had experienced. One cut became another and before she realized it, she was cutting herself multiple times daily even though the escape of passing out had stopped occurring. The escape had turned into a habit, and in some ways, an addiction. As I began to research this phenomenon, I found that her story was common. As a matter of fact, though it is not always accidental, many cutters are looking to either escape or find a relief of their circumstances, or to find an outward physical manifestation of the inward pain that they feel. For some, cutting began as a way to punish themselves for not being stronger or for being unable to deal with the issues of life that they face.
