Why do self harmers cut

Drinking alcohol or doing drugs while hurting yourself increases the risk of a more severe injury than intended. And it takes time and energy away from other things you value. Skipping classes to change bandages or avoiding social occasions to prevent people from seeing your scars is a sign that your habit is negatively affecting work and relationships.

Self-harm is not a mental illness, but a behavior that indicates a need for better coping skills. Several illnesses are associated with it, including borderline personality disorder, depression, eating disorders, anxiety or posttraumatic distress disorder.

Self-harm occurs most often during the teenage and young adult years, though it can also happen later in life. Those at the most risk are people who have experienced trauma, neglect or abuse. For instance, if a person grew up in an unstable family, it might have become a coping mechanism. If a person binge drinks or uses illicit drugs, they are at greater risk of self-injury, because alcohol and drugs lower self-control. The urge to hurt yourself may start with overwhelming anger, frustration or pain.

When a person is not sure how to deal with emotions, or learned as a child to hide emotions, self-harm may feel like a release. Once a person injures themself, they may experience shame and guilt. If the shame leads to intense negative feelings, that person may hurt themself again.

The behavior can thus become a dangerous cycle and a long-time habit. Some people even create rituals around it. However, it is a symptom of emotional pain that should be taken seriously. If someone is hurting themself, they may be at an increased risk of feeling suicidal. There are effective treatments for self-harm that can allow a person to feel in control again. Psychotherapy is important to any treatment plan. 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.

Self-harm is most often a way of dealing with emotional pain. What feelings make you want to cut or hurt yourself? Emotional awareness means knowing what you are feeling and why.

Feelings are important pieces of information that our bodies give to us, but they do not have to result in actions like cutting or self-harming. The idea of paying attention to your feelings—rather than numbing them or releasing them through self-harm—may sound frightening to you. But the truth is that emotions quickly come and go if you let them. Self-harm is your way of dealing with unpleasant feelings and difficult situations.

The help and support of a trained professional can help you work to overcome the cutting or self-harming habit, so consider talking to a therapist.

A therapist can help you develop new coping techniques and strategies to stop self-harming, while also helping you get to the root of why you hurt yourself. It exists in real life. There is often a connection between self-harm and childhood trauma. Finding the right therapist may take some time. But the quality of the relationship with your therapist is equally important.

Trust your instincts. Your therapist should be someone who accepts self-harm without condoning it, and who is willing to help you work toward stopping it at your own pace. You should feel at ease, even while talking through your most personal issues. While cutting and self-harming occurs most frequently in adolescents and young adults, it can happen at any age.

Because clothing can hide physical injuries, and inner turmoil can be covered up by a seemingly calm disposition, self-injury in a friend or family member can be hard to detect. However, there are red flags you can look for:. Unexplained wounds or scars from cuts, bruises, or burns, usually on the wrists, arms, thighs, or chest. Covering up. A person who self-injures may insist on wearing long sleeves or long pants, even in hot weather.

Needing to be alone for long periods of time, especially in the bedroom or bathroom. Isolation and irritability. This can cause them to withdraw and isolate themselves. Fact: The painful truth is that people who self-harm generally hurt themselves in secret.

In fact, shame and fear can make it very difficult to come forward and ask for help. Fact: It is true that many people who self-harm suffer from anxiety, depression, eating disorders, or a previous trauma—just like millions of others in the general population. Self-injury is how they cope. Fact: When people self-harm, they are usually not trying to kill themselves—they are trying to cope with their problems and pain.

People often link self-harm to suicide but for me it was something very different; it was my alternative to suicide, my way of coping even though sometimes I wished that my world would end. This is normal - lots of young people who self-harm find asking for help very difficult. But it is an important step towards recovery and feeling better.

Telling someone about your self-harm shows strength and courage; it can often be a huge relief to be able to let go of such a secret, or at least share it. It shows that you are taking charge of your well-being and doing what you need to stay healthy. Feeling listened to can help you feel more supported. And it works both ways: if you open up it might encourage others to do the same. There are lots of people you can talk to about what you are going through.

It is important to tell someone you trust and feel comfortable with, as they will be able to help and support you. Young people told us that they have been able to talk to:. There are no rules about how you should tell someone. The most important thing is that you feel comfortable and trust the person you decide to tell. Set time aside to talk to them. Remember you can set the pace and it is up to you how much you want to tell them.

If you find speaking about it too difficult, you can tell someone in writing or in an email. You can even ask a friend to speak to a trusted adult on your behalf. Let them know you need help with how you are feeling.

Try to focus on the thoughts and feelings behind your self-harm rather than the behaviours. If you decide to talk to a GP or other health professional, you can take a friend or family member with you to support you. Sometimes after telling someone you may feel worse. But remember that once you get over this hurdle there is support and help available. Remember that health professionals, GPs and teachers are familiar with this issue and are there to help. As hard as it is to tell someone, sharing will take the pressure off you and help you get the right support and help available.

There are lots of support services and treatments available when you feel ready to seek help. If you seek help from your GP, it is likely they will offer you counselling, where a professional will listen and help you to work on solutions and strategies to cope with the problems you are dealing with.

Talking therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy CBT focus on building coping strategies and problem-solving skills and have been found to be very effective in helping to reduce self-harm [21].

Other forms of counselling, like psychodynamic therapy, for instance, will help you to identify the problems that are causing you distress and leading you to self-harm [22]. It is important that you talk to your GP or a trusted health professional who will help decide the best treatment option for you. There are also a number of charities and self-help groups throughout the UK that can support you through this experience.

People who have self-harmed have said that it can be helpful to hear from other young people who have experienced self-harm. More information about these sources of support is available at the end of this booklet. I feel a lot more confident. I felt that, without them knowing, I was being held back. I no longer feel ashamed as I know people are supporting me. The problems that are causing you to self-harm can, with help and support, become more manageable over time or even go away.

Things can and do get better! Take time and be patient with yourself. Start to learn how to care for yourself. Young people who have recovered from self-harm say that changes over time and changes in circumstances in life for example moving home, changing schools, finishing exams, going to university, changing jobs or changed financial circumstances helped them to recover. Others explained that recovery was about finding new coping strategies and more helpful ways of dealing with emotions or distress.

This is also an important factor towards recovery from self-harm. It dawned on me that continually harming myself was not allowing me to grow; it was just proving that I was still here and I could feel. Asking for help and having support is very important if you are trying to stop self-harming. It is important that you do this when you feel ready to talk about it. Talking to someone is what is important. For young people used to carrying burdens on their own, it can be hard to receive support.

Part of recovery is trusting people enough to let them help you. Talking to someone you trust can help you discover why you self-harm and help to find new ways to cope with difficulties [25]. Finding out what makes you happy, sad, angry, isolated, vulnerable or strong can help you develop other ways of dealing with these feelings.

Counselling is a good way of exploring these thoughts and feelings and is available through your GP. These techniques find a release for the emotional pressure you feel without the need to harm. If you feel the need to harm yourself, try to give yourself a goal of getting through the next ten minutes without doing so. But the most helpful to my recovery was the five minutes rule, where if you feel like you want to self-harm, you wait for five minutes before you do it, then see if you can go another five minutes, and so on till eventually the feeling that you need to is over.

Self-harm is not a positive way to deal with things. However if you are self-harming it can be difficult to stop, especially when you feel distressed or upset. Wounds and injuries of any type can be dangerous and carry the risk of infection, which can be serious, so they need to be looked after. If you have serious injury, feel unwell or feel that you are going into shock fast breathing, racing heart, feeling faint or panicked you should seek help immediately.

If you find yourself in this situation, find a trusted adult or friend who can get you the medical attention you need. Many people stop hurting themselves when the time is right for them. It is a huge step towards stopping when they begin to talk about it, because it means that they are starting to think about what might take its place eventually. You can create a safe box to help you through times when you feel overwhelmed by emotion and have the urge to harm yourself.

Fill it with things that make you happy and calm, to help you to get through this feeling. Some suggestions: activities such as crosswords, your favourite book, CD or movie. You could also include a list of things to do that make you calm when you are feeling triggered. When you are feeling overwhelmed, talk to a friend, family member or trusted adult. Let them know what you are thinking. This can help relieve the pressure that you are feeling. Make a list of people you can talk to at these times and keep it somewhere safe.

Knowing who you can talk to in times of crisis at 3am, weekends or when you are at school can make it easier to ask for help when you need it. Add these to your safe box. She's 16 now and hasn't cut herself in more than a year. There are better ways to deal with troubles than cutting — healthier, long-lasting ways that don't leave a person with emotional and physical scars.

The first step is to get help with the troubles that led to the cutting in the first place. Here are some ideas for doing that:. Although cutting can be a difficult pattern to break, it is possible.

Getting professional help to overcome the problem doesn't mean that a person is weak or crazy. Therapists and counselors are trained to help people discover inner strengths that help them heal. These inner strengths can then be used to cope with life's other problems in a healthy way.

Larger text size Large text size Regular text size. What Is Cutting? Why Do People Cut Themselves? How Does Cutting Start? Here are some ideas for doing that: Tell someone. People who have stopped cutting often say the first step is the hardest — admitting to or talking about cutting. But they also say that after they open up about it, they often feel a great sense of relief. Choose someone you trust to talk to at first a parent, school counselor, teacher, coach, doctor, or nurse.

If it's too difficult to bring up the topic in person, write a note. Identify the trouble that's triggering the cutting. Cutting is a way of reacting to emotional tension or pain. Try to figure out what feelings or situations are causing you to cut.

Is it anger? Pressure to be perfect? Relationship trouble? A painful loss or trauma? Mean criticism or mistreatment? Identify the trouble you're having, then tell someone about it. Many people have trouble figuring this part out on their own.

This is where a mental health professional can be helpful. Ask for help. Tell someone that you want help dealing with your troubles and the cutting. If the person you ask doesn't help you get the assistance you need, ask someone else.