Thanks for the update. You're parents will probably adjust in time. I hope things continue to improve for you.
Good!
Sometimes the hurt on your parents faces is what it takes to want to stop. It is one thing to do it in secret but now that it's in the open it is much harder to continue. The one thing I would say to you is - don't rebel against the people who are trying to stop you doing this - it is a natural instinct as a teen to get annoyed at elders telling you what's good for you (not that you ARE rebelling against anyone).
You will need to be strong to allay the fears of your parents and the school that you DO want to stop and you are willing to try.
Don't panic and let anyone scare you. Yes this is a scarey thing - you already know that, but just be aware that the school and your parents first thoughts are that they are frightened this is the road to suicide. Assure them it is not.
It can be worrisome if this gets out to the kids in school, but know this, you are strong enough to deal with any snide remarks that might come your way, but hopefully your friends will rally round you and be supportive.
Above all, remember we all make mistakes. It is a part of life and there is not one of us that is perfect. It takes a strong young lady to be able to look at herself and accept that she will always have some faults and flaws as she tries to improve day by day, but these are the things that make her special and wonderful and an individual.
Hi Shannon,
My name is Christine... I haven't read through all the posts but I read your first one.
I am 20 years old and when I was your age I started cutting myself, I felt that if all I could concentrate on was the physical pain, then the emotional pain would just go away (well for a little while, until I had to cut again)... And for a while, I really thought it was helping me.
My family found out and they got angry and that made it worse and made me cut more and I was just so unhappy that everytime I got hurt I would have this horrible sinking feeling inside of me. I gave up hope and everything.
Eventually my cutting lead to me having a huge butcher knife, locked in a bathroom and me trying to slit my wrists. I just thought the pain would never end.... THANK GOD I DIDN'T SUCEED...
My boyfriend at the time found me and stopped me, he was crying and all ( I was 18 by this time)
Then the older I got and the more I looked at my scarred up arm and how horrible it looked and bad it made me look when I went for job interviews and stuff and How much I HATED when people ask me things like "oh, do you have a cat" or something when they obviously know what it was....
ANyway I haven't cut myself in a year and 7 months now..... I am so much happier, the older I get the more I realize how precious life is and I can't imagine missing it, I still get sad and sometimes I still get the urge to cut myself, but when I do I just stop and think that it isn't the end of the world and this feeling will go away. I am strong and I can beat it!!
Hope this helps, if you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask!!
she doesn't know I know
Am inspired by the intelligent discussions here. You folks may be able to help.
situation: cherished 19 year old daughter, who grew up with tons of love is involved in the cutting phenomena. Her - extremely deep in literary communication, gifted artist, athletic, as in lifeguarding, surfing, snowboarding and such. Generally optimistic. When she does get angry... it's evident. She moved out of the house the day she turned 18 to live with her boyfriend in another state. (she's now 19) They had been together for about 4 years. He procceded to get a degree as they lived together. She went to school @ a college and managed a municipal school. Long story short, she is back at home for a while to mend her broken elbow from a snowboarding accident,(or so she says). She was up in the Bay area visiting my sister, her aunt and spilled the beans to her on the cutting, IN COMPLETE CONFIDENCE to her.
My sister called me days later to alert me to the situation and is extremely concerned about the the breach of confidence to my daughter, but she just had to tell me.
I would like to honor that trust. As well, I am looking for a bit of advice from what appears to be some of the younger individuals who have actually participated in this form of "releif".
We share a lot of humor in our family and our love and trust goes deep. Only when you are a parent will you gain insight into how life changing the love for your own child can be. Words fall way short of the emotions and commitment one feels for a child/children you hold above all else.
Your postings have grabbed my attention, sympathy, hope and emotions. perhaps you may be able to lend some insight on an approach that would leave the trust granted my sister, intact. I surely do not want to confront my daughter. Confront has that south meets south on a magnet kind of thing. The preference would be to ease into a dialogue.
Your kind insight will be most appreciated.
G~
well, as someone who has done this before...i can say that im sure your daughter is afraid to tell you because she is afraid of your reaction to it. i for one know that it was easier to talk to my counselor (when i did) than it was to talk to my parents. dont start talking about it immediately. maybe start talking to her and ask her how things are going and see if she tells you about it. give it a couple days or so and just talk to her and maybe she will open up to you. let me know how it goes.
I'm going to ask this out of pure ignorance, so please don't think I'm being rude.
When I was growing up, I got bombarded with the usual teenage stuff. "We're gonna go steal stuff from the hardware store", or "Come over later and we'll raid the liquor cabinet", or "wanna smoke some grass?". No one ever said "Hey, I got a new knife, let's go out to the shed and carve our initials into our forearms".
How the heck do you get started on something like this? Is it an offshoot of the piercing and tattooing that is becoming so rampant (and gross IMO)?
Just wondering.
well, its not something that someone wakes up in the morning and decides that they are going to start doing. so many things can trigger emotions that lead to it...and cutting is a way of controlling the pain. yes if you think about it, it only causes MORE pain but it releases some sort of another emotion that just makes everything so much better, because you can control this, you can control how much pain you are in, you can stop it when you want to. for me, so many things just got too hard to handle, there was no one i could really talk to about it, i couldnt talk to my parents, and friends can only do so much. there really is no complete known reason i ugess for why people do it. there are different reason that people do it. thats all. thanks for asking. im sure there will be other people that have something to say about it.
I don't think there is any one answer. Different people fall into it in different ways. Like Heeven said, she started doing it and didn't even think of it terms of a coping mechanism until it had already become a habit. I know my daughter was aware of it because she knew other people who were doing it. She was really concerned about one friend yet six months later she was doing the same thing. Her friend told her how much better it made her feel and how it didn't affect anyone but herself (wrong!) and gave her a strong sense of control.
When you look up the historical information on cutting there are a lot of references to sexual abuse leading to future cutting. That might have been the typical cause in the past but it isn't so any more. The kids talk about it among themselves, although not in a social 'let's do it together' sense. My understanding is that it's a very private thing.
edit: PS - how are things going Shannon?
Hi Girlsdad, Welcome to A2K.
Since your daughter is back home for a while I think you can tread slowly and just be with her. See how she is, maybe by just observing. Other than the broken elbow and healing at home, are she and the boyfriend still together? Cutting is always a symptom of something else. Usually it's a symptom of needing to cope with some unbearable sadness or grief or stress. She's been away for quite a while so it's possible she's kept her troubles from you and might even continue to do that if she thinks you'll be disappointed in her.
It's good that she opened up to your sister. Is it possible for your sister to give her a call to see how she's doing and offer to listen further? During the conversation (or subsequent ones) your sister can tell her how much she wants to help her and at the same time perhaps guide your daughter into bringing you into her circle of support. Perhaps she could offer to talk to you on your daughter's behalf, even though she already has. I'm usually not very big on suggesting end-arounds but your daughter has put your sister in an uncomfortable position. I know of another case where it was an uncle who kept the confidence and then all hell broke loose when the parents finally found out and found out that the uncle knew and didn't tell them. On second thought I think you should suggest your sister tell her that she's worried about her and really feels she should say something to you. That's sort of how I found out. My daughter was confiding in a school counselor who finally told her that she needed extra help and someone had to tell me and gave my daughter the option of telling me herself or letting the counselor doing it. My daughter was underaged so it is a slightly different situation but I think your sister was right in telling you and should probably either fess up that she already has, or that she's going to.
things are going good...theres still that urge to cut and ill even go out in the kitchen and stare at a knife for a minute...but then ill realize that all its going to do is get me back into my old habits and start new trouble..something that i DONT want, something i DONT need. so i would say that right now things are going purty darn good. thanks for asking.
Shanaynay--
Congratulations. Contemplating knives is a huge step above using knives. At the risk of sounding sententiously moralistic, I'll remark that will power is like any other muscle--it strengthens with use.
I'm delighted at your new equilibrium.
Hold your dominion.
This is probably going to sound stupid but I'll mention it anyway. After a vacation in Greece where I picked up some "worry beads" - something that is used as a normal part of the culture there - I did get some relief from the need to cut. Since it was a habitual thing for me, this helped me break the habit.
Shanynay, delighted to hear you are doing well. Keep with it. I know the need will gnaw at you again and again but you've got to divert your attention elsewhere if you can.
girls-dad, while each person is different, had my parent approached me about cutting back when I was doing it, I would have balked at the issue of discussing it with them. I was terribly insecure and immature and anything told to me by an adult was absolute bunk (in my own mind), but your daughter is older (slightly) and perhaps she is looking to talk to someone about this, or she wouldn't have mentioned it to your sister/her aunt. What did your sister tell you she discussed with your daughter? Did they talk about why, how often, getting help? If not, tell your sister to tell your daughter that if she (your daughter) doesn't sit down with you and talk about this, then she (your sister) will tell you she it cutting. To blazes with keeping secrets or worrying about your sister keeping your daughters confidences. She should tell her to tell you and that's that. Your daughter will get over the initial "betrayal" after a while because it's just plain stupid to yap about it to one person and not expect it to get around - c'mon!
And when your daughter does approach you, listen and ask questions more than dictating a plan of action. SHE needs to be the one dictating or making decisions on how she is going to handle this. You can lead her but don't push - it could turn her off, since the very issues that are causing her to cut may make her take offense to other people deciding and controlling her life. Tell her she can share absolutely anything with you (from the sounds of you, she can) and that you want to be her support, her sounding-board if she is thinking of making decisions or has ideas. Of course you can have an opinion but be aware of her reactions and moods to them - she might not appreciate them. These are suggestions only of course, not an experts recommendations, since I do not know you or your daughter well or your relationship.
Cutting is generally something that people do alone and in secret. It has become more heard of and (dare I say it) popular of late, where kids are talking to each other about it. I don't know that cutters do it in a room together like doing drugs, smoking, drinking. It still has a bit more stigma attached to it than drugs since these days is fashionably cool to do drugs (which I think is a load of bollox).
Anyway good luck girls-dad and Shanynay keep up the good work!
You make some great points Heeven. I like the idea of the worry beads. I used to have some when I was a teen. Maybe I'll try to find some for K.
K has recently gone back into counseling to work on her coping skills and general anxieties. She started last fall after some on-going cutting episodes during some high stress times, but she stopped going once she started feeling better. She had a emotional rough patch recently and cut herself for the first time in months. Now she's aware that unless she figures out an alternative coping skill, she will revert to cutting whenever things get tough. She's started asking me, her counselor, and her friends for alternative ideas.
My point to girlsdad is that the desire to stop has to come from your daughter. If it's something she does for control then she'll need to want to give it up and replace it with something else, preferably a healthy alternative, before she can successfully walk away from it. It becomes like a drug. One of the girls on the BUS board stated that she was able to stop once she realised that she was no longer using it to be in control, but that it had taken control over her.
I agree that you need to be careful about having her feel pushed into a corner and the control of the situation being taken from her. In many cases the self control is what starts it to begin with (similar to an eating disorder).
I totally agree with you J_B, the desire to stop must come from the cutter. No matter what others say, think, do, the cutter has to be the one who decides when and how to stop. However I don't think girls-dad will push his daughter. It's a start to bring it out in the open and begin dialogue. There's lots of back and forth to be done - baby steps - until the habit and need can be broken.
I look back and think how silly I was and how I should have been able to stop easily, but as we all find with life ....... easier said than done.
Hiya,
geeze... 2 days down the coast with my two kids on separate medical runs. You can go 15 years without a glance at a medical facility and then a little flurry
elbow with the daughter and some nerve investigation with her brother. We managed to laugh like crazy while traveling the roads, playing their music, which they mercifully pulled out some of the better arranged and sang CD's. It was most refreshing to hear great songwriters in their generation. I'm always rooting for the creative bent in people.
And like a good novel, sorry to keep you waiting, my daughter's unique choice of "initiation rights" was discussed in a cool matter of fact way while visiting their uncle, (my brother). We stayed up late outside, and went around the world with ideas, and feelings and other topics to stay light in thought.
No one confronted My daughter.
Here is what happenned tonight though:
My sweet wife discussed it (cutting) with her while she was bathing this evening. Thank goodness for girl things. Could never think of a better person to have the conversation with her about "the discovery" of this "behavior" from us her parents, than her Mom. It makes a rainbow pale, their love for eachother, and I get to remain silent. Knowing she knows I know, we don't talk about it. She now knows if she does want to talk to me about it she can.
Right now
I have no desire to force the issue. And really
. This is the healing zone/time. The time in between
., when you don't talk about it. Let some concepts settle. When all the cards are on the table
you don't react until you understand the cosequence of the draw and the way it was played. It's just that these cards are on the table
.. and they are just there
now we have to start putting value on the cards.
Reasoning, humor, some progressive debate some silence
there's a lot on the table.
Somehow, I want to weave into a response here that will addreess all the very nice contributing jewels of insight and experience you folks have shared. Can do this by a few observations:
People and creatures seem to have a propensity to seek out, not just joy, but thrills and other sensations that may or may not relate to accomplishments or satisfaction. Thrills and joy are much like the display of an incredible light show
usually over in a dazzling sort of way, while satisfaction and accomplishment are more of a long drawn out sensation that really needs to be "crafted". Don't know which one requires more sttention. I do know satisfaction has a lot to do with appreciation. Ingrates are usually miserable. People who do not appreciate the potential in existence but rather choose to dwell in narrow little escapades into "woe is me" crap, seem to have a hard time constructing some sense of lingering satisfaction in their life.
I'm getting over this episode of "initiation and the art of how to land this thing", for a few reasons:
1. How many cultures around the world, present and past, utilize some sort of "heavy duty experience/s" that ushers in the transformation from child to adult. It is absolutely a series of events, as opposed to "an event". And depending on your culture, it takes on many different approaches.
Phsycotropic: peyote with Indians / LSD and other smokeables and injestibles, that alter your perspective. The strong part of an adult persective will evolve out of the insight gained from such "adventures. The older person, who doesn't really "grow up", not all adults are mature soles, will ignore the insight and just bathe in the temporary "high". The wise will take the "message from the "high" and log it into their perspective gallery that becomes a building block for either accomplishment, success, satisfaction or any combination of the three. No matter, they have to do with finding that somehting that you "do" that contributes to society and existence as a whole. Basically, animals and humans injest or do some sort of activity that challenges their survival instincts. How you collect and utilize these experiences depends on how efficient you are at processing the potential and awe that is life.
Some can dwell in dogmas and ritual behavior that can stifle creativity. When something/someone does not CREATE, they tend to drift into some sort of distruction. Then you study nature and notice biological activities that thrive off of the decay that destruction brings about. So is destruction wrong..??? Apparently it is a part of life. It's just another way of transforming something. Think of it: creating is really making something of nothing, or at least arranging things so they have a productive outcome. Destruction is the downhill easy road where you are just taking advantage of something that has gone through a creative stage. Simply, tear it down.
So how you grow up is quite a personal experience. It's all yours. I will always point out to my kids, how people can be adults, but they are not grown up. One has to do a lot of prosessing to arrive at being a responsible, caring and contributing adult.
Some adults have yet to learn or remember there is a sensitive "break in" time where young people do their diligence into finding themselves and how good it feels to be themselves. Sadly, and always remember, sadly
., some people never settle with what they have found of themselves, they keep looking for something else, instead of building a foundation around who they have discovered as themselves and their ever changing relation with this world. It always moves and shifts, this world, and how well can you adapt..??? well
. That is what life is all about
In closing
. I am optimistic of my family situation. It did what it did. What is ahead is precious and exciting. I don't think we can be boggled down by "proffessional help", we will have worked beyond that slow motion scene and have migrated on to something more productive.
Please, this is not to say, that suddenly she may stop doing cutting, or the occasional phsycotropical adventure, it is saying that these are passing things. They will mean less to her as other things step up into her list of priorities.
I'd rather have something evolve, so it is more permanent, than some superficial attempt at "converting to serve others wishes". Main thing, she knows we love her, her brother loves her, her gramma and aunt and uncle cherish her. Her
she is growing up
. something all wise people never wish upon themselves ever again
!
Thanks a million all of you
G~
by the way, I tend to conclude that all of you are on a rewarding path and have some sense of appreciating your discoveries...
kind regards,
G~
I've been wondering how she is doing... I don;t know if she still visits A2K but if you do, how is everything going for you now??
actually...things are really good. i think i just needed my junior year to END. i needed to get away from everything that happened and this year, my SENIOR YEAR (yes..super excited) everything has changed. sure...i still have those issues that i need to deal with, but i find better ways to deal with them annnnnnnnd i just...think things through and not let them get to me as much. thanks for asking!
Good to hear... so no more cutting,right??? It has now been 2 years and 6 months for me!! It really is a big accomplishment...
I am very happy for you! Good luck in your senior year too.. I miss school
