Cutting- The "New Age Anorexia"

[olpluvr]

Mutilation, self-inflicted wounds, cutting, parasuicide. We hear about teenagers who cut parts of their body due to emotional distress, but there remains the true question: are these teenagers cutting to gain attention from family others, to fit in with other teenagers who are also doing it, or is it being done in secret to rid of emotional pain?

Comments

Re: Response: ferret_angels

[ferret_angels]

What I am trying to understand is the whole aspect of one slicing themselves to alleviate stress. Even though I definitely don't promote smoking/drug use/alcoholism in any way, I can understand why a person would use those as crutches when stressed out. All of those things have an addictive ingredient that hooks the user, and are proven to provide relaxation. I just cannot understand how physically harming oneself would help in any way. One could say it's "addictive" but there isn't any "ingredient".

I also agree that a "cutter" should be taken seriously and provided with proper help. In all honestly though, most cutters DON'T even want to kill themselves. Most suicidal people don't want people to know of their plans, and keep them completely hidden. The only tell-tale sign is deep depression. I think that if a cutter "commits suicide", it's usually accidental, them getting carried away with cutting and hitting a major artery.

I still don't believe that self-mutilation is beautiful. A lot of people who get "corsets" and put scars on their bodies as "beauty" do it for attention. I mean, a person with their ears stretched all out of wack with a huge circular "thing" is screaming, "LOOK AT ME". I don't even want to get into the whole corset issue...yuck!!