You want to keep cutting and hide it from Mom? Here are a few possible reasons as to why you cut and why you don’t want to quit cold turkey.

  1. Cutting into your skin until you feel pain and draw blood helps you believe that you can actually feel something, anything.
  2. Doing it gives you a measure of control of how much pain you will allow yourself to feel.
  3. Watching a cut heal gives you some sort of hope that if a cut can heal, so can your pain, however small that healing may be.
  4. Picking at the scab as it heals leaves a scar that reminds you of who you think you are.

Naturally, I might be way off on every single one of these, but

It’s not your cutting that’s the problem. It’s the way you have chosen to deal with your pain.

Perhaps you feel you are the ice queen or you are this vast, dark emptiness inside that feels nothing, but cutting proves you are alive and can feel and heal. So you already have proof. But needing to cut to prove it to yourself over and over means you don’t really believe it’s true. Worse, it’s always a temporary relief.

Eventually you can learn how to feel again in a healthy way that doesn’t make you want to fall apart. Ask your mom if you can see a counselor so you can talk about what happened to shut down your emotions and pain in the first place. Or talk to the school counselor.

I never cut, but I’ve hurt big time. As soon as I talked myself into being willing to feel my pain, it suddenly became less powerful. Every time I had a painful thought, I’d hold out my hands and whisper, “I embrace the pain,” and it would die down. It’s very freeing.

We usually shut down because people hurt us. They’re being their douchey jack-ass selves and will stay that way, so along with the embracing thing, I’d also say, “I give you permission to be your jack-ass self.” My shutting down would never change them, but I still had the power to choose freedom for myself. now I’m (mostly) free but they’re still douchey jack-asses.

Seriously, find someone who can help, and if they end up being a DJA as well, keep moving forward until you find someone who is a decent, helpful human being who can walk you through all of these messy emotions and come out the other side. because there is another side.

This is not the end of your story. It’s the beginning of a much better one, and something tells me you have it in you to work through this and find out how much of a bad-ass you really are.