“I remember the first time I cut myself, but I can’t remember what made me try it. It was exciting, in a way. My heart was pounding. What if someone came into my room?The pain was satisfying. No, more than that, the control was satisfying. I wanted to hurt, and I hurt. I wanted to bleed, and I would bleed.” *Amy, 17, Geauga County


“... Self-injury doesn’t define people. It’s a behavior, not who they are.”


“I also used cutting as a punishment when I felt that I had failed at


something in my day.


When Teens Self-Injure


Underlying anxiety fuels the cutter’s need for pain Reporting by Terri Nighswonger


Self-injury, or cutting as teens call it, is the act of deliberately harming your body, such as cutting or burning yourself. The injury can be inflicted anywhere on the body, but mainly occurs on the arms and legs. Self-injury is an unhealthy way to cope with emotional pain, intense anger and frustration. Young people like Amy* who cut don’t want to draw attention to themselves. For the most part, they don’t want to commit suicide. They just want to stop the intense emotional pain they feel.


“People self-injure as a way to self-regulate their feelings and emo-


tions. Tey feel bad and they do this in an attempt to feel better,” says Victoria Kress, Ph.D., licensed counselor and professor at Youngstown State University whose is an expert on the topic of self-injuring. “It’s ironic in some ways because you don’t typically think of hurting your- self as a way to make yourself feel better, but sometimes people hurt so bad psychologically that the physical pain helps to detract them from the psychological pain. It sort of tells you how badly they feel.” Amy started cutting in fiſth grade aſter her family moved and her


sister leſt for college. “I had a lot of bitterness and resentment toward my family,” she


says. “Te one sister I’d always been close to had gone off to college overseas, and in this new state where I knew not one person, I felt utterly alone.”


The myths of self-injury I


t’s not easy to spot the cutters. Te ones who self-injure are not necessarily the ones wearing all black or with spiked hair. Tey oſten are the perfectionist, such as a straight-A student, whose frustrations are born out of not being able to be as perfect as


they want. Amy says that, along with her emotional issues, she had a ridicu-


lously high expectation of herself. “I also used cutting as a punishment when I felt that I had failed at


something in my day. Maybe I thought it would serve as some type of penance that would curb my guilt,” she says. “My insane level of


*names changed to protect the teen’s privacy


anxiety also caused me to hurt myself. I couldn’t stand being in public much. When I had to be, I would get so anxious that I would scratch and rub at my forearms until I bled to channel my nervous energy.” According to Kress, the media plays some role in giving young


people the idea to self-injure, but a teen won’t continue to do it unless other emotional factors are involved. “So people will ask, ‘Do they learn this from movies or from friends


or TV shows?’ Tey might get that initial idea from those outlets, but I don’t think it’s something they’re going to maintain unless they have predetermined types of things going on that would cause them to want to continue,” she says. “It’s also a myth that people go around flaunting their wounds and wanting attention. Te research shows that most people try to hide them and don’t even tell anybody.”


Warning signs D


esiree Morrison, LPCC-S, a therapist with Family Be- havioral Health Services in Mayfield Village, says cut- ting oſten will peak from ages 12-13 to age 16, but oſten comes in different forms for younger teens and for boys.


Behaviors such as head banging or punching oneself sometimes are


earlier self-injury behaviors. Boys tend to head bang or punch things. Tings like ticks, eye movement, skin picking, nail biting, nightmares and other behaviors that are anxiety-based also may be present before more injurious behavior manifests, Morrison says.


Continued on page 24 www.NEOhioFamily.com / November 2011 21


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