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Types and dealing with depression via cutting

jixmixfix

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Come to think of it, there are plenty of ways to safely be a masochist, especially in a safe, and albeit different, loving relationship.

:)

Push, pull...

Feeling insecure, being reassured...

Being willingly hurt then consoled...

:wub:

you're such an emneagram 4.... :glasses:
 

Siúil a Rúin

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There are some contrasting motivations for cutting which could possibly correspond to different types. Cutting in a visible manner is completely different from the hidden type. Self-harming to feel "something" is different from doing it to simplify complex, intangible feelings.
 

MonkeyGrass

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There are some contrasting motivations for cutting which could possibly correspond to different types. Cutting in a visible manner is completely different from the hidden type. Self-harming to feel "something" is different from doing it to simplify complex, intangible feelings.

+1:yes:


Not that I'd suggest it as a good solution...usually when I get the urge to "ground" my emotions this way, it's a signal that I need to re-prioritize in some area of my life. Usually, it's that I've taken on too many challenges at once, and they're all in competition for my emotional energy/attention.
 

Tamske

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Eeeeek.
To me, this is pure horror. I just can't imagine anybody cutting himself.
Okay, I know it occurs in real life. Please don't read this post as an attack against people who cut themselves. It's not meant like this. I don't hold it against them. I don't condemn them.
I'm just voicing my own subjective idea about it.

I can not imagine cutting myself.
I have a lot of imaginary characters running around in my head. Nobody of them will ever cut himself.

But then again, I've never been depressed. I've been sad, apathetic, angry, and everything mixed, but I've never even come close to depression. I don't know what it is like.
 

Totenkindly

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I didn't find your post offensive, and it's okay to not understand it.
There is a lot that is really hard to understand unless you have gone through it yourself.
All that we can do is offer each other safety, love, and compassion regardless of whether or not we can directly empathize.

The further along I get into a "happy place," the harder I find it to remember exactly how bad I felt and why it led me to do things I did.
 

Soar337

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I did used to cut (Not anymore. I refuse to) Now I just cry to music. Pahahhaah :p
 

Synarch

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First off, we need to remove shame from the world. Shame is what leads people to harm themselves. Shame is a meaningless construct. There is only what is healthy and unhealthy.

Cutting is very rational in certain respects. I find it easy to understand. There have been times in my life where I felt so bottled up with painful emotions that I wanted to punch things or be hit just to overwhelm the tight ache inside. At points in my life I have punched myself in the leg to try to unblock the feelings, to overwhelm the fear keeping me from letting the pain inside.

We do not have a language anymore for suffering. We are uncomfortable speaking about it. But, we should not be. To live is to suffer. Just as joy is part of life, so is suffering. Pain is central to life. As soon as you see its value, the fear drops away and you can integrate yourself fully and go on to live.

Harming yourself is a way to connect with your feelings. It is not that you are feeling the pain and marking it physically. It's generally that you are NOT feeling the pain. Something is holding you back from letting painful emotions overwhelm you. We try to control how we feel. But, since emotions are connected very deeply to our physical feelings we can reconnect with our feelings by working through the body.

Cutting probably operates in many ways. By signifying internal pain with signs of physical pain, pain becomes comprehensible. We can see it. We can also see the process by which we heal. That can be comforting.

Likewise, cutting is often done in private so it can have a certain ritual quality to it. I imagine there may be a correlation between OCD and cutting.

I imagine there is also an aspect of anger to cutting. The desire to do violence is internalized and controlled. A young man may punch a wall and harm his hand, while a young woman may cut herself. The initial feeling may be identical.

Also, women have to deal psychologically with the notion of being penetrated so they may be less squeamish about the concept of chthonic, bloody interiors of our bodies. They know they are likely to be penetrated and implanted with offspring. All these things involve blood and violence so it is unlikely to be as threatening to females in the sense that they prepare themselves for this reality whereas typically men do not.


It's usually done for one of two reasons with me: Either I feel a lot of emotional pain I don't know what to do with, or I'm punishing myself for not being as pure or strong as I feel I should be.

The release of emotion is also a reconnecting to the emotion.

Thank you all for your insight. While speaking with a friend today she told me her 15-year-old daughter had been cutting herself. Her daughter is currently in group therapy and has stopped cutting herself. However, I thought maybe her daughter might feel less self-loathing (if that is why people cut themselves) if her way of perceiving the world was validated through type. To those of you who have experienced this, did learning about your type help you in anyway? Thank You

I would also be curious what her home life is like.

My introversion, at least, has something to do with self-harming impulse. My weak sensing probably contributes.

I'm not really interested in punishing myself, I like me just fine. :heart: I burn myself on rare occasion, and not badly. Mostly, it's about carrying a lot of emotional tension without physical release without realizing it, some major/minor thing triggering me going over the edge of *needing* to release it, and me being unable to cry easily when I need to. :doh: For whatever reason, I can't cry. The endorphins are like a crazy drug.:blush:

It is also about control.

People cut for various reasons. I think it started out with more women/girls doing it, but I know quite a few boys who do as well. It isn't for attention because most people I know who do it go to great lengths to hide it. There's a huge sense of shame that accompanies it, and yet it appears to be a coping mechanism to deal with pain that has no legitimate outlet for expression. Some people even take it a step further and put things inside the cuts to make them fester (crayons, bits of metal etc that get healed into the skin and then cause problems). I think there is a feeling of control that it gives as well as some release in the pain (I think there is actually some euphoric feeling from that). Unfortunately it is a cycle and creates more shame than before and therefore more cutting to cope. Where I used to work, cutting was done by over half of the kids I taught (and those are the ones I knew about). Often people will even choose a place on their body that others can't easily see. There is some element of it catching on - in schools, prisons, youth facilities etc if one person is cutting, there are soon more. I think it truly stems from not having adequate emotional attachments to a strong adult. These attachments need to be fostered and developed rather than just trying to treat the symptoms (cutting or depression).

Interesting. Never heard of people leaving things in the wound.

Self-mutilation is a whole other species of depression, it's masochism in its purest form.

To be hurt by others is one thing, but to hurt yourself, well, that's a whole other bag of beans, beans that you can control, and understand.

To hurt oneself is to find relief, feel a release, and discover a sort of fucked up redemption.

Perhaps you'll only understand it if you do/done it.

Sometimes it's nice to reflect the way you see existence in your body.

I did used to cut (Not anymore. I refuse to) Now I just cry to music. Pahahhaah :p

Music is also good for connecting with the emotions.
 

ubiquitous1

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I really appreciate you guys sharing your personal experiences with this issue. It saddens me to know that so many people suffer so deeply, that this becomes a viable coping mechanism.

I did used to cut (Not anymore. I refuse to) Now I just cry to music. Pahahhaah :p

For me, music is very cathartic.

..
I would also be curious what her home life is like.

A far as I know her home life is good. However, her dad is a Marine so, they have moved around quite a bit. This may be the root of her problems; I know,for me, it was very traumatic when we move.
 

Totenkindly

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We do not have a language anymore for suffering. We are uncomfortable speaking about it. But, we should not be. To live is to suffer. Just as joy is part of life, so is suffering. Pain is central to life. As soon as you see its value, the fear drops away and you can integrate yourself fully and go on to live.

yeah. Our culture is weak. We're into pleasure and living forever, we are not very accepting of pain and death, except as taboo, and even our media (cinema, etc.) tends to detach violence and death and make it a spectacle rather than something real that people experience personally.

I'm actually really glad I've always been aware of death because even though life has been bittersweet much of the time, I feel I have grown a great deal and learned many things about life that some people do not figure out for years and years until forced kicking and screaming to confront the dark. Our culture would be me more intrapersonally wise and filtering back out to interpersonally if we could accept legitimate suffering and death.

Harming yourself is a way to connect with your feelings. It is not that you are feeling the pain and marking it physically. It's generally that you are NOT feeling the pain. Something is holding you back from letting painful emotions overwhelm you. We try to control how we feel. But, since emotions are connected very deeply to our physical feelings we can reconnect with our feelings by working through the body.

True. The general life pain was usually dull, thudding, effusive, overwhelming; the cutting was sharp and clear and localized and tangible.

Cutting probably operates in many ways. By signifying internal pain with signs of physical pain, pain becomes comprehensible. We can see it. We can also see the process by which we heal. That can be comforting.
]

pain is tangible, true, which helps a person articulate it and make it non-abstract. The healing thing seems more an afterthought, not a cause.

Likewise, cutting is often done in private so it can have a certain ritual quality to it. I imagine there may be a correlation between OCD and cutting.

Not sure on that. I know I'm not OCD, and there are girls who don't appear OCD who do it. I think the CONTROL issue, though, is common to both... OCD wants control over environment to reduce anxiety, cutters might want control over ... something... (one's life? autonomy? feelings?)

I imagine there is also an aspect of anger to cutting. The desire to do violence is internalized and controlled. A young man may punch a wall and harm his hand, while a young woman may cut herself. The initial feeling may be identical.

That seems plausible. It's a socially acceptable form of self-violence that goes beneath the radar... and because it is secretive, it can help one feel momentarily powerful.

Also, women have to deal psychologically with the notion of being penetrated so they may be less squeamish about the concept of chthonic, bloody interiors of our bodies. They know they are likely to be penetrated and implanted with offspring. All these things involve blood and violence so it is unlikely to be as threatening to females in the sense that they prepare themselves for this reality whereas typically men do not.

It's an interesting idea, I have to admit, but as far as tangible evidence seems rather like hogwash -- I mean, I could also conjecture that women are more protective of their bodies and having that beauty marred which would lead others to think they were ugly, so inflicting visible scars on their bodies and taking pleasure in that seems extremely antithetical.

I'm more inclined that it deals with self-punishment or with reconnection with one's emotions in some way.

Interesting. Never heard of people leaving things in the wound.

yeah. I've heard of it before. I didn't feel like doing that though. It is some other psychological influence I guess.

Music is also good for connecting with the emotions.

Great, now we'll have people cutting themselves with music. :doh: (C sharp, anyone?)
 

OrangeAppled

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I've always seen it as a very extrovert thing. All of the cutters I've known were ExFPs. It seems a need to physically manifest an internal pain. They need to literally make an opening, because that's how they deal with stuff (externally).
As an introvert, I don't feel that need (and I'm not prone to self-mutilation in the slightest - respecting the body is very important to me).


I believe self-harm is often associated with BPD, eating disorders and depression (so she kind of hit the trifecta).

I've noticed that also, and I think cutting is almost just a sign of a bigger problem, not the problem in itself.
 

Kaveri

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I cut when I was a teenager and stopped for good at about 21. I'm an INFx. I don't think I would have started cutting had I never heard anything about it. My sister cut herself first and I guess I sort of imitated her... And I also secretly hoped that someone would notice how sad and left-out I felt.
 

Cindy

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Great, now we'll have people cutting themselves with music. :doh: (C sharp, anyone?)
lol

I just happened to read something about cutting today which was a bit random and made me think of this thread. Synarch and Jennifer have already touched on it though.

Cutting is a sensory distraction (and consequently potentially addictive). It involves a stimulation of the senses in order to immediately avoid feeling the original pain of a situation. The pain of cutting is more manageable than the overwhelming pain we are seeking to distract ourselves from.

So I agree that it's a control thing. It would perhaps be more positive to face our pain. I can only speak for myself when I say sometimes whilst the pain I feel seems incredibly hard to face once I do face it, its not usually as bad or scary as I though/felt it would be. And with a bit of self understanding and acceptance on occasion it just vanishes.

Ditto Jennifer re being aware of death early. Thats some perspective. You just don't know when someone or something is going to be ripped away from you - its out of our control.

I tried but I can't find an Smilie with a tear in its eye but also a relaxed smile - yeah bittersweet.
 
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