What is some advice for a person who is a cutter?

If Someone Said:

"I go by the saying 'Tearless grief bleeds inwardly', and personally believe that if you're sad, your grief is in your blood. So I cut myself to let it out and this helps me feel better about myself." If this is what a person with the addictive behavior of "cutting" would say to me, here is what I would say:

I respect, and think I understand, your thoughts, but I think I have a different and better solution. I do agree with the saying about tearless grief; I believe tearless grief does hurt us. If we try to hold feelings of grief in, we may well feel as if our hearts have holes in them and are bleeding. Our emotions need to be acknowledged and our losses mourned. Our bodies and minds are telling us things through our feelings and even providing outlets that are appropriate for release. We need to listen and then respond appropriately. If you feel hungry, eat. If you feel thirsty, drink. If you feel pain, move away from it or eliminate the source. If you feel sad and are grieving, cry.

Therefore, it follows in my experience that if you feel grief, but can not cry to express it or appropriately react to it in another acceptable way, you will feel even worse. The answer is to cry, to feel and acknowledge that specific emotional reaction to loss. To experience acceptable feelings of sadness and mourning in our time of grief. "Cutting", using a knife, razor, or other sharp slicing instrument to cause us to feel pain and have endorphin release, is a blocking mechanism. Blocking emotions is a temporary fix at best. Cutting (which was used in medicine and known as "Blood letting" in centuries gone by) only delays things by giving you other sensations and feelings in the interim to block the true feelings. It obscures the needs, blocks us from the reality of our emotional needs and temporarily avoids the proper solutions. The need to cry remains unsatisfied and your body will bring it forward again, and you will feel sad again, over and over, until finally the related emotion and response are coordinated.

If you acknowledge what you feel, and react to it in the appropriate way, you will fill the need, and if it is grief, you will eventually even fill the hole in your heart bit by bit with the appropriate response, and then feel better. I believe this.

They had theories about illness and negative contents in the blood in ancient Greece and the Middle Ages, and more recently in the 19th century, but more people died from the "cure" (leaches and blood letting) than from the underlying illness or disease. When science became able to see and identify what the real problem was, and learned how to deal with it appropriately, then people were cured of the disease and were no longer unnecessarily made more ill by adding another physical problem on top (anemia, infection, etc., etc.) caused by the "letting" of the blood.

When it seemed like the blood letting was working, it was really the body's own immune system or healing processes that fixed the problem. But, it sometimes coincidentally seemed to happen after the inappropriate response of blood letting, so for a long time they attributed the cures to the wrong thing, injuring or weakening and even killing people in the process. For that reason, the medical theories behind blood letting (phlebotomy) were for the most part abandoned long ago, and I believe appropriately and none too soon.

There are still a few disorders today that are appropriately treated with this practice. Very few. But, the key is that the method is only effective in the long run when it is appropriate to the disorder or the underlying need of the body, mind, or spirit (as in crying when sad, eating when hungry, phlebotomy when too many red blood cells, etc.).

I believe that our bodies are very good at healing themselves on their own in many if not most circumstances. I believe that in many many more circumstances we can help our bodies in that respect by using our minds and will. Sort of the mind-over-matter, placebo effect, the what-you-believe-will-happen-will-happen, way of looking at things. As a person who also believes in science, however, I don't think the evidence is there that we are capable of using those resources appropriately in all circumstances and/or they do not work in all circumstances for whatever reason... we are perhaps not yet evolved to that point, we have new disorders from new causes not yet overcome naturally, etc.

So, my theory on cutting is that it is only the placebo effect, or the belief that it will work that makes it seem to work. If it were an otherwise harmless practice, say whistling, and it seemed to work, I'd encourage it (but only in addition to, not as a substitute for proper appropriate medical treatment). Cutting, though, unlike whistling, has negative ramifications, I believe, in physical aspects (that we should not heap on our bodies, especially when the body is "down"), and also in psychological aspects because it is creating false assumptions, false crutches, and delaying the real fix, such as crying when sad. It seems almost too simple to be the answer, but most things in nature are very simple.

I have often rented a sad movie when I had something emotionally painful happen to make me feel sad, just to elicit the crying response to "prime the pump" and get the process started. And it does make me feel better. I would encourage you to try the same. Hopefully you have not trained your mind to lean entirely on the inappropriate crutch (cutting). It is an habitual and ritual behavior that will make it difficult to accept other solutions at first. It may therefore, prevent you from experiencing relief from the appropriate response to the emotion, but only at first.

I am convinced, if you stay with the right response for the associated feeling, your mind will adjust, and can then pitch in with your body's work and help bring physical and emotional balance. This will happen best and fastest with the addition of the spiritual dimension for balance with your inner self.

My belief system is based on the holistic approach (body, mind, spirit) and I believe each assists the other with problems in their respective areas. But for it to be ultimately effective you have to involve like for like... as in, if the body is "broken" you can not fix it with only responses from the mind and spirit, you must bring in the body in the work, too. It is a three way balance. If the emotions are the problem, you can not try to solve things through only physical (blood letting in this example) and spiritual work, you have to pull in appropriate mental/emotional responses, too.

So, from my way of looking at it cutting is a physical aspect you are trying to use to fix an emotional imbalance. It is like using a hammer to try to do a screwdriver's job. Both are a part of the toolbox, but each is targeted to its own functional area of work. Hammers with nails and screwdrivers with screws. When using the wrong tool or using the tool on the wrong job, you will probably not only not fix the problem, you will very likely break the more than you fix.

And since it is not a balance of all three aspects, it will fail to be a permanent solution and will probably even add extra dimensions of imbalance. For an emotional issue (grief), you need to use your emotions and mind to acknowledge and explore the feeling and your body to express and release the feeling in an appropriate way (tears). The final piece of the equation comes from within, your spirit, the link to the source, to light, to love, and ultimately it enables you to draw from that well, the strength, understanding, and love for the holistic you. The you that can bring everything back to proper balance if you listen to it and balance your responses to fit it.