♪ Intro Music ♪
Hello there ...
'Cutting' is one of the most misunderstood human behaviors.
Most especially because of how much it scares other people.
People think:
"If they could do that to themself, what could they do to me?"
Also, Cutting is an extremely addictive behavior.
For this reason,
I figured I'd go into this subject.
Before we get too deep into it,
I'm gonna come right out and tell you
that I was addicted to Cutting, myself,
for many, many, years -
so I understand this topic
on a multitude of different levels
and perspectives within this Universe.
Now, chances are
if you are not a Cutter yourself
you will come across somebody in your lifetime
who is Cutting
or was a Cutter,
and for this reason,
it's important for us to delve into this topic
on a deeper level.
For the sake of this video,
I'm gonna be referring to 'cutters'
just like that - as Cutters,
because that's the stereotypical term that we use
to describe people who are engaging in Cutting or self-harm.
But I want you to not mistake this:
Cutting is not an identity - it's a symptom.
And there are many other behaviors
that fall under the category of self-injury ...
... than just Cutting.
Some people are 'burners',
some people freeze themselves,
some people pull out their hair,
some people break their own bones,
engage in bruising,
other people embed objects within their body -
so there are many different types of self-injury.
Cutting is only one of these.
And what you'll find with self-injury
is that the person who's engaging in that self-injuring behavior
has a reason for why they're picking that* particular*
way of harming themselves.
For example:
A Cutter might choose cutting because
they're full of really negative emotion
and when they watch the blood leave their body,
they feel like the emotions are leaving with the blood.
The first thing we have to understand about Cutting
is that cutting is not a suicide-attempt.
Some Cutters, it is true, are suicidal,
but other Cutters are not.
Cutting, in and of itself, is coping mechanism.
The second thing we have to understand
is that Cutting is addictive.
It's an addictive compulsion.
For anything to meet the criteria of Addiction
it has to adhere to the Three C's.
No.1 - (C)raving for the substance,
No.2 - Loss of (C)ontrol
once the thought to 'use' arises in the mind of the person,
and No.3 - (C)ontinued use in spite of negative consequences.
Cutting fits these three criteria for an Addiction.
And a lot of the addiction to Cutting
revolves around an addiction to Endorphins.
Endorphins block pain
but also play a part in our ability
to feel relief and pleasure.
They affect us much like Codeine or Morphine does.
When endorphins reach the opiate receptors
in the limbic system
especially in the part of your brain called the Hypothalamus,
you experience relief, pleasure, and a sense of satisfaction.
You also feel more calm and positively energized.
Here's the thing -
when your body experiences pain
your brain releases endorphins.
Endorphins both soothe and energize you
so you can get out of harm's way.
For this reason,
Cutting soothes negative emotion.
It is a coping mechanism
which provides temporary relief
of intense feelings such as anxiety, guilt, depression,
stress, emotional numbness, a sense of failure or self-loathing,
low self-worth or the pressure of perfectionism.
We can become addicted to the chemicals
that our own body produces
with the same veracity
as we become addicted to a street-drug.
And when we start to associate
the action of cutting with that feeling of relief,
that sets up a neural pathway in our brain
which compels us every time we feel negative emotional states
to seek relief through the behavior of Cutting.
That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Cutting.
To understand Cutting fully, we have to dive even deeper
and we have to understand
that self-harm is not only a behavior we see in humans -
we also see it in other animals -
animals that are captive.
Therein lies an interesting truth.
At some level, the physical Human, who is a Cutter,
feels some kind of 'captivity'.
Without exception, like a caged animal,
the Cutter is in a prison where negative emotion
especially despair, hatred and rage
cannot be expressed,
and so those emotional states are internalized.
There is nowhere for the energy to turn
but inwards towards the Self,
and so they are expressed upon the Self.
Those emotional states that compel a person towards Cutting
are the result of childhood traumas.
For example:
One of the most common causal situations
that leads to Cutting
is a child perceives themselves as being emotionally rejected
by a parent that is supposed to love them,
or that the child wished, loved them.
This is common, of course, if the child
is born to a critical or perfectionistic parent.
The child develops hatred and rage for that parent
and experiences a deep level of despair,
but when the child expresses those emotions,
they are shamed for it.
Those emotions are invalidated.
Their parent turns the emotion back on the child
by implying that the emotions mean
something is wrong with the *child*
because there is no other *valid* reason
for them to feel that way.
Because of this,
the feelings are internalized -
the child becomes hyper-critical of herself or himself
and that hatred, now internalized,
becomes focused at the Self.
To understand this causal scenario that leads to Cutting, deeper,
imagine a fish in a fish tank.
Now imagine that that fish is projecting emotion outwards.
That emotion will hit the glass walls of the tank
and ricochet back towards the fish.
As a Cutter, it may take you *years* to realize
that no child is born loathing themselves.
It may take you years to realize
that what has actually happened
is that somebody in your life
has treated you in a less than loving way -
and you have internalized these feelings
and now you treat yourself
with the same level of disapproval,
with the same level of self-loathing.
You treat yourself like something is inherently wrong with you,
that you are bad and thus need to be punished.
You have exchanged emotional torture for physical mutilation.
All Cutters are self-loathing.
All Cutters are self-critical.
You did not learn to view yourself this way -
you were seen this way by other people
and so you learned to see yourself this way.
I challenge you to look beyond the surface of things.
I challenge you to look at that myth
that parents love us because they're our parents,
and instead be open to the idea
that somebody in your childhood
did not love you like you needed to be loved.
Somebody in your childhood rejected who you were.
Look deeply within yourself ...
... admit to who *should* have loved you,
but either couldn't or didn't.
Cutting is often a sign of abuse, especially sexual abuse,
because it is a manifestation of the despair and self-loathing
that arises from internalizing the despair and rage
that occurs when we are not loved by someone
we wanted to love us.
It's also an attempt to gain control over our body,
which we did not have control over
when it was being used by other people.
When it comes to our negative emotions,
we do not feel the capacity
to feel the way that we feel
especially if our emotions were invalidated -
if our feelings were 'not OK'.
For this reason, we are after two things -
Sedation and Control.
To 'sedate' our emotions
means to numb or drown out our awareness
of our negative feeling.
To 'control' is to gain power over our discomfort.
When we feel negative emotion, we feel out of control,
so we gain back our control
by exerting control over the way that we feel.
All addictions, without fail,
exist to either sedate or control our emotions.
Cutting accomplishes both Sedation and Control.
We can sedate our negative feelings
through an endorphin release.
We can control our emotions
by creating and causing that endorphin release.
There are two types of Cutters:
- there are Cutters who are secretive and ritualistic
about their cutting,
- and there are Cutters who are demonstrative
about their cutting.
Whether a Cutter is secretive or demonstrative
is going to tell you a lot about whether somebody
is needing Sedation or Control, more so.
Those who are ritualized with their cutting,
and who are secretive,
are more desperate for a feeling of Control.
On the other end of the spectrum,
you have Cutters that are demonstrative.
These people will cut in areas which are visible to society.
Because, they, need Sedation.
They're looking for some way to feel a sensation of relief,
instead of a sensation of control.
But here's the thing -
they're looking for that sensation of sedation and relief
to come through other people.
These Cutters are desperate for rescue.
Society shames them for cutting
by saying that they just cut for attention.
And so, they cannot admit to anyone
(or even to themselves)
that what they want is for someone to notice.
They're in a prison
of a torturous situation,
unseen by society and by the people around them,
they're shamed for wanting attention
that subconsciously they *do* want so badly.
They want attention
because they want someone to save them
from the hell they're living in -
think of it as a visible S.O.S.
The dream is that on top of the sedation
of the endorphin release,
someone will come to sedate our pain
by loving and caring about us enough.
Of course, Cutting has the opposite effect on people -
it drives them away.
I was a Cutter who was desparate for rescue.
I'll never forget this time when I was 18 years old
when I was the most desperate for people to notice
the internal pain that I was in.
I was at a very public ski resort
in the cafeteria area,
and I was openly cutting with a piece of glass -
the blood was running out onto the floor.
And all these families kept passing me by,
including children.
Only the little kids were the ones who said anything.
I remember a little girl looking up at her mother and saying
"What's wrong with that girl, Mommy?"
and nobody wanted to come talk to me -
instead they were repelled and they walked by me ...
... even a group of ski patrolmen ...
I couldn't have admitted at that point in my life
that what I wanted was attention.
I could never have admitted that it was
a desperate plea for help.
That was too *shameful* -
that was what my parents were shaming me for
the whole time when I was growing up ... and cutting ...
But what I really wanted was
for somebody to stop and to recognize
the amount of pain that I was in.
I wanted attention to be drawn to what was wrong with me.
I wanted someone to notice.
My life felt like I was in prison of glass
where I could see out but no one could see in.
The last thing on Earth that you need to do
is to shame a Cutter for wanting attention.
It's the same thing as shaming somebody
who is stranded in a hostage situation,
for writing S.O.S. on the wall
because it's just a 'desperate plea for attention'.
When it comes to Cutting,
like any addiction,
the addiction itself is just a symptom of the deeper root-cause.
That's why, when people come to seek my help for Cutting,
it's never about stopping the cutting,
it's about finding the root-cause
of *why* we might be cutting.
We treat the symptom of Cutting
the same way as we would a rash.
You treat the underlying conditions,
not the rash itself.
That's the only way to get that behavior to modify.
It's the only way to integrate
the emotions causing those particular behaviors.
Cutting is done to avoid and escape the way we feel.
But as long as we avoid the way we feel
we can't find healing.
We have to be willing to go in the opposite direction
when we feel upset,
and use the compulsive energy we feel
to propel us deeper within the very emotion
we are trying to escape from.
We set out to integrate the Emotional Body.
For this reason,
it is essential that anyone who is struggling with Cutting
watch my video on YouTube titled "Healing the Emotional Body".
There many, many, techniques to get you to stop
the actual behavior of Cutting.
But for obvious reasons,
I think this is a surface solution
and it's an artificial healing, not a genuine healing.
The reasons that you are cutting are rooted deeply
in childhood trauma,
and until we're willing to go to that place,
we will find no solution to the cutting itself.
But ...
I will share with you today the one technique
that actually did accomplish the end of my cutting.
To do this,
I had to get in touch with the Inner Child.
Now, all good modalities
that deal with healing emotional trauma
will at some level, and at some degree,
put you in touch with the Child Within.
Now what I did to end my cutting
can be summed up in one sentence:
I imagined that by cutting myself,
I was cutting the Child within me.
Most Cutters have a ritual spot where they cut -
mine was in the bathroom.
So what I did is
I sorted through my photographs
for most adorable picture of myself that I could find as a child,
and I taped it up ... in the bathroom ...
If you don't have a childhood photograph of yourself,
what you could do it imagine yourself as a small child.
Now every time I went to cut,
I would imagine that I was cutting that child.
I would imagine grabbing her arm
and having her squirm away from me and cry
and not understand why I was abusing her ...
why I was treating her this way ...
why she needed to be punished.
I want you to try that.
Every time you go to cut,
imagine that you're cutting your childhood self.
Watch yourself pull against that cruelty.
Watch yourself cry at your own mercy.
What I noticed when I started doing this
is that I couldn't do it -
I started collapsing into tears.
I couldn't cut the child ...
... even though I could cut the adult.
Here's the thing:
If you can't cut the child
and you can cut the adult,
the minute you realize
that there's no difference between
your childhood self and the adult self
because the childhood self is still within,
you can't cut your adult self.
And if you're someone who *can* cut your adult self,
still, despite this practice,
then the Child Within is still a conceptualization to you -
it's not something you have experienced fully ...
it's not something you have come into contact with emotionally...
it's not a reality to you yet.
If you know someone who's Cutting,
you cannot stop their behavior for them ...
They have to want to stop.
And to want to stop,
that behavior has to not serve them anymore.
The thing is -
as long as they still have those unintegrated emotions
and traumas within their body ...
as long they're still trying to escape from the emotion ...
the cutting still serves them.
The worst thing you could do to a Cutter
is to shame them for cutting.
This does nothing more than add fuel to fire
of why they're cutting in the first place.
If you wanna help,
don't react to the cutting behavior itself.
Demonstrate your unconditional love to them
by drawing attention to, and desiring to understand
the emotions that they're trying to escape from - by cutting.
On some level,
every Cutter wants you to know how much pain they're in.
They need to be acknowledged
and they need their pain to be validated instead of invalidated.
They need to be loved regardless of how they feel
instead of be led to believe
they are only lovable and wanted if they feel good.
What they need is the opposite of rejection.
They need to know that something is right with them,
instead of wrong.
If any Cutters are watching this now,
take this last sentence that I said to heart:
The opposite of what you need is rejection.
Nothing is wrong with you -
instead, everything is right with you
because your emotional guidance system
is reflecting to you, deeply suppressed traumas
and deeply suppressed emotions within your system.
Begin to know your triggers.
Because those triggers are a good indication
as to the traumas you experienced in your childhood
which need to be felt and integrated.
There is nothing that is wrong with you
because your emotions are telling you accurately
how you were emotionally treated by other people
when you were young.
Just don't expect them to admit to it «winks»
♪ Outtro Music ♪
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