Cutters: What the fuck can I do?

A

amberguillen

New member
Apologies for having a bit too much to drink (thereby damaging my lucidity) before posting this, but I came from a friendly get-together where drinks were involved before the bullshit started happening. Concerning said bullshit, I wish to be educated for future reference if and when I get roped into it again.

Before I get into the following story, I wish to reiterate that it is completely true. Only the names have been changed to protect the ignorant...I mean innocent:

I rent quite a few movies, and I prefer to share my movie experience with friends, in that I take them to their houses to watch them before I take the movies back. Before such screenings happen, several Boilermakers, Jagerbombs, shots of straight whiskey, etc, come across the table taking their cumulative tolls on my judgment as you can imagine.

Tonight, the screening happened at Toddman's. Toddman's older female roommate has a 25 year old daughter, Angie, who has a history of cutting and was in and out of mental institutions as a teenager. Well, Angie was there tonight and watched the movie with us, but as bullshit happened between her mom and her roommate (Toddman), and as the alcohol kept flowing, Angie took it upon herself to go into the driveway and cut on herself with a piece of glass she keeps in her glove box (for what, fucking emergencies?).

A.) I'm intoxicated and I don't really know how to deal with this shit. Not even sober do I know how to deal with this shit. Given my usual line of work, I am usually too concerned with other people carving me up to cut on myself. As long as I can remember, I've found myself in those situations and have kept a healthy respect of the blade and avoided them and all things like them. The only exception to this is when I had a brief fascination with acupuncture and hammered the pins in myself.

B.) I don't really understand cutting, and have always just assumed that it's beyond my understanding and have thus far been 100% correct in that assumption. To this day I am fucking lost.

The rest of the story: I dated this chick right before high school and even though I don't have any interest in her physically or romantically, I think of her as a sort of a friend, and I get emotionally involved. I knew from the moment she went outside that she was up to something.

She smokes, and it's required at the Casa De La Toddman that one must smoke outdoors if one is to smoke. She had already been outside just moments before, and it was obvious by her mannerisms that she was doing something a little more self destructive than putting burning leaves in her face. She tried to act like everything was all cool, but she kept wincing (quite obviously I might add) and favoring her right arm.

After the movie was over and i was leaving, she took it upon herself to grab another cigarette (I'm thinking I was set up for a pity party, but who knows...I know jack shit about this bullshit), and I ended up talking to her in the driveway for an hour before I left.

I don't really know how it came up in conversation, but I asked to see the wound (I guess the medic in me wanted to see the gore even if I couldn't do anything about it), and it looked as bad as she made it out to be. It was 4 inches long, and at least 3/4 inch wide at the middle where it was splayed open widest. It wasn't past the skin completely, but it was deep enough that the bleeding was intermittent.

I'm not concerned about this particular wound because she's cut herself so many times over the past 10 years that I believe she knows what she's doing. Hell, her skin looks like she's been whipped with a weed eater. She refused to drive in order to get medical attention, despite the fact she'd only had 1 drink HOURS beforehand. Her biggest concern was hiding it from her mom and Toddman before she could leave in the morning.

The most I did for her was shake her hand and agree not to judge her as a person, but I think all I did was pander to her lust for attention. I'm not 100% on this, but I'm reasonably satisfied that this is all I did.

We did talk for like an hour, and about a vast variety of things. However, as you can probably tell, I'm chemically not all here, and I was even less so in Toddman's driveway when I left. Lucky me, I live less than a half-mile from his front door and I love brisk walks at 3am.

So, any helpful suggestions for next time? I don't want to be a total asshole, but I also don't want to cater to her need for attention.
 
There's really nothing that you can do about her cutting. When I was younger, probably about 13, 14, I did it a bit myself. I did it because it made me feel like I could actually feel something, instead of being numb to the world or something emo like that. Obviously I've changed since then.

But yeah. Best advice would be to make yourself available to talk to your friend if she needs it. Don't try to tell her what to do and what not to do, just try to be there for her, like a friend should be. That's the most you can probably do at the moment.
 
Unfortunately, therein lies my drunken conundrum. I can make myself available, but how do I know if I'm just feeding the disease, if I'm satisfying the desire for attention?

Maybe I'm just going emo myself here, but why the fuck is it always me who has to deal with this psycho bullshit?
 
Because you let yourself. Rather than say "you know, that is pretty dumb", you let them go all emo and do nothing but encourage them in a way because you'll be there for the attention.

Hell, I don't know. I may be way wrong, but that's what it sounds like to me.

If I were you, I'd tell them flat out "I think it's for the attention. Don't expect me to give it to you. Drop the emocide and get with the suicide".

Ok, the last part was a joke. But I hope you know what I mean. :drunk:

I'm a bit sick/drunk. This may not have helped. :happysad:
 
That's pretty much what I expected, and what I thought myself when I let myself get dragged into that conversation. She was doing a shitty job of covering it up in the first place, wincing in pain, favoring her right arm, asking for duct tape and/or superglue (like we don't all know what the fuck she just did).

I didn't disguise the fact that I knew, and I did want to see how deep she'd done herself. I think that was my mistake, though. I've seen all I needed to see. Next time, I'm feigning ignorance and apathy...even if she's shooting blood.
 
When my father caught me smoking, he did the "smoke a whole pack till you get sick" deal. You should try the same approach. Tell her she's a wimp with her little cuts, then stab her. jk. I have no idea how I would deal with that situation. She needs professional help.
 
Well cutting is normally the result of somone feeling out of control or as said ealier feeling numb. If it is for the first reason it is normally seen with other type of compulsions (like she's overly obsessed with working out, a particular show or will only eat yellow foods etc). This type of cutting is solved only through therapy and antipsychotics. Others just do it for emo reasons: they are so very sad they could die, life is worthless, or they saw it on that movie "secret cuttings" and it seemed like a good way to get attention. Judging from her previous mental instability it doesn't sound like it is something she will grow out of (unlike those emos). She needs professional help. No way around that. Tell her mom and face the possibility of her getting upset because you tattled on her. She's 25, it's time to stop hiding things from mom. Botoom line is she is crazy and the sooner she comes to terms with it and gets help, the better.
 
Unfortunately the professional help hasn't helped. If anything it's exacerbated the root problem, whatever that is. I think it's just her being an attention whore, and my giving more than an acknowledgment is doing more harm than good. Perhaps it's simply time for her dumb ass to grow up.
 
I used to cut myself when I was a teenager. I did it so that the physical pain may overpower the emotional. I used more dull objects and dug into my skin repeatedly. It hurt more. I didn't do it for attention. The reasons were purely selfish. I didn't want other people to know or feel sorry for me.

My boyfriend has scars galore all over his chest and arms. He did it out of boredom.

I also was given professional help. It just made me angrier.

She may be doing it for attention. Either way, my advice would be to ignore it. Act like she doesn't do it at all. She may respect you more for doing so. I would have.

Good luck.
 
Yeah you definitly need to stay out of it. If the therapy hasn't worked, ignoring it may be the solution. Act like it's no big deal. If she is doing it for attention hopefully she'll get bored and stop (or act out in some other way). Some hobbies might help too.
 
3DRadio, you handled it really well. Even if it was a cry for attention, telling her that you arent buying it and all this stuff wont do any good. It only leads to worse situations.

My take on cutting is this: You only do it because thats how you see everyone else deal with being emo. If the first emo person were to read many books instead of cut themselves, Im quite positive the person would be reading every chance they got instead of cutting. Its a fad.
 
I always have my nose in a book and always did. This post was ignorant, sweetie.

I'm not defending the act of cutting OR being emo, but not everyone does it for the same reason. Then again, I don't think it was a fad when I was an angst-ridden teenager. Shrug.

I can't see someone doing it because it's TRENDY. That sounds ridiculous.
 
3DRadio. I think you handled the situation fine. I guess I wouldn't really know what to do either. Ignoring it has to be the best option.

Don't apologize for writing incoherently because you were drunk. Your writing is a hell of a lot better than mine, sober or not. I didn't even see a spelling error!



I think it is trendy. How come we never heard about this problem 50 years ago? Somehow it caught on:rolleyes:

If somebody really wanted to get attention, they should find more creative ways of hurting themselves. Like hitting yourself in the face with a hammer.
 
As a non-cutter, I still think I may be able to help you out a little here.


I went through some things in my life that I thought were just horrible. In hindsight, some of it wasn't really that big of a deal, but in the heat of the moment you tend to lose perspective on things.

I had a few times romanticised the thought of suicide quite a lot in my mind, and I really wanted to do it too. Fortunately, I came to my senses, hence me posting right now.

However, those situations were for me basically just manic-depressive panic attacks. I felt like the world was spiraling out of control and my life had gone to shit and like there just isnt a damn thing I could do about it. I felt like a slave to fate, existence, god, whatever. You feel like your life is out of control, and to me, the thought of suicide was comforting because I knew if I went through with it, I would have that control back. I wouldn't feel like a victim, but more like a martyr. I know that's kind of deranged, but like I said I came to my senses. This was years ago.

I suspect in at least some of these cases, it's very much a catharsis for them. It's a way for them to feel like they're in control again, even though it's self-destructive.

Hopelessness and depression, at least in my case, always stemmed from feeling like I had no control over my own life. Maybe that's what drives them in some cases? It makes sense to me.

Perhaps it's often just a cry for attention, though. Maybe it's both.
 
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