Remedy

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AA

Cool. Have fun with it. Don't kill yourself. That is all.

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There's not much else to say about that.

Mike C

As the father of an ex-cutter, I'm pleased that you're finding strategies to help yourself. The scabs may be a bitch but they're nothing to having to explain the scarring over and over a couple of years from now when you no longer cut or feel the need to.

Stay off the meds if you can; the solution comes from within. Good luck with it.

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Tiamat10

Better dry erase markers than blades, any day of the week. I've been a cutter before, so I know what you're going through. Never drew on myself to prevent it though. In hindsight, I wish I'd have thought of that actually.

I went in for a more constructive approach to hurting myself: I jogged. Or hiked. Or climbed.

Anything that was physically taxing and sure to leave me sore the next day. You should try it sometime. Or you could stick with drawing on yourself which is probably a lot better.

Either way, I'm glad you didn't cut. Three cheers for you.

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A-L

I've never cut myself, but I am glad that you didn't.

Brendan M

Hmm. Cutting intrigues me- or anything to do with it. Could anyone who does it explain to me why it provides satisfaction?

Amber Leaf

sorry to be an arsehole but weren't you saying on the police raid thread that you were studying criminal justice and you were thinking of this as a career?

im sure you then went on to say how pigs could determine who was innocent and guilty by their actions.

bit random i know but are there a lot of ex-cutters joining law enforcement?

Im not too sure that i would want authority given to someone who was at one point so un=stable that they turned to cutting themselves (or others if that was the case) to get relief.

and before you start going off on one - i used to cut up regulary and ended up sticking pins in my arm so don't give me all that 'im recovered - i have my therapy bullshit'. the urge to self-harm never goes away and all im saying is that given the stress of a person in law enforcement; i wouldn't (if i were a head pig) want to employ someone who was so mentally weak.

__________________
'Jonny's laying in his sperm coffin and the angel looks down at him and says:
"Oh, pretty boy, can't you show me nothing but surrender?' - Patti Smith

Anarchy for me - Anything for whatever anyone else wishes.

Acid culture, techno culture, underground culture, rebel culture!

JosephB

I'd rather have Remedy -- someone who's dealt with some pain in her life, and made an effort to deal with it -- pounding on my door in the middle if the night, rather than some blockhead, Clint Eastwood wannabe. Who's a better judge of behavior?

And does the urge to harm yourself extend to harming others?

Oh, and you were a cutter. Are you not able to discern what you think is fair and reasonable behavior?

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-- Flannery O'Connor

Remedy

To everyone who was polite: thanks. I'm on the verge of running out the door for something I've been planning all week, so I'll respond to others in more depth later.

For Amber Leaf, because I don't seem to be able to resist arguing lately - I thought we were done with this, but apparently not. That's fine with me, really; I still don't care.

Nope. I said I'm taking a criminal justice course, but I'm in the science end of law enforcement when needed (it is needed, but not constantly); otherwise, my career works on something else entirely. I take criminal justice because I enjoy it and because it's interesting, not because I want to be a cop.

Reading comphrension 101 is sorely lacking. I said that your actions would make them suspect you were guilty; they had nothing else to go on at the moment, and they had to act to protect their safety as well as their goals. When they had time to study it all out, the conclusion would be different.

I wouldn't know. There's no survey for that sort of thing, at least as far as I've seen.

I don't really care about what you would want, but I think we've all ready established this, so I'm not sure what the point is. Since we're having fun, I'll say that I'm not too sure that I would want a writer to not be able to use even semi-proper grammar, but I'm assuming you are one, so obviously what we want is not exactly what happens.

No one recovers, not fully anyway.

Your view of law enforcment is so skewed anyway that I don't doubt that you really have no idea about what you're talking about. Besides that, you don't even know why I cut; it was not stress. I deal with things very differently than you do, obviously, and this does not bother me.

Amber Leaf

From my experiances of cutting and from knowing others who have I would certainly not want someone who is unable of controlling their own emotion pounding on my door than someone who is generally content and balanced.

What happens if someone who is into self-harm and has mood swings goes into raid a house and is called something a little bit too personal by the occupant? It leaves the occupant open to the person raiding the house potentially taking the insult personally and reacting in an emotional manner rather than a professional one.

I wouldn't want either someone who harms themselves or others when upset raiding my house as it could turn into a messy situation.

Believe it or not there are some people who are able to act proffesionally in stressfull circumstances without allowing their emotions to come into play (albeit not many of these people work in the police force).

I was a cutter and then and even now I wouldn't be able to truly say that my emotions wouldn't come into play when judging a risky situation.

At the end of the day people cut for a reason. If someone is unable to judge themselves properly enough that they can warrant cutting themselves as a means of escape then I don't think they are in a position to judge others.

__________________
'Jonny's laying in his sperm coffin and the angel looks down at him and says:
"Oh, pretty boy, can't you show me nothing but surrender?' - Patti Smith

Anarchy for me - Anything for whatever anyone else wishes.

Acid culture, techno culture, underground culture, rebel culture!

Amber Leaf

Because hitting = instead of - is the sign of a bad writer and not a clumsey finger. it doesn't matter that i haven't capitalised a single sentance - just that you seem to want to highlight a simple mistake.

without getting into this argument again - my actions were normal of an innocent person as i was innocent and most people would kick off at being woken up like that.

Oops, i misunderstood. i thought from the way you were talking that you were training to be a copper seeing how you know what they look for in people's behaviour when determining if someone is 'suspected' of being guilty or not.

I never claimed to know why you cut and you do actually deal with things a lot like how i used to to tell you the truth. i used to draw on myself a lot instead of cutting up and at one point was tempted to go for tatoos untill i realised i would probably end up covered in them.

ok, i have had many, many encounters with the police in my life. nearly every weekend they turn up at parties i go to in an attempt to make either shut them down or (in the case of the odd decent ones) to make sure they are being run safley.

my cousin is a copper. i see the police every day parading up and down the main road near where i live constantly avoiding the smack/crack dealers that are making money directly in front of their faces.

i do know what i am talking about because i have seen it and not just took a course.

__________________
'Jonny's laying in his sperm coffin and the angel looks down at him and says:
"Oh, pretty boy, can't you show me nothing but surrender?' - Patti Smith

Anarchy for me - Anything for whatever anyone else wishes.

Acid culture, techno culture, underground culture, rebel culture!

Writ-with-Hand

Remedy, that looks pretty artistic to me. I sure couldn't pull off something looking so neat.



Amber and Remedy, I'm not so sure it is helpful to either one of you, seeing you both share the same or similar affliction, to tear one another down.

This cutting thing - which I have no experience with at all - seems to be mostly an affliction found among girls and women. Girls and women tend to turn much of their emotional pain inward, whereas boys and men seem to more often turn their emotional pain outward. To be overly simplistic I'll say men destroy others and women destroy themselves. (I know that's not entirely true and oversimplified)

I do realize their are boys (or maybe men too) that cut themselves. I saw this on a documentary about homeless children in Romania. This one young boy cut himself all the time.


As for cops, I'm personally happy they are out on the streets, and their job takes a lot of courage and dedication. That said, I'm not so sure I would qualify all or most veteran cops as "content" and "stable."

Malone

I know I've asked questions about this before, but I still just don't get it. Is it about the pain? Could you replace the cutting with a tattoo gun and get the same buzz? Or hit yourself with a hammer or close a door on your hand or something? Do you like to get punched and slapped around during sex? Does that kind of masochism go hand in hand with cutting? Or does it have to be self-administered pain?

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There Is A Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed

Brendan M

Common ways of hurting one's self are:

• Cutting with knives/similar sharp objects;
• Shaving skin and flesh with razors;
• Pushing pins through skin to create artistic effects;
• Biting any part of the body, mostly the "fatty" bits or wherever the person feels comfortable biting.

Tiamat10

Can't speak for everyone here, but for me a tattoo wouldn't have done the trick because if I ever wanted to cut, I wasn't in a fit state to be out among people.

I suppose it would have the same effect to smash myself with a hammer, but that would likely leave lasting damage that would be a lot more irritating to deal with during good times.

It's that the pain releases endorphins to give a buzz and distracts from the emotional thing, not unlike the high you get after sex, only without the lingering pleasure.

And no, masochism doesn't go with it. I hate pain and tend to avoid it at all costs--barring my previous self-cutting. I've no idea why it happened that way. And on that same note, attitudes between the sheets aren't necessarily connected a pain fetish. Fewer or things would kill the mood quicker than being slapped around, I think.

Basically, cutting and the pain that goes with it is directly related to emotional pain, and in general, it's not carried into other aspects of life.

Of course, everyone's different, so some cutters might disagree with me completely.

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