I have a really good friend that I care a lot about and she's a cutter. How do I help her?

Question

She's been doing this for almost a year now. The first time she did it, I told her that she shouldn't have done what she did and that was the end of it. And then a few months later she looked depressed and when I asked what was wrong, she said "save/help me" on a piece of paper and made me swear not to scream or tell anyone. She tried to lie to me about it but I grabbed her wrist and she yelped. That morning when I went to school, I was shaken up and my friends were wondering what was wrong and why I couldn't tell them. Finally, during lunch me and my friend went to the media center and I told her how to find out for herself. After she found out we went to a teacher that we trusted a lot. Eventually, the counselor found out and notifyed her parents. She still does it and her parents aren't doing anything about it! I really want to help her but I don't know how. I've already had her call me when she feels the need to cut herself and try to write about her feelings, but they didn't work.

Answer 1

use your schools social worker or school psychologist Hun they will and should find her help just be her friend and be there for you. I have been through this with many students and the main cause is stress and she finds this way for her to reduse it. good luck and if you need more help please e-mail me at [e-mail] here is something that may help ya. i know its long but read it
Thank you for caring enough about your friend to seek advice on how to help her get through these hard times. I'll give you my advice, with the disclaimer that I am in no way a "professional" expert, I just happen to know one person's experience (my own) first hand, and have corresponded with other cutters, which may give me some insight on what helps and what doesn't. I will use the feminine pronoun, as girls seem to be more prone to do deliberate self harm, but keep in mind that there are also many male cutters out there, one of whom may be your friend.

First thing you should know is, there is no quick fix. In most cases the cutter has found on the edge of a knife a coping mechanism that helps get them through life. We cannot simply take that away from them without helping them replace that with something else that really works. They now need to unlearn what they've learned is the only thing that works for them. And this is a long process for most people. So patience will be very important.

FAMILY
If your friend is still a minor, or living with her parents, how are your friend's parents dealing with the situation? If they don't know about the cutting, then your friend probably wants to maintain whatever level of confidentiality about this that she requests. Be sure to ask HER who it's okay to talk to about this. You can talk to whomever you want to to get advice and help, just don't reveal her identity unless she okays that. Sometimes in a panic, family and friends will institutionalize a young cutter without really investigating whether that institution is right for her, whether they even have a program for cutters (most do not), whether this will impact her in a terrible way. They just panic and their big fear is that she will commit suicide. They understandably fear that because they are not trained to deal with this themselves, they won't handle it right without professional intervention. And sometimes a hospital or center can be helpful, just to be in a safe place where you cannot continue cutting. Sometimes, when a kid is doing this, they're really silently asking for some kind of help, some kind of emergency help. They can't express how they're feeling, they may not even be sure WHAT they're feeling, or why, they just feel something. Talk to your friend about what she thinks would be the most helpful thing that could happen right now to get her through this.

I believe cutting is usually a coping response to the environmental factors in that cutter's experience. If your friend has been a victim of child abuse or sexual molestation of any kind, and I'm not saying that she HAS, but it is a frequent factor in this kind of bahavior, the perpetrator will have a lot invested in making sure that this fact never comes to light. Therefore if the perp is a family member that will also SKEW things a great deal, in terms of how this is dealt with if the family finds out. So please be very careful with confidentiality issues for her protection. If she wishes to reveal her situation to people then it's probably a good idea for her loved ones to know what's happening, but it should be HER choice.

HOSPITALS
It's important that the cutter be allowed control over the situation and not be rail-roaded into some hospital ward against her will. Of course, even if she signs in voluntarily, that signature may be coerced, as it was when I was a teenager and threatened with certain punishments if I did not sign the papers at the intake desk of various hospital psych wards. Once inside, you basically lose a lot of personal freedoms and individual rights. People stop believing what you say to them. You're lumped with everyone else as a "crazy" person and you're watched 24 hours a day. Doctors only show up once or twice a week for a 15 minute chat, from which they can learn very little, and then they often proceed to prescribe medication like serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, xanax, prozac, zoloft, lithium, paxel, you name it, they'll try it. While these meds may help some people, usually in the case of a cutter there is absolutely nothing wrong with the cutters brain, no evidence of any kind of bio-chemical cause for the depression, and therefore the chemicals do more harm than good and are an inappropriate form of treatment. Also, even if you sign in voluntarily, it's then very difficult to get back out. They can put you on 72-hour hold if you request to leave the ward, at the end of which you are put "on trial" to determine your condition, and of course there is no "lawyer" on your side, you're alone and everyone thinks you're nuts so why would they believe you when you say you're confident you can do well on the outside?

When is hospitalization a good thing? When the cutter truly wants to go in. When there are groups inside that meet to discuss this issue with each other, so the cutter gets a broader picture, understands she is not the only one, not isolated. When the doctors don't jump to conclusions and start medication. When there is a professional with experience with deliberate self harm cases who can help the cutter work through their pain and find new ways of coping. When the cutter feels more comfortable in an environment where they know they will not be allowed/able to do self harm.

CONTACT/THE BUDDY SYSTEM
Okay, what can you do to help? Are you, phoning, emailing, or writing letters back and forth? It's good for her to have someone she can talk to about this. Let her know that she can phone you any time, night or day (night time can be the hardest for cutters) to talk to you instead of cutting, if she wants to do that. (Alcoholics often set up a buddy system and have someone to call so they can talk instead of drinking.) Tell your parents you'd like to pay for the long distance calls and make calls to her in the evenings just to check in and see how she's doing. You could request that she make you a promise, to always call you first (it helps if you have a beeper or cellular phone) when she's feeling like cutting, and hopefully sometimes a long chat with a friend who really cares will alleviate the pain or break through the numbness. If you cannot do it, set her up with a buddy who can be available in this way. Emailing is also good, but having a voice to listen to, even if over the phone, can be better, more of the human touch. You could ask her to write you one short letter a day and send it in the mail, and set up a daily correspondance this way too. This gives her something to look forward to, your letters back, and an outlet for her feelings through writing.

Let her know you care, even if you don't totally understand what she's going through. (She herself most likely does not yet understand what she's going through or why HER. There may be some sexual or other abuse she's experienced somewhere in her childhood that she is not aware of now - the brain is a genius at hiding what we cannot cope with until we're older and stronger.) Try not to react too strongly to the behaviour itself, even though it may be very upsetting and frightening to you. Focus on HER, not what she's doing. If she feels ready maybe you can explore with her WHY she's doing the cutting. What leads up to it, how can she change her immediate environment so that factors or "triggers" that lead up to cutting can be changed or stopped. For instance, if she always puts on a certain cd before cutting, have her volunteer to lend you that cd for awhile.

QUESTIONS TO ASK
Does she WANT to stop right now? Is she ready? Perhaps she needs to lean on this cutting crutch a little while longer. Does she think there's any chance that she will actually try to commit suicide one of these times? Or does a certain amount of pain ease her internal pain each time and then it's over for a little while? How deep are the cuts, how much blood does she lose? If it's a dangerous level, then she SHOULD request professional help. If it's not, and the cuts are more superficial, the worst that she'll have are scars, maybe infections. Ask her if there are any ways she can envision for you to provide the kind of friend's help she may need, and ask her to be very specific. Ask her if there are things you should NOT do, things that would break your trust.

SAFETY ISSUES
Gently remind her that she should be disinfecting her knives regularly, and disinfecting her cut areas before and after she cuts, with Betadine or something like it, so they heal up well. She might want to have some sterile gauze bandages on hand and medical tape. That also lowers the itchiness as they heal. If she's hitting walls, how deep are the bruises? Is there any danger of fracturing bones? If she's setting herself on fire or swallowing batteries, or doing any other life-threatening activities, it's definitely time for her to enter a safe haven, and one should be sought out immediately, be it staying with a friend, checking into a hospital, or finding a center for people who do deliberate self harm. Do some research on help centers in her area and send her the list.

COPING MECHANISMS
The cutter experiences cutting as a form of self-preservation, ironically. A way of coping with intense feelings. What she needs is to learn new methods of coping that can replace the crutches she's leaning on now; the razor, the matchbook, the brick wall. Once she has these new coping methods she can put away the crutch in her own time, when she's ready. It doesn't always help to show anger, to prevent the self-harm on the physical level, or to punish the behaviour. Perhaps you can suggest to her to find new ways of venting, perhaps working first with physical things, punching bags, working out, martial arts training, throwing rocks in a safe place (into a lake, or in a field or a large empty lot) til exhausted, safe but intense physical experiences. Then work from that to breathing exercises, chakra meditation, writing a journal, doing art work about how she's feeling, etc. Some cutters found it helpful to do art: one kept large peices of paper on which she would draw x's any time she felt like cutting, just drew them and drew them til she felt better, and weaned herself off cutting x's into her arm.

When the cutter is in denial
Perhaps she doesn't see anything wrong with what she's doing, since it seems to make her feel better, and probably isn't life-threatening. Perhaps she can't face the fact that she's doing it, and denies it even to herself. Or perhaps she denies it to others because she so depends upon this coping mechanism that she doesn't want anyone trying to take it away from her. Perhaps if you let her know that she's okay, she doesn't need to feel ashamed of what she's doing, it's actually quite common, and that you're not judging her, you just care about her and want to help in any way she thinks might be helpful. Try to keep the conversation from getting too heavy, don't pathologize her self-harm behavior. Keep the focus on HER, rather than on the self-harm. You want her to feel safe about sharing something very personal with you that she may be ashamed of. Back off if you feel like you're touching a nerve that will be too painful and cause her to disconnect from you. These things take time, and trust needs to be earned. She needs to know that you'll still be her friend, you'll still be there for her even if she continues to do self-harm. Your friendship is NOT conditional upon her behavior, it's there for her no matter what she does.

RESEARCH
The more you know about deliberate self-harm, the better you'll be prepared to help your friend. Have you visited the Secret Shame website? It offers a fairly comprehensive collection of information on the subject of self-harm, both from cutters and from people in the medical professions. There's also a list of links to many other sites that also could be useful. Perhaps you could print out information from this or other sites and have that available for her to show doctors and nurses and mental health counselors in case she seeks treatment somewhere, since usually WE cutters have to educate the professionals on this issue. Otherwise they may misdiagnose her. If they want to put her on medications, have her aware that she must DEMAND every kind of test they can run to indicate that the existence of a bio-chemical imbalance before she'll let them give her so much as an aspirin. Or if she's in no condition to stand up for herself, she'll need someone there to ADVOCATE for her with the professionals, and it would help for the advocate to do some research on this subject in order to hold their own in the professional setting. Have a list you've gathered of hospital wards, clinics, centers, help lines, resource books, etc, available to the cutter and to you in the event of an emergency situation.

Let her know that many thousands of other people do what she's doing, she's not the only one, and that anyone can overcome this, that this won't last forever. You can give her my email address so she can contact me if she wishes to write to someone who's been through it and is now doing fine.

Thanks for caring about a friend in distress! Good luck to you, and I wish your friend the best!

Answer 2

Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. This has got to be so tough for you. Kudos on being such a wonderful friend to her.

At this point, there's really very little more that you can do. I'd talk to the counselor again, and tell them that her parents don't seem to care. Her counselor can call her parents back and try to light a fire under their butts, and if that doesn't work, there are calls they can make.

As for your friend, she needs to be in treatment. If you keep on alerting people, she'll get it, one way or another. Wonderful job on what you've done.

One caution: Don't let this drain you. Take a step back when you need to, and make sure that you're being taken care of just as well as you're taking care of her.

Answer 3

This is so sad and a sign of something way deeper which needs a REAL doctors help and counseling .. let her know you are there for her, love her and perhaps you can even go with her to find the right help.. do it NOW before it becomes so much worse... and above all else PRAY for her... The parents need to realize this is NOT just a fase... God Bless you as you help your friend..

Answer 4

If she isn't listening then tell her that she is hurting you too. My friend used to cut & that's what her friends did. They said that it was hurting them when she hurt herself & she eventually stopped. They didn't say it rudely, but calmly & patiently, & she realized that she wasn't doing anything for herself. If that doesn't work, suggest an alternative, like popping a rubber band while on her wrist, my friend does it & says it works. (plus it doesn't do any damage long term, but that is ONLY IF she doesn't stop w/ the talk!!)

Answer 5

My daughter has a friend who cuts. All you can do is be there for her as a friend, tell her that you care about what happens to her and want her to seek help she is comfortable dealing with, and encourage her to share what it is that may be pushing herself to do it.

Give her lots of hugs, and reassure her you will always be there for her if times are tough.

Do not condemn or judge or reprimand for the act... some cut for attention, others cut to defer the pain they are feeling from something else.

Answer 6

that's sounds like it's pretty stressful for you. if I were you i would tell a teacher again, and also mention that her parents aren't doing anything about it. have a talk with her and try to convince her to stop. right now the only one to help her is herself, help her see that?

Answer 7

regularly human beings injury themselves to experience alleviation from something it somewhat is hurting or frightening them. Be there on your pal. attempt to no longer tell her to end hurting herself, as this might push her away. somewhat, be supportive and enable her understand she can communicate to you and believe you with something. in case you do get somewhat in touch approximately her protection, you are going to be able to desire to communicate to her dad and mom or a instructor, yet she can possibly get somewhat indignant with you in case you are trying this - like I suggested, while you're somewhat in touch approximately her protection, then do it. otherwise basically be a chum.

Answer 8

I know it is your best friend....and you want to help her. But this is the best...you really have to tell someone because if you dont know to do how are you going to help. sombody else have to help.....maybe that would work i am a pre counselour...

Answer 9

you should tell her parents or yours ....seek help for her....and tell her that if she continues to cut herself that you cant be her friend anymore...

Answer 10

I didn't get past the question to read the whole thing.... TELL SOMEONE!!!