03-21-2024, 10:40 AM
WHY DO PEOPLE CUT THEMSELVES?
Once, when I was in secondary school, there was a dyed haired feminist girl who sat next to me in one of my classes. She came in one day and sat beside me with her sleeves rolled all the way up, obviously trying to show off some cuts (more like little scratches) on her arm. I said nothing about it, and eventually she got tired of waiting for me to take the bait, so she thrust her arm in front of my face. "I GOT THESE CUTS BECAUSE MY RABBIT SCRATCHED ME"... I knew exactly what role I was supposed to play in this little theatre performance. I was supposed to say something like " No! You don't get cuts like these from a rabbit! You've been cutting yourself haven't you? Oh please, you must stop this!" but I refused to be a circus monkey and jump through her hoops, so I just pretended to actually believe her that these scratches came from her rabbit. This pissed her off and she let out an over the top and clearly annoyed laugh and said loudly "Oh my god you idiot! Did you ACTUALLY think you could get cuts like these from a rabbit? I've been cutting myself you idiot!" and then she went round the class telling people that Lindenbaum is so stupid that he ACTUALLY thought you could get cuts LIKE THESE (little scratches) from a rabbit, which I thought was strange because at first she was performing as a shy girl who didn't want to let anyone know that she has a DARK SECRET (she scratches herself), but now she seemed to drop the act because she couldn't resist telling everyone about how insensitive I was...
As far as I know, people didn't cut their wrists as a coping mechanism historically. It seems quite new. Maybe its partly because in the past, there wasn't really a morality that strongly praised brokenness. Now that we have such a morality, people will try to show off their brokenness to others in whatever way they can. Is transgenderism an evolution of this? I would bet that self harm in the form of cutting your wrists has become less popular recently and has been largely replaced by transgenderism as a signal of brokenness in the last 4-5 years.
All this is to say, we already know one of the most popular reasons for this kind of self harm: attention. But is there anything more to it? Is everyone who engages in this behaviour only doing it for attention?
One of the big reasons that you would often hear for why someone cuts their wrists is that they "just want to feel something - anything!". Back when I was in secondary school (probably the first time I heard about self harm) I didn't quite understand what was meant by this. After all, these people who cut themselves (the ones who do it genuinely and not as a public performance), they seem rather emotional, not like the type who "can't feel anything", they seem in fact to feel more than most people! So what's going on?
Well, now I think I know the answer: boredom. Boredom for most people is a minor inconvenience, it is the slightly unpleasant feeling they get when they can't find something to watch on Netflix for slightly longer than would be comfortable. I'm not talking about this kind of boredom.
The type of boredom I am talking about is a feeling that has certain requirements that must be met before it can be experienced. The requirements are: Intensely low energy, a generally unhappy state, probably a certain personality/disposition and finally, you must have nothing to do. The intensely low energy means that you won't have the willpower to engage with something that requires any amount of effort on your part, so reading a book is off the table and so is anything that requires basically any amount of actual engagement. In this state, the only thing the victim can do to occupy themselves is something like watching a Youtube video, because most Youtube videos don't require you to think, you basically sit there in a vegetated state only half paying attention. This is the true reason for those 3 hour video essays/ reviews/ recaps you see on Youtube, at least a good chunk of the audience is watching because of the reasons I just described. "I don't want to think, thinking is too hard, too painful, sedate me, give me your anaesthesia".
If you want to, you can skip to the 1:50 timestamp of this video, it seems to be showing exactly what I just talked about.
If while in this state the victim does not find SOMETHING to distract themselves, not even a Youtube video, then they will experience the the most intense, painful form of boredom. I've been in this state before a few times, and I felt like tearing my face off, it was physically painful, unbearable! I wanted to smash my head against a wall... and THIS is a very similar or maybe the exact same state as the person who cuts themselves. This is what they mean by "I am so numb", they mean " I am empty, there is nothing in this world that holds my attention, I have no goal or path, there is nothing animating me, I am BORED" and they cut themselves perhaps just to feel something, or perhaps they do it just because they're so intensely frustrated, yet they can't find anything to unleash their anger on, so they unleash it upon themselves.
Also, I'm too tired to go into it right now, but I believe that boredom and depression are extremely similar emotional states and might even be the exact same thing, just at different levels of intensity. The level of boredom I've been talking about in this post might simply be called "depression" by most people.
So then, these are the only two reasons I see for people cutting themselves: most do it for attention, some do it out of intense boredom (or numbness, emptiness, it is all the same thing). I'd like to know what other people think, am I right? Is there something I'm missing? What do you think the psychological cause of self harm is?
Once, when I was in secondary school, there was a dyed haired feminist girl who sat next to me in one of my classes. She came in one day and sat beside me with her sleeves rolled all the way up, obviously trying to show off some cuts (more like little scratches) on her arm. I said nothing about it, and eventually she got tired of waiting for me to take the bait, so she thrust her arm in front of my face. "I GOT THESE CUTS BECAUSE MY RABBIT SCRATCHED ME"... I knew exactly what role I was supposed to play in this little theatre performance. I was supposed to say something like " No! You don't get cuts like these from a rabbit! You've been cutting yourself haven't you? Oh please, you must stop this!" but I refused to be a circus monkey and jump through her hoops, so I just pretended to actually believe her that these scratches came from her rabbit. This pissed her off and she let out an over the top and clearly annoyed laugh and said loudly "Oh my god you idiot! Did you ACTUALLY think you could get cuts like these from a rabbit? I've been cutting myself you idiot!" and then she went round the class telling people that Lindenbaum is so stupid that he ACTUALLY thought you could get cuts LIKE THESE (little scratches) from a rabbit, which I thought was strange because at first she was performing as a shy girl who didn't want to let anyone know that she has a DARK SECRET (she scratches herself), but now she seemed to drop the act because she couldn't resist telling everyone about how insensitive I was...
As far as I know, people didn't cut their wrists as a coping mechanism historically. It seems quite new. Maybe its partly because in the past, there wasn't really a morality that strongly praised brokenness. Now that we have such a morality, people will try to show off their brokenness to others in whatever way they can. Is transgenderism an evolution of this? I would bet that self harm in the form of cutting your wrists has become less popular recently and has been largely replaced by transgenderism as a signal of brokenness in the last 4-5 years.
All this is to say, we already know one of the most popular reasons for this kind of self harm: attention. But is there anything more to it? Is everyone who engages in this behaviour only doing it for attention?
One of the big reasons that you would often hear for why someone cuts their wrists is that they "just want to feel something - anything!". Back when I was in secondary school (probably the first time I heard about self harm) I didn't quite understand what was meant by this. After all, these people who cut themselves (the ones who do it genuinely and not as a public performance), they seem rather emotional, not like the type who "can't feel anything", they seem in fact to feel more than most people! So what's going on?
Well, now I think I know the answer: boredom. Boredom for most people is a minor inconvenience, it is the slightly unpleasant feeling they get when they can't find something to watch on Netflix for slightly longer than would be comfortable. I'm not talking about this kind of boredom.
The type of boredom I am talking about is a feeling that has certain requirements that must be met before it can be experienced. The requirements are: Intensely low energy, a generally unhappy state, probably a certain personality/disposition and finally, you must have nothing to do. The intensely low energy means that you won't have the willpower to engage with something that requires any amount of effort on your part, so reading a book is off the table and so is anything that requires basically any amount of actual engagement. In this state, the only thing the victim can do to occupy themselves is something like watching a Youtube video, because most Youtube videos don't require you to think, you basically sit there in a vegetated state only half paying attention. This is the true reason for those 3 hour video essays/ reviews/ recaps you see on Youtube, at least a good chunk of the audience is watching because of the reasons I just described. "I don't want to think, thinking is too hard, too painful, sedate me, give me your anaesthesia".
If you want to, you can skip to the 1:50 timestamp of this video, it seems to be showing exactly what I just talked about.
If while in this state the victim does not find SOMETHING to distract themselves, not even a Youtube video, then they will experience the the most intense, painful form of boredom. I've been in this state before a few times, and I felt like tearing my face off, it was physically painful, unbearable! I wanted to smash my head against a wall... and THIS is a very similar or maybe the exact same state as the person who cuts themselves. This is what they mean by "I am so numb", they mean " I am empty, there is nothing in this world that holds my attention, I have no goal or path, there is nothing animating me, I am BORED" and they cut themselves perhaps just to feel something, or perhaps they do it just because they're so intensely frustrated, yet they can't find anything to unleash their anger on, so they unleash it upon themselves.
Also, I'm too tired to go into it right now, but I believe that boredom and depression are extremely similar emotional states and might even be the exact same thing, just at different levels of intensity. The level of boredom I've been talking about in this post might simply be called "depression" by most people.
So then, these are the only two reasons I see for people cutting themselves: most do it for attention, some do it out of intense boredom (or numbness, emptiness, it is all the same thing). I'd like to know what other people think, am I right? Is there something I'm missing? What do you think the psychological cause of self harm is?