too old for this

[boldaslove20]

I'm a 27 year old single mom, I have a full time job, a mortgage, a car, we even have a dog. I feel like this should have been a phase I got thru when I was 14 years old, and like I'm being selfish and melodramatic.
I am too old to "cut", and too smart to be abusing perscription pills. I have two amazing little kids, I just feel like a huge let down to myself.
When I was a kid, and thought of myself as a woman, this is NOT what I pictured.
I cannot find any resources online for ADULT cutters, and everything I do find is immediately related to "emo" kids and dark makeup...which I obviously don't relate to.
The only sources I find for people "like me" are recipe sites, and blogs about single moms and fast cleanup tips.....ugh.
Why can't I find anyone else like me? I know there are people out there, I just don't know where they are.
So here I am, desperately posting online at some random forum....

[Mark]

Bold,

I wouldn't worry about feeling like a freak - you are definitely not the only adult who cuts. There are lots of adults who cut and self-injure on this forum; I've worked with a bunch of such folks in the past when I was doing active clinical work. It's really much more common than people think but people don't think that because people don't talk about it much. Cutting is a sort of coping mechanism - usually a way for people to regulate intolerable emotions or to feel something if they've gone numb inside, or a way to punish themselves, or a way to feel like they are in control of something, or some combination of these reasons. Addictions are likewise ways to handle emotions - not helpful ways - but attempts at making bad feelings go away (at least at first). So it's all coping but in ways that aren't terribly effective, which leads to the need for more coping, and it becomes a circle.

Best therapy at present for cutting (for stopping cutting) is Dialectical Behavior Therapy - now widely available in most communities. You can search in our therapist locator (http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_index.php?idx=213) to find someone near you if you like.

Can you share a little more of your situation? These sorts of things generally do not occur in a vaccum. Are you comfortable talking about what has lead you to cut; how you got to be addicted? Also - it will be helpful to us if you can share how you've dealt with these issues in the past, and if you've been in therapy before, etc.

[texasgirl]

Your not alone in your feelings, I'm 36 a mother of a teenager and still do it. I'm sorry I do not have a magic answer for you, the feelings come and go, I take it one day, one moment at a time.

Texas girl

[boldaslove20]

Thank you texasgirl and Mark. I am in therapy, she's great...but I'm in the midwest and people are uber-sensitive (including me) to things like this. I will look up dialectical behavior therapy, thank you for the suggestion.

I was abused by men I cared about, and still care about. Its very confusing to me. I was hit and beat and raped and its just a mess spanning at least four years I can't explain or get back.

I've also been abandoned (at least that's my perception) by the father of my kids, and I cannot make myself mad at anyone but me.

So much to go into really, that's just the "triggers" I suppose a doctor would acknowledge.

I cut when I was younger too, before that. Those years I don't know that I had reason, except that I just wanted to be bleeding on the outside instead of hurting on the inside. Like bloodletting if you will.

I read somewhere that back before people knew much about medicine, they would cut into their arms or legs to release blood from the body, because they believed that the body was made of four basic elements or humours: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Any overage of either of those would cause sickness, so at times I suppose they'd blow their noses, or defecate...I dunno, anyway...they would cut into themselves to release the "overage" of blood.

I know, CRAZY...but that's how I look at it. A really demented form of bloodletting.

Releasing the toxins and shit out of me....course, it doesn't help much!

And reading your word, "addiction" Mark, upset me at first because I'm in a family of alcoholics...probably another DING on the checklist of my therapist...so that term seems so helpless and more like an excuse to me.

But I hadn't considered it. My doctor had mentioned that I had an addictive personality, and that it was an addictive behavior, but now...maybe this IS my addiction. Duh, right?

Anyway, no pills for it I suppose. The few people that do know I do it, get very angry, one of them hides my blades when he finds them.

Makes me scared to talk, because they don't seem to understand, nor do they want to.

[mscat]

Hi there,
I am very new to this group and had read your post a few times before my account was activated.
Just so you know you are not too old, and seriously, a lot of times age has nothing to do with self injury.
I know of a few fourm's that are for self injure's and there are many that are older then you and I.
I am a single parent too, and have a history of the same behaviors. Don't feel alone about your addictions.
What I have learned is that these are all ways of coping. Anther thing, is that you are doing well for yourself, and still functioning as best as you can. You are able to take care of your children, home, morgage, ect. AND are doing it on your own.
Oh, I also have a dog too :)