What causes self cutting?

A coping mechanism is a great answer. I can tell you more about the “coping mechanism”. That is such a broad term left open for all kinds of interpretations. I am talking from self-experience.

The answers you have received thus far are good ones, but there is more to it than just being unhappy or coping. There is a terrible turmoil going on inside. It feels like at any moment you will explode. You are unable to express what your feeling in words. If you don’t find an outlet, you think you will die. You NEED for people to see you. You crave for understanding, yet no one ever really sees you and people never understand. You hold intense pain inside and it tears you apart. Maybe you tried drinking it away, or even talking to someone. When the drunk wears off, the pain is still eating at you. And when you talked to someone, they just laughed and said something insensitive like, “Chill out, have some fun. It’s no big deal.”.

So you are chopping vegetable one night and you accidentally cut your finger. You immediately put your finger in your mouth or rush to get a band aid. In that moment you don’t realize that is doesn’t hurt. This is going on in your sub conscious mind. Instinct to is take control of the situation. Stop the bleeding. Clean up the mess. After a few moments, things have calmed and you realize you assumed control of a situation. You actually had control over something. It becomes clear, you can control this. You can control the depth of a cut, the length, the amount you bleed, the mess, all of it. It is comforting. If you express the despair inside you are feeling on the outside, maybe somehow, you can feel better. This is how it becomes a coping mechanism. To others what seems crazy and weird, to you, it is symbolic of what you are feeling on the inside. Now you think maybe people will truly see you and understand. You soon find out they don’t. They think you are sick and weird. This only makes it worse. This is why people cut. They are not sick or crazy. They do need help to find other outlets to safely express themselves. When your life feels completely out of control, you will do just about anything to find and maintain any type of control and no matter how twisted it seems, it helps the individual feel somewhat sane even if they know it is harmful and wrong. Most true cutters accidentally discover the comfort achieved from a cut.

Those individuals who claim to be “emo” and cutting is a part of that, are only followers and have no idea the true pain a cutter feels. I am not talking about external pain. Cutting is not cool or trend.