Troubling Trend?
A couple of summers ago, my wife met a teenage girl at summer youth camp and subsequently stayed very close to her in an effort to impact her life for Christ. One of the things this girl struggled with was "cutting". Many of her friends also did the same.
My 14 year old niece recently informed me that "all" of her friends cut themselves. So when I ran across this article from Focus on the Family, I found it very informative about this disturbing trend.
I would rush home, take a knife from my desk and escape to a private place where I'd carve wounds into my skin. Frantic self-abuse and physical pain drowned out the emotional pain I was feeling, if only for a short time. Nursing my wounds, I felt oddly comforted, guilty and aware that, next time, it would take even more pain to find that brief release. I was a freak with a secret. Little did I know how many teen cutters guard that same dark secret.
Experts call cutting "the new anorexia" because, like an eating disorder, it is a self-destructive attempt to control painful thoughts and unexpressed emotions. Current research places the number of self-injurers at about 4 percent of the general population,and as many as 10 percent of American teenage girls.
