When Your Skin Becomes a Canvas for Your Pain

Cutting is a practice that has crossed age and gender lines. It's not just depressed teens who inflict injury on themselves--it can be anyone dealing with overwhelming feelings. This book explores the complex issue of cutting without offering any pat o...

Before my college roommate started cutting her arms with a razor blade, I’d never even heard of self-mutilation. The frightening introductions came after I returned home from class one day. I followed a trail of blood sprinkled across our apartment kitchen floor; understandably, I was afraid, concerned and didn’t understand why she hurt herself.

To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire, and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.

SiOS provides you resources to help overcome self-injury. Read others' stories and share your own. You are not alone, and recovery is possible.

Of all the self-destructive behaviors I had, cutting was always the hardest to explain. How do I reconcile having inflicted destruction upon my body even while serving the Lord?

This website is part of the Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery and summarizes their work, and provides links and resources to self injury information.

Take some time to explore our free resources on cutting and self-harm. If you would like additional help, you can chat live with a Hope Coach at any time!

S.A.F.E. ALTERNATIVES is a nationally recognized treatment approach, professional network, and educational resource base, which is committed to helping you and others achieve an end to self-injurious behavior.

Stories of those who have struggled and overcome.

This free eBook will give you access to information to help you understand the types, signs and risk factors of self-harm, along with guidelines on how to find help for you or a loved one. Self-harm and cutting are serious and you can overcome this addiction! Take the first step to recovery!

Mercy for Self-Harm exposes the root issues surrounding self-injury and offers hope for those needing freedom from self-harm.

Mercy Multiplied is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping young women break free from life-controlling behaviors and situations, including eating disorders, self-harm, drug and alcohol addictions, unplanned pregnancy, depression, sexual abuse, and sex trafficking.

Self-injury is one of our society's fastest-growing and most disturbing epidemics. Bodily Harm is the most authoritative examination of this alarming syndrome and the first to offer a comprehensive treatment regimen. Written by the directors of S.A.F.E. (Self Abuse Finally Ends) Alternatives, it clearly defines what cutting is and explains the kinds of emotional trauma that can lead to self-mutilation. Most importantly, Bodily Harm offers a course of treatment based on years of experience and extensive clinical research; as well as compassion, advice, and hope for the afflicted and their loved ones.

Growing up in a broken home without the love that most people take for granted, Victoria Childress embraced her emotional pain by adding physical pain. Cutting words on her arms in the dark proved a temporary crutch that was leading her down the dangerous path towards suicide. “With seemingly nothing to live for, why live at all?”

Using copious examples from his practice, Steven Levenkron traces the factors that predispose a personality to self-mutilation: genetics, family experience, childhood trauma, and parental behavior. Written for sufferers, parents, friends, and therapists, Cutting explains why the disorder manifests in self-harming behaviors and describes how patients can be helped.

Hope and Healing for Kids Who Cut will take you into the world of self-injury, defining what it is—and what it is not. You’ll hear stories from teens and young adults who struggle with the urge to hurt themselves, and you’ll learn to recognize the signs of self-injury. In addition, counselor and professor, Marv Penner will help you understand the cycle of addiction, that has become everyday life for so many hurting teens, and he’ll give you the tools and wisdom to help a self-injurer find hope and healing. Whether you know someone who is cutting, or you are struggling with this addiction yourself, Hope and Healing for Kids Who Cut is something you want to have in your “first-aid” kit.

This is Jackie's story of repeated self-injury and how relationships with those who came alongside her—together with a deeper understanding of God's love and patience—brought her to a place of hope and healing

In 16 years of directing a college counseling center, I saw hundreds of students struggling with depression, self-harm, suicidal thoughts and most anything else you can imagine. They all had something in common—none of them wanted to tell an adult.

Cutting is a call for help that often occurs as youth attempt to cope with emotional pain and distress and show others how awful they are feeling.

I’ve struggled with self-injury for years. Of all the things that I’ve dealt with since becoming a Christian, this is by far the most difficult one to talk about. I had already been talking about having an eating disorder for years before I came to know God, so that really wasn’t difficult for me to talk about. It became more difficult to discuss as I continued to struggle for years, but even with that, the truth would come out eventually, as my friends watched my size grow and shrink and grow and shrink.

Many who harm themselves are looking for healing in their wounds. But only the wounds of Jesus Christ can bring us healing.

Those who attempt suicide are trying to end their life. Those who self-harm are actually trying to heal themselves.

John Piper says a simple hug can minister significant hope to others.