by Dannett Frey

Created on: December 21, 2008

It was a way to get out the pain that was inside of me. If I'm watching my blood leave me, it was as if that would be some of the pain leaving too. And now I feel like it has become addictive and a way to punish myself. -a 16 year old girl.

It is an actualization of pain. There are several levels. The most basic is that even if you tell people that something is wrong, a lot of times they won't know how wrong. But all they'll do is see a cut along a vein, and they get the message right away.-a 14 year old girl.

Although my cutting began as communication, now I also cut to change how I feel, to regulate her unbearable emotions: when I feel like nobody cares, I cut myself because I think I'm not worth it, and then I take everything out on myself. -a 17 year old girl.

It's so they know I am punishing myself. And some people will look at them and say, What happened? and I say, well, this was when I was really depressed, when I was fifteen. Oh, that's when I was seventeen, and my boyfriend broke up with me. Or I was depressed. So it's like a sign to others, and it's part of myself. -a young woman 20 years old.

As you can see, there are as many reasons for cutting oneself as there is ways to cut. You can "cut" yourself but scratching and pinching, using a knife, razor blade or glass. But look at the common threads in all of these stories; pain, depression, someone listening to what they are really saying.

Our teenage girls are disappearing right before our own eyes and we need to help these girls and the many other girls coming up following in their painful footsteps. We need to equip our girls before they need to learn how to stop cutting. We need to teach all girls, those cutting and those pondering cutting, how to feel again, how to speak and be heard without shedding any blood.

Our teenage girls need to be taught how to identify their own self-worth, build their own self-esteem, and to identify and feel their own feelings. We need to start with the very basics.

Identifying and feeling your feelings is where we need to begin. Write out on a sheet of paper the following feelings and identify which you have felt today, this week, the month.

Happiness

Sadness

Lonliness

Fear

Anger

Depressed

Joy ful

Numb

Alive

Scared

Have a journal or notebook available to ask yourself daily when you felt these emotions and what situations caused the feeling to come about.

In your journal write one positive attribute about yourself. If you heard someone compliment you write it down that day as well. An

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