Hi everyone, I did that too, when I was a teenager, so it was a long time ago. I still have the scars, but I do not feel embarrassed about it, because they are a reminder of my struggle for myself. I dealt with a lot at the time when I used to cut, and the cuts would provide me with some kind of relief that I could not feel otherwise. A psychologist friend of mine told me, much later, that cuts are sometimes called, perhaps in psychological jargon, "gills" as in fish gills. Even if it comes across as a cold-hearted expression, it is vivid nonetheless, and I embraced it. Clearly enough, it is called so because sometimes those who inflict them on themselves feel they are suffocating, and need to "open" in order to catch a breath. I remember the feeling. In addition to this, when I would cut, I would feel as if I were more present, because I dealt with a lot of dissociation, and could not feel my body as my own. If anyone did tell me to stop cutting at the time when I did, I don't know if I could have, without the necessary therapeutic help and guidance. Yet, no one in my family really cared enough even to notice that this was going on. Sometimes people say that it is a cry for help, but I soon realized that no one was really listening. I cannot remember how I stopped cutting. I think it happened when I found other ways to calm myself, as someone already mentioned. By then I realized that no one was going to save me, and that the only person I can rely on was me. I became very ambitious professionally at one point in my life, and somehow focused all that contained energy towards achieving some goals that had some significance for me. I started building myself from scratch. Cuts are not as simple as love or hate for oneself. But they are a reason for concern, as they are only a skin deep manifestation of much more pervasive emotional problems.