Cutting: Why Teens Hurt Themselves
By Jeannette Moninger
http://www.familycircle.com/teen/parenting/communicating/cutting/

Caia Pattynama hesitated the first time the scissors pierced her arm. "It really hurt," she says, "but I figured if I could tough it out, it would prove I could get through the other things happening in my life." In the seconds it took for drops of blood to appear, Caia, then 15, felt an odd sense of peace. "I knew it didn't make sense, yet I felt better," she says three years later. "For that moment, I was in charge."

Life started slipping out of Caia's control when her beloved stepfather, Daryl Simpson, passed away unexpectedly. She was just a few months shy of her 14th birthday. Though everyone in the Centennial, Colorado, family—mom Monica Simpson, older brother Jared Pattynama, then 16, and younger sister Kendall Pattynama, then 12—was reeling from the loss, Caia was having a particularly hard time. "She was angry and becoming increasingly withdrawn," Monica recalls.

Caia started high school in the fall, and Monica hoped her daughter's mood would improve once the stress of that transition passed. But Caia, a self-described introvert, struggled to fit in. When she did make friends, she was surprised to discover that several of them were into cutting. They said it was calming—which was all Caia needed to hear. In October she started scratching thin lines into her arms with scissors, safety pins and thumbtacks. Soon she was slashing the skin on her arms, belly and legs with whatever sharp instrument was handy. "Sometimes," she says, "the only thing that got me through the day was thinking about being able to cut when I got home."