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44 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
First Christian Book on Cutting a Pleasantly Surprising Find, March 29, 2007
This review is from: Inside a Cutter's Mind: Understanding and Helping Those Who Self-Injure (Paperback)
As a recently former cutter who is a Christian and has written her own e-booklet on cutting (Cutting: Self-Injury and Emotional Pain), I was looking forward to reading this book with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Mostly, though, I was just afraid. Afraid of the denial, oversimplifying and overspiritualizing that I've been subjected to at the hands of well-meaning (and sometimes not-so-well-meaning) Christians.
This book was an utter and thoroughly balanced surprise. I would recommend this book to anyone who seeks to understand self-injurers better. While being authentically Christian, the author does not minimize the psychological and physiological aspects of self-injury. And while she pays due attention to the spiritual side of self-injury, she doesn't equate self-injury with a solely spiritual problem. Speaking of depression and its interplay with self-injurious behaviors, she writes:
"Though it is scientifically clear that depression is both a physiological and cognitive condition that affects each person uniquely, some doctors write prescriptions for every patient suffering from depression, disregarding other factors that contribute to a person's well-being. Some counselors, on the other hand, downplay the importance of medication, insisting that therapy (or prayer) will eradicate depression. But research shows that most depressed individuals respond best to a combination of treatments."
In the words of a cutter, the author also issues a caution to would-be helpers in the church:
"I used cutting to make the torrential pain inside me visible, tangible. I wanted to know--and wanted other people to know--that my hurt was REAL. Someone might tell me I had no reason to be sad or anxious, but they couldn't argue with bleeding wounds. . . . It would have been nice if someone had reached out to me then. But even the church seemed to turn its back on me. People kept telling me to 'have more faith' or 'look at the good things in your life.' And I wanted to. I didn't want to be depressed. . . . I tried so hard. But I kept falling deeper and deeper into gloomy emptiness."
The author explains, "overscripturalizing and spiritualizing people's struggles or their paths toward recovery usually ARRESTS rather than encourages recovery. . . . Some of the most common are shaming messages from graceless religion." Indeed, this is what happened to me, but it does have to be this way, "We can help reiterate, over and over again, words of truth, hope, mercy, and love into their [self-injurer's] lives, all of which combat and oppose the darkness."
Reading this book affirmed my journey of healing, my journey back into the embrace of a once distant and condemning God. The author acknowledges: "It would be wonderful if once a person came into a hope-filling relationship with God, all his or her broken means of self-protection and self-help would magically disappear. . . . Through the process of sanctification, people GROW INTO their belief in a God who brings beauty from these wounds and hope for the hopeless. . . . Sanctification is a process that spans a lifetime. Healing doesn't have to happen all at once. The self-injurer you love will be transformed from the inside for the rest of his or her life."
Thank you, Jerusha and Earl, for helping people, most of all self-injurers, see that Jesus' body was broken, battered and wounded so ours don't have to be, so there is no longer any need for the self-injurer's body to be the sacrifice for sin. By his wounds we are healed (even if medication and therapy also help!).
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Self-injurers Club is Eight Million Strong--and Rising., February 9, 2008
This review is from: Inside a Cutter's Mind: Understanding and Helping Those Who Self-Injure (Paperback)
According to Jerusha Clark, the self-injurers club is eight million strong--and rising.
The stories in Jerusha Clark's thoroughly researched work on self-mutilation, while tastefully presented, are terrifying accounts that can be hard to stomach. Some vignettes are stories by practitioners describing their clients, while others are testimonies from the sufferers themselves, recounting their experiences about the first time they cut, how bad things got, and how someone helped, or failed to help them when mutilation was at its worst. One woman wrote,
"[my friend] Cori didn't judge me, get angry, retreat, or act frightened. I remember the hugs that she would give me and the prayers she would cover me with. When I felt ready to talk about it, Cori would listen and help me think through what I could do next. If being alone felt too threatening, she would stay with me.
Other people reacted terribly. My sister flipped out and lectured me for two hours, battering me with Bible versus that "proved" God wouldn't want me to do this to myself. She didn't understand why I couldn't just stop, since I knew cutting was wrong."
There is an old saying that some types of Christian counseling (the bad kinds) are like giving the client a Bible verse and a razor blade--I suppose to self-mutilators that expression most aptly applies. Fortunately, in Cutter's Mind, Clark does a good job of integrating Christian faith with clinical knowledge.
While lay counselors, or even some therapists, might appreciate the introduction to the topic of cutting, there is no doubt that this book is directed toward friends and family of persons who self-injure. In fact, the author assumes the reader knows so little about mental health counseling that "psychotherapy" in defined on page 160 in this simplistic way: "The form of therapy you may be best acquainted with is called psychotherapy or `talk' therapy. People make an appointment, see a counselor, and discuss what's going on..."
One selling point of the book is that it incorporates several SPECT brain scans. These scans actually do add a bit of interesting content, showing the reader that emotional issues can have a physiological component. This information suggests that, contrary to what some believe, cutting is not attention-getting behavior, nor a direct product of low self-esteem.
The problem's roots reach much deeper inside a cutter's mind.
Final Note: Online counseling may be a way for struggling persons to get help. Learn how to provide online counseling with this book: The Therapist's Clinical Guide to Online Counseling and Telephone Counseling: The Definitive Training Guide for Clinical Practice
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A little disappointed, August 13, 2011
This review is from: Inside a Cutter's Mind: Understanding and Helping Those Who Self-Injure (Paperback)
When I started this book, I had a feeling it would be a little preachy and I was right. This is not really for the self injurer but more for the family and friends who want to help. I liked how it went more in depth but I couldn't finish it.
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