Customer Reviews

Inside a Cutter's Mind: Understanding and Helping Those Who Self-Injure

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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!).

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

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.

Inside a Cutter's Mind: Understanding And Helping Those Who Self-Injure The Haunting cover and the subtitle of this excellent book will help you understand and help those who self-injure. Cutting, burning, hitting, bruising, picking at one's skin, excessive hair pulling, intetentionally interfering with healing and avoiding medical care are just some of the physical manifestations. This book is an excellent source of how to really understand and be helpful. It is very well balanced both to those who want to help, and those who self injure.
Our youth pastor said of the 200 youth he counsels there are many in need of help, I had not realized this. Self injureres are "living proof that when the body is ravaged the soul cries out, when the soul is trampled upont the body bleeds". The last part of this book has many resources for therapists, groups, alternative and excellent advise. I had to replace this copy because it was used so much.

I bought this book because I needed some answers and explanations for my own behavior. I wasn't yet willing to ask for help or even tell anyone what I did; I felt very alone, and it's awful when you're pretty sure you have a serious problem and you think it's up to you to solve it. When the book came, I sat down and read it basically straight through. I couldn't put it down, and I didn't go to bed until some time in the early hours. I could identify with a lot of what she said, and it made me feel better. I felt like at last I'd found someone who understood me. At last I didn't have to try so hard to figure myself out. One thing that was particularly helpful to me was her assertion that "Self-injurers aren't merely seeking attention; rather, they are indicating a desperate need for it." One of my greatest stumbling blocks to getting help had been the fear that I was just trying to get attention and didn't really have a problem. Jerusha helped me see that this wasn't so.
In summary, although this book seems to be slanted more toward family and friends of self-injurers, it has been a great encouragement to me. It is very informative, but does not trigger me to hurt myself as I've heard some other books on self-injury can. I found I did need to get help, but this book gave me the confidence to reach out for it.

This book was an eye-opener for me. Just like the majority of society, I greatly misunderstood the complexity behind this coping mechanism. This book has greatly helped me in reaching out to two of my friends who have resorted to this method of dealing with the pain in their lives. Ok, now for the pro's and con's.

PRO's
* The insights are deep yet written in a simple way
* Contains both practical and theoretical knowledge and techniques
* (for Christians) Written with a Christian mindset
* Affordable price
* Plenty of stories

CON's
* (for Kindle 6") Pictures come in really small and hard to read [not too many pictures though]
* Was wanting more practical tools for reaching out
* (for Secular) Contains a Christian mindset and will remind you of it often

Overall, this is a good book for a good price and is worth the read. If you are going to use this as a tool to reach out to people who cut, then this book is for you. If you want a book that goes in depth with scientific studies and the theories of why people do this, then, even though this book contains some studies, you might want to look elsewhere. Otherwise, it is a great book and is worth the time and money.

For someone trying to understand this practice of cutting,
this was a very well written book.

I bought this book to understand what was going on with the child of a close friend of mine, as well as learn about the self injury in general. It's a bit of a dark secret, and to those who haven't run into it personally, very hard to understand. This book was extremely useful in helping me learn about why kids start cutting, and how to counsel and support them once they do. It's not a fun book to read, but is necessary and useful to anyone who is serious about understanding the issue. From the haunting front cover to the final conclusions it's a book that will keep you captivated (if very sad) throughout. If you're serious about helping kids avoid becoming involved in this destructive lifestyle, this is a great book to read.