Seven Signs Your Child Is Cutting

Are you frightened by the possibility that your child is cutting? In recent years I have watched sadly as the age of children that cutting themselves with blades drops steadily from college freshmen to as young as fifth grade.

Recent reports have called “cutting” the latest epidemic to hit our children in the ages ten to fourteen year old age bracket.

According to Discoveryhealth.com, treatment for self injury has doubled in the last three years. The sad reality is this epidemic has spread across all cultures, social classes, and age groups. Our counseling center is biblically based and we are seeing this as a common tactic of the enemy even upon children raised in the church.

We have seen cutting as a gateway to spirits of suicide and addiction. It attracts children who have been bullied and lost their self confidence by giving them an option to escape the emotional pain.

Studies have shown that over half the child victims of sexual abuse or molestation will use cutting, like a drug, to numb the emotional pain. Cutting is also used as a form of self-inflicted punishment by children who suffer with perfectionism and guilt.

Social media, movies and music videos are serving to drive this dangerous practice from dark bedrooms and glamorize it into a mainstream activity. Stars like Demi Lovato, Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp have admitted that they have used cutting to escape pain.

One of the first clients I counseled for this was a beautiful college freshman whose parents had encouraged her, loved her, and released her to dorm life on a large college campus. A college experience fueled by loneliness, depression, and isolation led her into cutting and ultimately to standing on the top of a three floor parking garage preparing to jump and take her life.

She had grown up in a close knit family and church and did not have the emotional skill set to be thrust into college life on that large scale. It overwhelmed her and she became secluded. This depression and isolation had opened the door for deeper and darker demonic torment. When she made it to our office, it was by the total grace of God, because she was barely coherent and hearing voices telling her to die.

Most of the children will say they hear voices demanding them to cut. They will say things like “I keep hearing a voice say, ‘Just do it!’” or “you would be happier dead!” During one of the deliverance sessions, as we were casting out spirits, the teen girl told me that her ears kept popping as those spirits manifested and left her! Later, during the follow-up session, her parents reported that they could see their daughter’s joy returning the very next day.

Each case is different; however, we typically address the spirits of suicide and death quickly. Once those are gone we can begin the process of dealing with the other aspects of deliverance and healing aimed at the open doors/emotional traumas that led them to cut in the first place.We have determined from client interviews that he first cut takes the focus away from the emotional pain and move it to the physical realm.

It also releases endorphins that produce a quick rush like a “high” that makes this behavior addictive. As part of counseling sessions prior to praying any sort of deliverance, I have had them bring in their knives and blades and throw them out in front of me as part of an act of repentance and renouncing that spirits hold on their life.

From a recent report on ABC Action News, the following are seven indicators that your child may be involved in cutting:

1. Changes in behavior, including spending more time in isolation
2. Long showers or spending large amounts of time in the bathroom
3. Teens washing sheets and clothing themselves, when they previously did not
4. Suddenly using large amounts of toilet paper or facial tissue
5. Wearing long sleeves in summer, wearing large numbers of bracelets
6. New cuts or injuries appear without logical explanations
7. Frequently accessing/following online self-injury groups or websites.

The guidelines to parenting are changing rapidly but the plans of the enemy (the demonic realm) remain the same. They have come to kill, steal, and destroy. Cutting is one of the end time accelerant strategies to take this generation out. If you have identified these signs in your children, find a counselor or deliverance ministry that can help you with the source of that torment.

Counseling is important and necessary but cutting involves demonic spirits that the person must be delivered from. Demons cannot be counseled out of people and so many do not receive adequate help because this important reality is ignored or not dealt with.