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+--- Thread: I think cutting can sometimes be a psychotic symptom. Thoughts? (/showthread.php?tid=18)
I think cutting can sometimes be a psychotic symptom. Thoughts? - SkyeAlexei - 10-21-2025
I mean directly- not due to a delusion or command hallucination. Those are obviously psychotic reasons to cut, but I think the mindset itself can just be psychotic and lead directly to cutting, and this is based on personal experience and knowledge of a similar case in someone else.
How? [TW]
In a certain arguably-psychotic flavor of mindset, there becomes a morbidly fascinating quality to my own mortality. It's a deep sense of enamor, a pull to the dark side of the world and my role within it. I want to feel the mortality by cutting, to have the beast bite into me and show me what it's really got. And that in turn makes me feel alive, and that my life is in my own hands. In those moments, and for as long as the pain lasts, I feel have absorbed the power of mortality itself.
Would you not call this manner of thinking psychotic?
RE: I think cutting can sometimes be a psychotic symptom. Thoughts? - alix_in_the_wild - 10-21-2025
As someone who is not just psychotic but also studying psychology, I think the answer depends on the perspective.
I doubt that, unless fuelled, as you said, by delusions or hallucinations, the field of psychology would describe it as a psychotic symptoms. They teach us that psychosis really resides in the "losing touch with reality, whether externaly or internaly". After all, many people who aren't showing any signs of psychosis may still use cutting or othehr forms of self-harm. I think an analysis of the reasoning behind the self-harm will very often be considered to be on the neurosis side of things.
Now, what I just said is purely based on my interpretation of my classes. That might not be the opinion of everyone on psychology, nor is it mine actually.
In fact, I agree with you. I think psychosis can influence self-harming tendencies without it being because of delusions. For example, I would say that many psychotic people experience dissociation or some form of it, but something that is directly linked to their psychosis. And some of those people might use self-harm to counter this dissociation. That's the first example that comes to mind but many others might explain self-harming with psychosis.
As for my own experience with self-harm, while I do think most of it is more related to neurosis, I am convinced some of my reasons are highly related to my psychosis.
To answer your last question, I would indeed call this pattern of thoughts as psychotic. It's also quite relatable.
Anyway, those were just my thoughts on the matter
