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Understanding Cutting
Physical pain takes priority over psychological pain

Today I was feeling a lot of emotional pain. I stretched my foot out to put my bare toe into the fan on the floor. I had already taken the protective guard off a long time ago because it was loose and made a lot of noise. So I could touch the fan blades as they spun around. I have done this before and knew it didn't hurt much, since the blades are plastic, not metal.

This time I wanted to feel some pain. I remembered what I wrote a long time ago that "Teenagers cut to stop their emotional pain". I wanted to see if feeling some pain in my toe would help stop my psychological pain. As I held my toe there this thought came to mind, "Physical pain takes priority over psychological pain."

For the benefit of search engines, other ways of saying this are "Physical pain takes precedence over psychological pain", "Physical pain takes priority over emotional pain", and "Physical pain takes precedence over emotional pain."

S. Hein
August, 2010