What can cause an addiction to cutting?

More cutting.: Cutting stimulates the production of endorphins -- opioid-like substances the body produces to manage pain. It can be addictive. Some patients use cutting to: 1) wordlessly communicate distress, 2) take inchoate emotional pain and focus it onto a specific physical site, 3) practice a sense of mastery over pain and bleeding, 4) produce a strange sense of pleasure. Treat like an addiction and stop.

Cutting: There are many reasons people cut, but a predominant theme surrounds issues of control of pain and body. Those who have been deeply sexually traumatized will occasionally be cutters to avoid dealing with feelings of rape trauma. People with eating disorders also may cut as a way of exerting control over their own body. There are many pother reasons as well, not just these.