So, I was thinking. If Pain lets you know you are alive, and depression make you want to kill yourself...Why do depressed people cut themselves? I mean, if they honestly don't want to be alive, why then, remind themselves that they are????

Your thought please!

oxymoron

cutting is lame.
Real men have their nuts bitten off by Laplanders.
That's the way I want to go.

Cutting one's self is a way of numbing the pain. In a sense they're bleeding their pain away.

...wow...that was pretty...extreme.

Isn't that kind of what emo's did in the middle ages, except using leeches because they didn't have razor blades?

Hm, I dunno about emos, but hundreds of years ago doctors used to slice a persons wrist (or the like) and make them bleed out in order to treat sicknesses. Sort of a placebo effect, but hey at least they felt better!

"Blood letting was practiced from ancient times through the late 19th century, and likely began as a result of the belief that the disease resided within the body, and often along with the evil or bad spirits that caused disease.  Blood letting was a means of relieving the disease and/or spirit from the confines of the body.

Other beliefs that influenced this practice included the belief that blood did not circulate, and that the blood could become stagnant in the body.  Also, there were those who asserted that we could have excess blood in our systems, which could be a cause of illness.  (It's likely this belief was in response to symptoms of hypertension, and a resulting drop in blood pressure when a patient was bled out.)"

http://www.blurtit.com/q446184.html

"Bloodletting (or blood-letting) is the withdrawal of often considerable quantities of blood from a patient to cure or prevent illness and disease. It was the most common medical practice performed by doctors from antiquity up to the late 19th century, a time span of almost 2,000 years. The practice has been abandoned for all except a few very specific conditions. It is conceivable that historically, in the absence of other treatments for hypertension, bloodletting could sometimes have had a beneficial effect in temporarily reducing blood pressure by a reduction in blood volume. However, since hypertension is very often asymptomatic and thus undiagnosable without modern methods, this effect was unintentional. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the historical use of bloodletting was harmful to patients"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_letting

But as I said in the OP. Pain reminds us we are alive. People who want to die, should not be trying to remind themselves that they are alive. Am I right?

Yes, pain reminds us that we're alive. They're bleeding out the pain, meaning they're trying to get rid of it/not feel it anymore.

But in doing so, they are creating more pain. They are in effect, amplifying the reminder that they havn't killed themselves yet.

My friends who cut themselves say they don't feel it when they're doing it. They also tell me it's a great stress/anxiety cure. Sounds like something not to try in the future