When I worked in the behavioral health field they had me work full time with the teenage girls…the cutters, burners, bulemics, anorexics, depressed, and sexually acting out. It’s true that most of these girls turn to such extremes because of sexual abuse, but there are so many more reasons they do it! It can come from mental or emotional abuse, loss of loved ones, etc. Sometimes they feel that the bleeding or eating or sex is the only thing they can control. Some may actually be chemically depressed (the brain’s chemicals are unbalanced for any of many reasons). Others may appear to be socially active and balanced, but never actually learned good coping mechanisms for negative feelings. You’ve heard of the silent “cry for help”…sometimes they don’t even know they’re asking for help. All they know is that they’ve run out of other ideas. I’m really glad that you’re taking this seriously, because so many adults brush it off as a phase. I wish that parents had endless resources to handle this kind of thing at home, because in a lot of cases I worked, the parents just wanted to say, “It’ll all be okay,” or, “It won’t last forever.” The truth is that unless someone can influence them, even if from the sidelines, it may not be okay and it really could last well into adult-hood. Parents need to be made aware of the gravity of their child’s situation. It shouldn’t be a matter of waiting for their child to hit their rock bottom, it should be a matter of getting them to put down the shovel they’re digging their own grave with, before it’s too late.
Definitely seek guidance from your Church so that you don’t overstep boundaries, and if you’re willing to go the extra step, check and see if there are behavioral health clinics or hospitals in your area that can give advice on this. My favorite go-to website was called
www.TeensHealth.com, basically any topic you can think of is covered there. I also found a site that can give actual stories from a
teen’s perspective. There’s also a series of books by Ellen Hopkins that are on the teenage level, but I’d suggest reading them before handing them out, they really helped me understand the girls (Crank, Burned, Impulse, Glass, Identical). They’re excellent!
former Catholic mentioned using role playing to help them learn about what healthy relationships are and how to identify manipulation. That is a spectacular idea! Maybe have them anonymously write out situations that they have faced and discuss it as a group. The more real you keep it with teenagers, the better they understand you (which makes them feel that you understand them), so try not to sugar-coat much on this topic. Just make sure that whatever you do tell them, you’ve got reasonable proof . Kids want to do good, but they want to do it because it makes sense.
I know this sounds mean, but once they get to the point of cutting their own flesh or actually attempting suicide, the one thing that will keep them grounded is having the effects of their actions brought to their attention. Extreme example: I once had to help a therapist talk a girl out of slicing her wrists with a piece of broken shampoo bottle. The therapist literally asked,“If you do that, who is going to have to clean it up? What will your mom’s face look like when she has to come here and see what you did?”. The therapist snapped her back to reality from her romanticized ideal of what suicide would be like. (I don’t expect that you will ever be in that situation and I know that example is brutal, but it’s really how brutally honest we have to be sometimes.)
(StrawberryJam, these are just my answers based on my experiences
Can’t Jesus help? Absolutely! I can’t count the number of times that my self-proclaimed agnostic/athiest girls asked me to pray with them after a traumatic family session or serious discussion about suicide. They always asked in private, and usually had tears in their eyes. Maybe they were crying because they, again, felt they had run out of other options. But I’d say that turning to prayer in stead of cutting is a great option.
**Why can’t prayer help people of faith in matters like this? People like you who care and stick their neck out for others that believe? ** Why do bad things still happen when good people try to help? God gave us free will. He will not make someone put down the knife just because someone else wants them to. I think that, while the power of prayer is immense, God may choose to let us to learn from others rather than getting our way all the time.
**They do not expect a therapist to fix this do they? Or do they expect God to fix it? Or a mix of both? ** Therapy doesn’t always work (because the patient isn’t willing/ready, or because the therapist just isn’t very good). I think it’s possible that He has guided people to the company of Therapists that can get through to them. I believe that God does put opportunities and people in our lives if we are sincere in prayer, and I think he’s put snowbee in the lives of some of these kids because he knows they’ll listen.
