Remember your teenage years? The teenage years are difficult to deal with for all of us. And just like everything else we all have our own coping mechanisms. Sometimes that includes things like self harm. As parents we need to be aware of the signs to better help our children through this turbulent age.

What is self harm?
Self harm is also known as self injury or self mutilation and it is often the coping mechanism for teens trying to deal with difficult issues and feelings.

What are some common ways teens self harm?
Cutting the skin (also called “cutters”), burning themselves, hitting parts of their bodies to the point of bruising, or punching things like walls to hurt themselves. Pulling at or even pulling out their hair and picking or scratching their skin.

How common is self injury in teens?
Though the numbers are hard to correlate because of factors like the secretiveness that most teens have about the self injury, it is believed to be a fairly common practise amongst adolescents trying to cope with life. Another thing that skews the numbers is the amount of times self harm is seen as suicide attempts, when in fact they were only trying to harm themselves, using pain as a method of coping, and not trying to kill themselves.

Why do they use self injurious behaviour?
Often times it is used as a method to cope with emotional distress. Placing the emotional distress into physical pain makes it easier to cope with as it is a more tangible feeling. It can be done to release anger that would otherwise be directed at others, or to stop from having a panic attack. In more extreme cases it is done as a result of the child's own self hate.

It is a common misconception that self-harm is an attempt at suicide. Death is not what they are trying to accomplish. They are simply coping with stress and life by transforming an emotional into a physical pain.

Don't they want to stop?
Many children do actually want to stop the self harm, due to things like it escalating to a point where they feel it may lead to suicide. They may realize that the scars they carry will be with them for life or that it may result in irreversible damage to their bodies. They may become even more socially rejected as a result of the self harm (which is often the case in “cutters”).

What can we do to help our self injurious child?
There are a lot of things we can help involve our children in to overcome self harming. This is the biggest part we can play in helping them and that is helping them to find healthy ways to cope with their problems. Things like giving them art supplies, journals or other means of expression can help. And if the problem persists or escalates to higher levels of course seeking professional help. Self harm is typically a result of lack of coping methods, so helping our children to cope in a healthy manner can stop the self mutilation and behaviours from occurring.

Article by Rachel Goodchild

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