Today, some adolescents have discovered self-harming by cutting as a way to cope with anxiety, worry, and depression. For them, dealing with intense emotions and balancing them is not about anything else other than harming themselves by cutting. These young people use the feeling created by the numbness from cutting to substitute the pain. That is, numbness relieves pain and internal suffering.
For this reason, cutting and burning as a means of self-harm is an addictive behavior. Numbness, like drug use, is a coping method. These adolescents experience unbearable inner pain, a sense of emptiness, loneliness, and feeling bad. The behavior of cutting and self-harm is initially observed and practiced within peer groups, but they continue it later, thinking that it gives them relief. Because the goal is to feel relief. The internal pain and emptiness come in bouts, and during these times, the adolescent tends to cut themselves, feeling as if they are experiencing a withdrawal, and they feel relieved, or at least claim to feel relief.
According to research, one in every four adolescents has harmed themselves in some way at least once during their lifetime. That is, one out of these four individuals could not cope with intense emotions and tried this method. Sometimes, picking off scabbed wounds or reopening existing wounds on the body is also among these methods.
These adolescents do not harm themselves with the intention of suicide, meaning they do not attempt to die. On the contrary, the goal is to survive, to cope with intense painful emotions, and when they are unable to cope, they resort to numbness and self-intoxication. It is not difficult to understand the state of an adolescent engaging in such behavior. They harm themselves to survive, to continue living.
In fact, drug addicts do not use drugs to kill themselves, even though sometimes death happens due to various reasons. The purpose is not to die, but to endure.
Mayo Clinic has provided some tips for mothers to understand whether their children are engaging in self-harm behaviors:
- Scars, scratches, or bruises
- Spending long periods alone or staying in their room
- Wearing long sleeves, even in the summer
- Frequently claiming accidents happened to them
- Carrying sharp objects
- Recent relationship issues, such as deterioration in relationships
These adolescents do not engage in cutting behavior for show. On the contrary, they do it secretly, either in their rooms or in the bathroom because they do not want anyone to see them. The reason they don’t want to be seen is that they don’t want to be disturbed and they fear that this method will be taken away from them. A substance addict also does not engage in these behaviors in public unless necessary, or a teenager with an eating disorder might be vomiting or inducing vomiting, and this behavior might go unnoticed by the family for months.
Sometimes adolescents are greatly affected by family relationships and issues due to their weakness of selfhood, or even if an adolescent is strong within themselves, the family problems are so severe that it becomes really difficult to cope. Parents, while dealing with their own issues, may not realize the damage their children are receiving. These issues are generally related to marriages on the verge of divorce or intense parental conflicts. When looking at the family structures of adolescents who harm themselves, it has been observed that they also cannot cope with their intense emotions and cannot balance them. As a result of the inability to balance or regulate emotions, it turns into either severe anger outbursts or physical harm. The adolescent has almost learned to cope in this way. For this reason, in such treatments and counseling, the treatment of the adolescent is separate, and the treatment of the parents is separate. In other words, the family is evaluated holistically.
