My Teen Is Cutting: What Parents Can Do To Help

When a parent discovers that their child is cutting, they are often shocked and panicked. It’s tragically common, but how parents react can affect their adolescent children’s healing.

Middle and high school self-harm is hidden, misunderstood, and shameful. Self-harmers usually have challenging emotions and concerns to deal with. They cut themselves to cope with extreme pain, sadness, anger, or frustration. Self-injury temporarily relieves these sensations but produces long-term physical and emotional harm.

What is self-harm?

Individuals self-harm when sadness and anxiety overwhelm them. Self-harm is intentional self-injury. Typically, those who self-harm do not intend to commit suicide. Instead, they self-harm to alleviate painful emotions.

Self-harmers relieve severe feelings. Self-harm (cutting) is when someone hurts themselves on purpose. It’s usually a coping method to relieve emotional discomfort.

Why do teens self-harm or cut?

Some people cut to suppress or control their feelings. Some intentionally harm themselves to “feel something” instead of emptiness. Kids have said, “I wanted to make sure I was alive.” 

Many parents focus on the what rather than the why when they discover their teen self-harms. There is a reality that, as parents, we want to just make it stop and quickly sweep it under the rug. It is hard to think about and even harder to deal with. Our children’s cutting causes the parents intense emotional pain, and we often lack the emotional tools to deal with it.

Let’s just be blunt. Were you taught coping mechanisms and emotional regulation by your parents? As a child, were you told to suck it up, change your attitude, or move on? Pain is easily buried. Consider your kitchen trashcan. No one likes taking out the trash. To avoid putting out the trash, the family pushes it down as hard as they can. Emotions are not trash, yet we avoid “bad” ones because they make us feel bad. We will do anything to avoid pain.

Let’s examine fear, sadness, and anger and the feelings that can surround them. Fear can cause rejection, insecurity, anxiousness, and out-of-control (passive). Sadness can cause guilt, despair, loneliness, and powerlessness. Anger brings aggression, criticism, embarrassment, and jealousy.

People may self injure to:

• Process negative feelings
• Distract themselves from those feelings
• To feel rather than feel numb
• A sense of control
• Punish themselves
• Express emotions that are embarrassing

Teens are better at feeling physical pain than intense emotional pain. As emotional distress bubbles to the surface, teens that do not have healthy coping skills want the pain to transfer from emotional pain to physical pain. It provides relief similar to releasing a pressure valve in your body. It calms, it soothes, and it is temporary. Parents must help them learn to feel and cope in healthier ways.

The different types of self-harm

There are many different ways that people self-harm. A common form of self-harm is cutting oneself but there are others that include: scratching, piercing the skin with sharp objects, burning, hitting oneself hard enough to cause bruises or welts, pulling out hair by the roots, and picking at existing wounds until they become infected. These behaviors can be extremely dangerous and can lead to serious health complications if not treated properly.

Sometimes, it is what is closest and does not always mean a sharp object.

Tools that can be used for self-harm:

• Safety pins
• Paper clips
• Ink pens
• Nail scissors
• Razors
• Lighters
• Curling irons

The warning signs of self-harm

When your teen is cutting, there are physical and emotional warning signs you may see.

Physical signs of self-harm:

• Have injuries they can’t or won’t explain
• Seem incredibly slow or exhausted
• Agitated more than normal
• Long sleeves and long pants during hot weather.
• Not engaging in sports like swimming where their legs, arms, or torso can be seen.
• Keep lighters, matches, stencil knives, razor blades, and other items are hidden.
• Using antiseptics and bandages more frequently experience
• Change in eating and sleep patterns
• Lose interest in activities
• stop hanging out with friends,
• Miss school
• Academic performance declines

Emotional signs of self-harm:

• Exhibit significant mood swings
• Irritable frequently
• Frequently lose their temper
• Feel depressed,
• Empty or hopeless
• Stop caring about their looks.

What NOT to do when someone is cutting

If your teen self-harms to cope with emotional distress, you may feel worried, sad, and angry. Parents often jump to the “what ifs” of suicidal thoughts, suicidal behavior, depression, and worst-case scenarios when trying to understand teen cutting. 

You may want to ask the teen, “How could you do this to yourself?” or “Stop doing this right now!” Please remember that most kids who self-harm are terrified too. Self-harming teens often feel regret, guilt, and shame. Read, “I Am Cutting: A Letter To Mom”

Let’s be honest: seeking family therapy, treatment, or any other mental health service still has a stigma attached to it.

POINT OF VIEW FROM SOMEONE WHO SELF HARMED

I didn’t know my home was dysfunctional. I was a middle school student (in the 1900s), and my life seemed out of control. It was just my norm. It seemed everywhere I looked, I couldn’t do anything right. My mom yelled all of the time. My grades were okay. My brother was on drugs. My dad worked non-stop. Everything felt off, my brain never turned off, and the anger bubbled over but at the same time squeezed on my heart so I couldn’t breathe. There were no tears, nobody I could talk to,so I wrote in a spiral notebook. I wrote it all down and it would help. I carried the notebook around until I left it in Art class one day. My teacher found it and they called my mom due to what I had written. My mom took the notebook and read it to me out loud as I cried. “You have everything!” she yelled, “You have nothing to be sad about.” That night the pain had to go. I felt trapped, humiliated, and alone. I took the safety pin and began to scrape…

How to help someone that is self-injuring

Your child may be unable to explain what’s happening. Stay calm, respectful, and reassuring, don’t judge or react angrily. Listen to learn what your child is thinking, feeling, and doing and how you can help.

Validate what is happening. We validate someone by recognizing their thoughts, feelings, experiences, values, and beliefs. Validation doesn’t mean you agree with what is happening or are “fixing it”. It shows them that you are trying to understand. Consistent validation grows a natural connection. Connection makes them feel safe and shows them that no matter where they are, they matter and so does your relationship.

 Validating Statements:

• I’m so glad you told me about that.
• Thank you for confiding in me.
• We’ll make it through this… together.
• Tell me a little more about that…
• How do you feel today?
• It’s okay that you’re having a sad, hard, or miserable day.
• It’s normal that you feel…
• You’re right to think…
• What do you need right now from me?
• I really appreciated it when you…
• It’s very normal to think and feel the way you do. I understand that.
• What can I do?
• I think we can figure out what to do.
• I admire how brave you are.
• Your emotions make sense.

Tell your child that powerful emotions are normal yet uncomfortable. Feelings are not right or wrong. They just are. Start talking about your own feelings and your healthy coping methods.

Mental Health Social-Emotional Awareness Activity:

The next time you or your child have an intense emotion or response, time how long the intensity lasts. It helps to know that the discomfort from these emotions will pass. Having a thought like, “This will pass. This is a feeling and I can feel it for 15 minutes.” gives hope instead of catastrophic thinking that it will never end.

Stopping self-harm behavior takes time

“Just stop it!”

If it was only that easy to help teens stop harming themselves. You can not microwave maturity and you can’t fast forward through the process.

The process of unlearning a coping mechanism that gives them relief and calms their brain is going to take time. They will be unlearning and relearning. It will not be easy. It will be messy.

The goal is to first understand what is happening and understand the thoughts and feelings that cause this behavior. Then, your teen will need to find healthier ways to process feelings and emotions. The ultimate goal is to substitute the healthier behaviors over time and self-harm less and less as they learn, unlearn and relearn. Celebrate when they take positive steps forward. When they have an incident of self-harm, validate, and reflect on what could be done next time. It takes time to truly learn healthy new behaviors. This is called a “growth mindset”. You celebrate growth.

Where to find help for self-harm

If your teen is engaging in self-harming behavior, they need to work with a qualified mental health professional that specializes in teenagers. Even though most people don’t think of self-harm as suicidal, teens who do it are at a higher risk of committing suicide.

• Individual Therapy for you and your child. Therapy can help you learn and work through our own feelings of fear, anger, and sadness.
• Family therapy can help parents and teens improve communication and stress management.
• DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) to manage anxiety, rejection, rage, terror, and learn distress tolerance.
• CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy) challenges negative and disturbing thoughts, shows how they reoccur and teaches new thinking.
• Medication may be needed for anxiety or depression. Medication doesn’t cure anxiety or depression, but it can help patients manage stress and emotions so specialists can learn emotion regulation and distress tolerance. This means learning how to be comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Self-harm is a coping mechanism for challenging emotions. It is not a character flaw. The first step in helping someone who self-harms is to offer support and understanding without judgment or blame. Seek professional help from a therapist or counselor, as well as medical attention. With intention, time, new skills, and understanding, this will be the beginning of discovering healthy ways to manage emotions that can be applied not only as a teen but also into adulthood.

You can connect with:

www.crisistextline.org where you can text a crisis counselor at 741741.

National Alliance on Mental Illness NAMI Helpline at 800-950-6264 or text “HelpLine” to 62640