I have just discovered my daughter has been cutting herself. Anyone know of any good places to look for help, besides dragging her to a Dr.?

This has just blown me away!

Hi vicki,
Sorry to here about your daughter's trouble's i had a friend who used to burn himself wit cigarette's ,to be honest no-one new why he did it.
I have found this link
for you to read and then maybe you can see what your next step should be.

Good luck
Mz30

Thank you for that link. I'm going to try to get through to her.

What age is your daughter? Both of mine had their problems growing up. My oldest was raped by a family friend at 13 and the youngest got into drugs, booze pretty big and suffered depression. Psychologists were involved somewhat, but were not that helpful. We tried to spend as much time as we could with them and offer our support. Hoping for the best, we let them go about their business and just made sure we were there when they need help and guidance. Not sure what we did right but they're both happily married to decent guys and both are excellent mothers. They have admitted that they can't believe the change
Mark

She's 15, always been a little angry, especially when a new girl moved into town about 4 years ago and started to bully her. Then she adopted the 'dark' personality. Kind of a goth look.

Ahh yes the Gothic look. When I went to school, we had our cliques but I never experienced the peer pressure my daughters described and I can understand wanting to be accepted. 15 to 18 is going to be rough for her. We tried to monitor their friends, sent the to Lutheran school. It's the same where ever you go. You got to lengthen the chain a little but be prepared to jerk it back
Mark

Oh, gracious, how hard this must be!

I'm not a doctor but your family doctor would be the first step? Some anger and depression with a teenager is one thing but no happy child cuts themself and forgive me for offering advice, but anyone so desperately unhappy she's willing to scar herself is surely in need of help now, before it possibly escalates?

Many children apparently 'come out of it' on their own, just as Mark's daughters did - but how horrible it would be if yours was one of the unlucky ones. Gentle sigh and my kindest thoughts.

You would be surprised to learn just how many kids do such a thing. I know I was.
Mark

Vicki, are there any County Public Health Services there you might call upon?
I looked on the web, but your town's profile did not show anything for me.

One of the local churches might also offer some advice or counseling?
Or the schools Admin/Nurses?

http://teenagerstoday.com/resources/articles/mutilate.htm
http://www.healthyplace.com/Communities/Self_Injury/Site/
http://www.kidshealth.org/teen/your_mind/m...th/cutting.html
Mark

Sorry to hear of the trouble, Vicki, and horrified to hear about the rape, Garmanma.

As it's already said, you need to give your daughter some space.

At the same time, at 15, it is essential that your daughter has confidence in you, trusts you and can relate to you. You can only acheive this by showing an interest in her and the things she likes doing - make her see you as one of her friends and feel that she can share anything with you. If you should ever give advice to her, it can only be when she asks for it. You also need to appreciate that there is no quick fix, that a lot of time and effort is required in order to overcome such problems, in some cases years.

This post has been edited by My Invisible Thoughts: Dec 30 2007, 07:10 PM

I thank you for the concern and genuine well-wishes from everyone here. My husband and I have had some very long talks with our daughter in the past few days. Your links have proven to be a valuable source of information. Basically we put it to her this way: I will check her weekly for new marks nothing embarrasing! She has been restricted in what she is allowed to do especially concerning the internet. During the course of our talks she has come to understand that hurting herself or hitting walls are NOT acceptable behaviors. When she has these feelings she is to talk to either myself or my husband about what ever has her emotions in a bunch - be it either something as simple as school work or as complicated as guys
Time will tell as to whether this approach works, but I did inform her, Either we do it this way and work through it together or we have to involve professionals and she does not want that to happen at all.

God Bless you all in 2008

This post has been edited by Vicki: Jan 1 2008, 11:25 AM

Just because someone likes to cut themself, doesn't mean they have problems. Though based on further descriptions you've given, I'd say she does. If someone dares me to inflict pain on myself, I'll usually do it, and have. I just find it to be fun, as well as observing the reactions of the people watching me. But your daughter probably is depressed.

Out of curiosity, would you care to give us all the details on how you learned she cut herself? Did you finds marks on her, confronted her about it, and she became suspiciously defensive? What?

And why have you restricted her use of the internet?

This post has been edited by solaris32: Jan 3 2008, 04:50 PM

Suspect expanding on part of this thread would be far from helpful to Vicki but if you'd care to start a new thread regarding "Just because someone likes to cut themself, doesn't mean they have problems"., solaris32, I would be interesting in understanding how this could be so.

Solaris - I find it hard to come to terms with your first observation - "Just because ........doesn't mean they have problems" To me this is affiliated with the term 'oxymoron' .. how can any one reconcile "liking to cut themselves' [i]with 'not having problems'[/i]???

Possibly the discovery of the problem had internet associations?? I would have thought that this is really a question that a professional health practitioner would ask, although the method of discovery may lead to some ehelpful conclusions??

This post has been edited by Quietmike: Jan 3 2008, 07:24 PM