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.

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

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?

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??

I don't see how it had internet associations, unless the girl talked to some questionable friends on there. And there's really no "method of discovery" in knowing how to hurt yourself, and it seems to come naturally to these people with so-called "problems". Either that, or they seem to have an innate desire to hurt someone else. For example, an angry child hitting their parents.

Just noticed solaris has been good enough to start a topic where we can discuss 'cutting' or other areas of "problems", rather than continue here in Vicki's thread.

http://www.thoughtvent.com/forums/Masochis...lems-t1076.html

I discovered the cutting because we had family in and her cousin just flat out asked her. Then told her father who told us. The clues had been there, like finding drawings of razor blades and blood. We had talked about it before but all I got was a negative response. As to the internet restrictions - its to spend more time with the family, we have noticed a withdrawal from the family and "attitude" . We want her to talk to us and not just people on the net so we can provide input.

I would certainly seek out professional advice for your daughter. You could certainly talk to her school's councilors about this.
Zarathustra

Update ... Alyssa seems to be much happier since we found out. She even joked about not having to wear long sleeves to the table, Almost like she had a weight removed when we found out - although she is still not happy with her cousin for squealing on her.

That's very good to hear!

Dear Vicki,
This post sure made me feel better about what your daughter is going through.

I'm fifty seven this year and still have to fight off depression.
I don't know if this will help you, but I would like to explain just how important it was all my life to have the attention I needed from my family.
I never got it, and it lead to a life of misery, even while I thought I was doing just fine.

There is a very fine line between being your daughters friend and being a good parent.
She doesn't sound like she's in any deep depression and with your love and guidance she may never need professional help.

It sounds like she is a bit lost and confused to what her worth is right now.

Trying to put up with all the pressure one goes through at her age can bring her to experiment with finding a away to understand her own emotions.
Cutting is just one way I and others have tried to feel something besides confussion, and uselessness.
This is a sign of not believing in ourselves and that no one else believes in us either.

Motivate her in ways that she can feel more self worth, and how important she is not only to you and your family, but how important she is to this world.

Show her how she belongs to a much larger world than what is just in her backyard, and that her contribution is just as important as Jesus was in his day.
I'm not religious and sometimes religion can push me away from others, but if someone had showed me at a young age just how much I would be contributing to this world today, well lets just say that I know I would have lived my life in a much different way than I did.

Help her to understand how everything she does has an effect on everyone she has ever known. And those she is going to meet in the future.

Listen to what she will share with you, and never admonish her for making dumb decisions. (like cutting) Then help her to evaluate why she does certain things and why she feels one way or another about events happening in her life.

Be on her side even when she has anger towards someone, but then help her to figure out ways to prevent people making her angry.
Give her ways to either avoid these confrontations, or help her to figure out ways to resolve issues with bullies, arogant snobs, or other people causing her to doubt her self worth.

A lot of times when I was dealing with my anger I never had the strength to resolve the issue with the people who were making me angry, so I turned it in on myself.
If there had only been someone to talk about my problems with and to help me find solutions I wouldn't have been so depressed in my life.
I just now am learning and understanding why I could not fit in with the rest of the world, and because of my background I had nowhere to turn.

Yes even though your able to laugh a little bit at the dinner table, the underlying problems have only begun to service, so you must keep the lines of conmunication wide open.

One other big point I would like to make is, if you have other kids. Then they too must be able to talk about what has transpired, and you cannot forget them for one minute.

The dinner table is a great forum for open and honest dicussions about troubling issues, and though there needs to be some guidelines, not one single subject should be taboo for your topics.
And when one individual needs more attention, it will be easier for others to understand why one kid is getting more attention than another.
( don't forget that you too as a parent might need the advice or comforting from your children in oreder to ease some of their pains as well as your own)

My last bit of advice is, should your daughter once again become less open to family and withdraws to her bedroom to be alone too much, then family counseling should be considered as this is not just her problem, but is a problem within the whole family.

Once you get this all resolved you can then come back here and tell us how your 17 year old got drunk with friends and you don't know what to do now! (this is meant as a little levity)

Thanks UJJ, I wish I'd seen such a post many years ago to maybe - help another in my extended family also.

I'll only say. Get help from others. There are many free programs and professional help in the USA.
One does not have to walk alone....