DD14 is cutting!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Check in her circle of friends. Cutting is a learned behavior. Our DD dabbled in this and when we sat her down she mentioned a few friends did it. When we cut off contact with those friends she was cured.

I'm glad that worked for your DD, but I want to suggest that parents may want to be cautious about this advice. Obviously it worked in at least one case, so it may be the right strategy for other kids, but it could also be very much the wrong approach depending on the specific situation as a sudden enforced isolation might be further traumatic for a child who is already clearly overwhelmed. If the teen feels that her entire circle of friends or her main friends and social support system are suddenly just cut out of her life, that could be devastating and scary and just make things worse. Going through something slightly similar with oldest DD now (not cutting, but other mental health challenges that manifest with self-harming behaviors) and creating feelings of social isolation when we tried to get her away from bad influences just resulted in making the situation even worse to where she was nearly having panic attacks and she didn't trust us with further information for a while because she thought we would "overreact" and "take away everything else from her life next". Dramatic? Maybe. Her genuine feelings and interpretation of our actions? Almost certainly. An escalation of the problem? Yes.

Like I said, it's great that PP's DD is no longer cutting, so clearly this worked for her, and advice from btdt parents is always valuable, I just wanted to throw out a word of potential caution.

[Anonymous]

Just want to say its becoming more common - its in a lot of popular culture now. She's picking it up from a lot of places likely. You're doing the right things.

[Anonymous]

I cut from ages 13-16. My brother left for boot camp and the next night I had a huge fight with my parents. That was the start. When my brother was killed a year later, it got worse. I was a competitive dancer, made cheerleading, was a honor roll student. Everything else I was doing made me seem 100% perfect.

My parents eventually had me checked into an inpatient facility for a week. The doctor declared I was bipolar and drugged me to no end. I went home and was placed in another inpatient program a couple months later for about 3 weeks. My meds were changed, but I didn't take them. I had been there long enough and was cooperative enough they didn't really watch me take them or look all that hard in my mouth. I went home. I was back a few months later as an outpatient.

It wasn't until I was in outpatient and doing therapy rather than drugs that I got anywhere. They quickly realized I wasn't bipolar, I was a 16 year old girl who had watched her mother die and had her brother (and best friend) body shipped back, and had a military father who was emotionally inaccessible and physically absent. There was nothing wrong with me other than I had never had anyone there to guide me through processing my emotions at any stage of my life. I started attending a weekly grief group at school (important that it was at school because it gave me people to talk to during the day if necessary), as well as seeing a therapist every 2 weeks to work on coping skills.

I graduated a year early, went straight through my undergrad and also finished that a year early, had a great job, and then returned to school for my masters. While getting my masters my dad died and I was tempted to cut. I didn't and instead started drinking a lot. My advisor noticed and called me out on it. I went back into therapy and was able to straighten myself out, graduate on time, and finish with a 4.0.

I have learned that I have a highly addictive personality, but that with enough willpower I can guide that addiction. I also find great comfort in routines. Since completing my masters I have made it to the gym every morning (minus scheduled rest days). No matter what else happens in my day to day life I know that I have control over the 2 hours from when I wake up to when I leave the gym. Cutting was something I controlled. It wasn't necessarily in response to emotional pain, just a response to feeling my world spiral out of control.

My advice to you as a parent is not to jump right on this. There is undoubtably an underlying cause and I think a lot of it has to do with you and the rest of the family. Just from your OP it sounds like you are busy, always rushing, and to your daughter it probably seems the younger siblings come first. She's 14 so she has the usually teen hormone swings going on and her personality may very well be like mine where she likes to feel somewhat in control of her world, but she still wants to feel like an important part in yours. When my dad first found out he started going to lunch with me on Saturdays after he picked me up from dance. That was just mine and his time. We'd go to places my brother liked and we'd talk about old family memories. It greatly improved my feelings toward him and made me a little more open to the therapy idea. Be extremely cautious of psychiatrists who will try to give her an instant diagnosis and medicine. I took Depakote, Lithium, Celexa, Lexapro, and Prozac because a bad doctor decided I was bipolar and the one after him didn't care enough to even confirm the diagnosis.

I stopped cutting about 13 years ago. I still have very visible scars. Yesterday I noticed that my arm hair has just now started growing back in the scarred area. I've considered having pigment added to the scars to hide the ghost white appearance, but now when I see them I just realize how far I have come and that no matter what happens I have to take care of myself to prevent me from falling back into that.