Ep 49: Risky Behaviors and Self Harm

Michelle Mitchell, author of 5 parenting books, shares some
surprising facts from her newest book, Self Harm. She says teens
act reckless and harm themselves when they can't find a better
way to deal with strong negative emotions. Thankfully, there's a
lot parents can do to help.


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Full show notes


A surprising 10% of teens today are participating in self harm,
but about 87% of those teens never talk to medical professionals
about it. That means if a teen is self harming, they might only
talk to certain family and friends, or not at all. Your teenager,
or a teenager you know, might not only be battling this problem,
but also keeping it to themselves. Because this issue is rarely
discussed publicly, teenagers may not feel comfortable speaking
up about it for fear of being judged or punished.


It’s not just teens that avoid talking about this issue. Parents
often don’t know how to deal with a moody teenager and refrain
from bringing up issues like this as well. This means that even
when a teenager is vocal about struggling with self harm, solving
the problem isn’t exactly common knowledge. That’s why it’s a
good idea to take some time to learn about this issue, even if
your teen isn’t fighting a self harm problem. Learning about self
harm can help you figure out how to deal with a moody teenager
should issues like self harm ever rear its ugly head.


To learn more about how to deal with a moody teenager, we
interviewed the amazing Michelle Mitchell, our first ever repeat
guest here at Talking to Teens! She’s the author of five
parenting books, the founder of the Youth Excel charity, and an
advocate for adolescent mental health. Her recent book, Self
Harm: Why Teens Do It And What Parents Can Do to Help is full of
expertise about self harm.


In today’s episode, Michelle talks about how to deal with a moody
teenager. She dives into why teens self harm, and how a parent
should react if they find out a teenager is doing so. She also
gets into the psychological process of forming habits––the Cue,
the Routine, and the Reward––and how you can use this knowledge
to figure out how to deal with a moody teenager and help them
find alternatives to self harm.


Why do People Hurt Themselves?


Somewhere in the world, a mother notices her teenage son hasn’t
been acting like himself lately. He repeatedly comes home in a
bad mood, seems disinterested in things he used to like, and
spends a lot of time holed up in his room. Something is clearly
wrong, so she sits him down to try and figure out what’s going
on.


When she finally gets him to open up, he shows her something she
doesn’t expect to see: scars on his arm from self harming. He
admits he’s been cutting himself regularly and isn’t sure how to
stop. Shocked, she doesn’t know how to respond. She never
imagined that her teenager would struggle with a self harm issue.
She wonders to herself, why on Earth would he do such a thing? Is
he trying to end his own life?


There are many triggers and signs, like self harm, that leave
parents wondering how to deal with a moody teenager. People often
think that self harm is indicative of suicidal tendencies, but
this is not the reality for the majority of self harmers. As
Michelle explains, most teenagers who self harm are exhibiting
cries of pains, and not aiming to end their own lives. A cry of
pain is a way of handling emotional turbulence that feels
otherwise impossible to escape.


Parents wondering how to deal with a moody teenager who engages
in self harm must understand the pressures that lead them to
this. Teenagers deal with a lot––pressure from their friends,
academic stress, societal expectations––causing them to feel
overwhelmed and out of control. Perhaps this woman’s son is being
bullied repeatedly at school or struggling with his body image.
This can lead to harsh, self critical thoughts that require some
kind of outlet. He may have developed this problem because he
didn’t have any alternatives to self harm to
help him deal with his emotions, and so turned to this solution
for stress relief.


Parents wondering how to deal with a moody teenager may find the
idea of hurting oneself hard to understand. However you’ve
probably experienced something similar: the invigorating pain of
exercise. You’ve likely felt your heart pound against your chest
and your muscles strain as you do push-ups or jig up a steep
hill. The body’s reaction to self harm is not unlike its reaction
to working out, and this is why it becomes a cathartic release
for some individuals.


It fills the body with adrenaline and excitement, and despite
being painful, provides a sort of “high” that distracts from or
relieves negative emotions. Teenagers can become addicted to that
feeling, causing them to reject healthier alternatives to
self harm and continue to hurt themselves instead.
Luckily, Michelle is here to walk everyone through the process
and help us understand how to deal with a moody teenager.


Starting the Healing Process


So, what would Michelle tell the mother in our story to do, now
that she has discovered that her teen is self harming? She wants
to comfort her child and help him get better, but doesn’t
remotely know where to start. She’s scared of saying the wrong
thing or making the situation worse. She simply doesn’t know how
to deal with a moody teenager in a way that feels respectful and
empathetic.


Michelle reminds us that kids often judge the severity of a
situation by how parents react, so how parents respond to self
harm matters more than we might expect. Although this mother may
be shocked beyond belief by the situation at hand, Michelle says
allowing her son to see her panic can be dangerous for his mental
state. He may respond with panic himself, leading him back into
the intense emotions that caused the self harm to begin with.


When figuring out how to deal with a moody teenager, Michelle
states that parents must not lead with their immediate reactions
to the discovery of self harm. Instead, we should process our
emotions away from the teenager at hand. That way, when we’re
ready, we can have a calm, collected conversation about the
problem.


When approaching how to deal with a moody teenager, Michelle says
it’s not effective for us to blame or criticize the teenager at
hand. Instead, we should ask what we can do to help. It can be
helpful to let the teenager know that we see the situation as a
collective effort, that it’s not something they have to face
alone. Michelle suggests being helpful and positive, to steer the
conversation in a hopeful direction.


It may be tempting to tell a teenager that they need to stop self
harming immediately, to forbid them to ever do it again. Michelle
says it doesn’t work that way, unfortunately. The process of
figuring out how to deal with a moody teenager is going to be
much more gradual. If a teen tries to stop self harming without
any leniency, they may relapse and then feel a lot of shame or
guilt. You can listen to the full episode to Michelle’s exact
advice for slowly decreasing the harm.


She explains the value of shifting a teen’s tendencies from self
harm to self help. This means developing new
alternati...