By Michael Hollander, PhD; 213 pages. Subtitle: Understanding and Ending Self-Injury
Teens who cut, burn, pick, or otherwise harm themselves are a source of concern, distress, and bafflement to their parents. Hollander, a psychotherapist who specializes in helping self-injuring adolescents, offers moms and dads a clue on why their kid does that, a therapy that can make it stop, and suggestions on how to parent in the meantime.
- Straightforward, non-alarmist take on a uniquely unsettling behavior
- Gives parents specific suggestions on how to best help their teens
- Author is generally respectful of parents, even while correcting them
- The behavior strategies included here may be useful for other teen issues
- Includes tips for helping parents guard their own mental health
- It's not a do-it-yourself program; you'll have to find a therapist to do DBT
- If case studies in which the doctor knows all bug you, there are lots of those here
- The calm approach recommended may be easier read than done
- May not work for all cutting kids
- Part I: Understanding Self-Injury
Chapter 1: Fact Versus Fiction - Bringing Self-Injury Into the Light - Chapter 2: What Sets the Stage for Self-Injury?
- Chapter 3: How Does Hurting Themselves Make Some Kids Feel Better?
- Chapter 4: DBT - The Right Therapy for Your Teen
- Part II: Helping Your Teen in Treatment and at Home
Chapter 5: Making the Most of DBT - Chapter 6: Resetting the Stage - How to Help Your Teen Restore Emotion to Its Proper Place
- Chapter 7: Writing a Better Script - New Ways to Discourage Self-Injury
- Chapter 8: Taking Care of Yourself to Take Care of Your Teen
- Chapter 9: How to Speak With Siblings, Friends, and the School About Your Child's Troubles
- Appendix A: Effectiveness of Adolescent Intense DBT Program
Appendix B: Intensive Treatment Programs
Why do teens cut themselves? Adults have all sorts of ideas: It's a failed suicide attempt. It's a cry for help. It's a bid for attention. It's an act of self-hatred. It's a result of weak parenting. It's a sign of serious mental illness. It's completely nonsensical.
In Helping Teens Who Cut, author Hollander suggests that most of those are wrong -- or maybe just a small part of a big picture. His conclusion, based on experience treating self-injuring teens, is that most of these kids have oversized emotional reactions that they don't know how to handle, and cutting calms them down. Teach better ways to handle those engulfing emotions, and the hurtful behavior will stop.
Hollander gives an overview of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), a method used by therapists to acknowledge and validate a patient's point of view while shaping it in a healthier way. Though teens will need to do the work with a trained professional, there are ways that parents can apply some of the same techniques at home, and avoid the kind of well-intentioned attempts at problem-solving or attitude-adjustment that do more harm than good.
The text is easy to read and generally gentle on parents, even while pointing out the many wrongheaded things they do. Exhibiting the patience and validation that the author recommends may take a superhuman effort for some moms and dads, who reasonably may feel big emotions and be unable to contain them too. Still, the advice is well-thought-out, and there are tools offered for applying the same techniques to your own behavior that a therapist will be helping your child apply to hers.
Much of that advice will be useful for parenting teens with a variety of special needs, not just self-injury. We could all use a little more self-control, clarity, and respect for our kids' unique, personal, and sometimes incomprehensible points of view.
