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.

If you've enjoyed Talking to Teens, we'd love if you could leave us a five-star rating, and if you have time, a review! 

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 alternatives to self harm, or different ways of coping.

Habits hav...