Self-injury and the lack of desire to stop

I believe I am aware of the clinical issues that arise with adolescents and adults with self-injury having worked with them over the years.  The urge to self-injure becomes reinforcing and almost psychologically addicting and therefore is tough to STOP! The "high" some people feel upon self-injuring is like any other adrenalin rush from sky-diving, a big win, or an audiences clap following an exception performance.

In self-injury the "feeling" almost immediately results in "numbing the emotions" and therefore helps to person to "NOT FEEL" the pain of their emotions. They may have learned that their are not allowed to feel their emotions. "You should not feel that way" "Your feelings don't matter" "Don't be angry" "Shut up and stop crying" "You should feel grateful..." "You are wrong to feel..." "I don't care if you feel/think..." and so, the child grows up thinking they have to get rid of their emotions. It may be joy, sadness, anger, anxiety, or any other emotion they were not allowed to show as a young child. The best way they learned to handle it is to "cut it out" or "turn it off." The end result is guilt and shame for feeling their emotions. As they get older, it gets more difficult to turn off their emotions.  If they do not learn other strategies for handling emotions, they may resort to one or many other ways to handle themselves--alcohol or drug use, perfectionism, eating disorders, or self-injury. 

What happened to teaching self-control in appropriate ways? It helps and is effective to try and understand a  child's emotions, and model appropriate behaviors to handle the situation. You may consider the following examples. "You're really unhappy I asked you to straighten up your room and put your toys away. Let's clean up together." "I can see you are upset and I am hear when you are ready to talk about it." "Of course you are sad your Grandma died, what can we do to help you take time to feel sad and something positive to remember her?" "It is no fun when your brother picks on you, let's talk about how to help the situation when ignoring doesn't work." "I don't understand why you are nervous about going to camp, tell me what is scary about it."

It only takes time to reframe your own thoughts and retrain your brain to consider ways to encourage self-control in a positive way. We owe it to our children to teach them, and this is what discipline is all about--teaching.