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Self Harm
| While many things can
be considered self-harm like drug and alcohol abuse or eating
disorders, the term self-harm is generally taken to be those who cut or
puncture themselves. This may start because school is often boring and
students may stare at their bare arms for hours each day. This habit
can develop like fingernail biting in response to anxiety. However, it
is often an attempt to generate a feeling of control in an environment
where one feels they have none.
As a coping strategy self-harm is a short term option. One can come to
associate even pleasure with self-harm such that it can reach addictive
proportions. However, even before those proportions are reached one can
discover that increasing frequency and severity are needed to produce
the same effect.
This can develop during teen years when one does not have the
opportunity to change or control their environment so that causative
anxieties may be left unaddressed. The teen years are ones where we are
supposed to be learning how to control our environment and deal with
other people. For someone denied the opportunity to develop these
skills, the resultant anxieties can seem overwhelming.
For many self harm represents an “escape valve” such that as pressure
accumulates, the act can relieve some of the pressure. That it seems to
work initially makes it much more difficult to give up later. The idea
of self punishment can also be incorporated into self harm, but it is
often an additional or amplified sense of control.
It can be difficult for Christian parents to even be aware that their
children may be using self harm as a coping strategy. Even with
awareness, it can be difficult to think of what could be done to change
things. Often as the years pass children grow and come to engage with
the world and achieve control to a degree where self harm is not
needed. However, there are some for whom it can become a life long
struggle.
When children in families were productive necessary members of the
family their work in caring for livestock, working in fields, or making
items for daily living was important and appreciated. Today sitting all
day in a classroom and watching TV at night may appear less taxing, but
it is also unnatural. If children can be encouraged to pursue a hobby
or other interest, it might introduce an element of control that can
take a person out of themselves.
Volunteer work is another option to help a person not spend an
unhealthy amount of time thinking only about themselves. Christianity
is supposed to be about transitioning from the selfishness of the flesh
to the selfless love of Christ-likeness. Today’s modern life seems to
make young people in particular excessively self-focused. Parents may
want to make sure they find ways to help and encourage their children
to expand their horizons beyond themselves.
In a consumer society that almost warehouses it’s children until they
are 18 in school institutions similar in many ways to the institution
of prison, parents have to be creative to minimize the negative effects
of this life on them.
2Co 5:15 And that he died for all, that they which live should
not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them,
and rose again.
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