Self-cuts and self-harm in adolescents in the practice of a child psychiatrist. Part 2
The teenager makes tantrums at home, declares that no one loves him, that no one needs him. Threatens to jump off the balcony, cut your hands, and the like. And cuts. And then mom or dad find him with bloody forearms in a semi-faint state. They try to provide help, stop the blood, call an ambulance, and he suddenly jumps up, rushes out the window … The system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan helps to understand the motives of the behavior of such children.
Part 1
At the reception, I often see boys and girls with self-injuries and self-cuts on their hands. They are brought by parents and teachers - noticing self-cuts on their hands, they start to sound the alarm. In this article, we'll talk about the demonstrative behavior of adolescents who willingly show their self-harm to other guys.
Teachers say that such children deliberately draw the attention of others to this, as if they are boasting. Such children often differ in their behavior at school: they behave demonstratively, can disrupt lessons, be daring, skip classes. They do their best to be noticed. Among adolescents, this behavior can be considered "cool", they say, look how brave I am. And at home? At home, the child is hysterical, demanding and is able to threaten suicide in front of relatives by applying self-cuts and self-harm on his hands.
Why do teenagers demonstratively inflict self-cuts and self-harm on their hands? For what reason are they doing this?
In my practice, I observe that adolescents with visual and skin vectors cause self-harm to the skin in order to attract the attention of others. At the same time, they may have other vectors, but the optic cutaneous ligament will be the leading one in the case described above.
The system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan helps to understand the motives of the behavior of such children.
Alarmed relatives bring such a teenager to see a psychiatrist for a reason. Not every child will threaten suicide through "opening the veins", self-cutting and self-harm in the arms. The teenager makes tantrums at home, declares that no one loves him, that no one needs him. Threatens to jump off the balcony, cut your hands, and the like. And cuts. And then mom or dad find him with bloody forearms in a semi-faint state. They try to help, stop the blood, call an ambulance, and he suddenly jumps up, rushes out the window …
I observe children who have been diagnosed with a psychiatric diagnosis. As a result of intrusive self-harm to the skin and behavior disorders, they were repeatedly treated in a psychiatric hospital. I read extracts: "Suicide Threat 2015, Suicide Threat 2017" …
Why is a child willing to voluntarily harm himself, causing self-harm, self-cuts on his hands? To understand the reasons for this behavior of adolescents, let's pay attention to the peculiarities of their psyche.
Causes of self-cuts and self-harm in adolescents. The role of the visual vector
A person endowed with a visual vector has tremendous emotional potential and sensuality. How it will manifest itself depends on the degree of development and realization of the properties of the visual vector.
Man wants to enjoy, to receive for himself. Children are just developing various skills, and more often their desires are fulfilled by their parents. If a child with a visual vector from childhood is used to throwing tantrums with screams and a sea of tears in order to get what he wants, then instead of developing interaction skills, such a primitive model of behavior is fixed. Driven by screams, the parents are ready to give him everything, just to calm down. Not understanding the characteristics of the child, they are helpless to influence the situation in any way.
The visual vector is a special component of the human psyche. A visual child, like any other child, needs correct upbringing, which is consistent with his mental characteristics.
The visual child, like no other, needs to create emotional connections. First, at an early age, with my parents, especially my mother. Further, in kindergarten and school, he creates emotional bonds with peers. Friendship between visual girls is not spilling water. And with skin-visual boys - the same. They share secrets with each other, experience each other's feelings as their own.
Reading classical literature is of exceptional importance for visual children - experiencing in their imagination everything that happens to the heroes of the books, children learn to sympathize and love other people, develop sensually and intellectually.
Guys with a cutaneous-visual ligament of vectors are also talented in acting, willingly attend the theater club, participate in school amateur performances. With proper development by adolescence, they learn to take their feelings and emotions out, for the benefit of other people - to help those in trouble, compassion for them.
The emotional amplitude of the visual vector is enormous. More than all other vectors. It is his desire to experience vivid emotions. It is the visual vector that has been given to humanity for the development of culture and art - as a means of encouraging other people to empathize with their own kind and thereby reduce hostility in society.
What happens if the child does not develop correctly with a visual vector?
In adolescence, the development of the human psyche is almost complete. If the visual boy or girl was not brought up properly, then they do not develop the skill to take into account other people, their feelings and desires. Such children continue to use infantile models of getting what they want in adulthood - for example, through emotional blackmail and threats of self-harm.
The visual vector will somehow get emotions for itself. For him it is a matter of life and death, constant deep experience of feelings and their expression is his air. Sometimes the way to get yourself emotions is to apply self-harm and self-cuts on your hands. From conversations with teenagers, I see the reason in childhood.
Often a girl, and especially a boy, was forbidden to cry. Or it was not customary in the family to express their feelings. In my practice, I saw families, outwardly prosperous, in which they spoke in verbs, but they did not speak about feelings, experiences at all. The child does not learn to bring his feelings out to other people, as he would do, having the opportunity to sincerely communicate with his parents, especially with his mother, reading books, playing on stage, playing the guitar in the yard, helping those who need help, expressing love. If the visual child is not taught to cry for others, then he will cry for himself. He will express himself in hysterics, the essence of which is the same: “Pay attention to me! Give me what I want! …
And a wave of self-cuts, self-harm rises, more often on the hands, in adolescents. Suicide threats, demonstrative blackmail, emotional pressure - all this they do with the aim of pumping themselves into emotions, because close people do not remain indifferent to such behavior and "feed" the adolescent's visual vector with attention to his problem, tendency to self-harm and threats of suicide.
Outwardly, adolescents with a visual vector can look quite remarkable. Their demonstrative appearance just screams: "Pay attention to me!" …
Visual adolescents suffer without receiving emotions, suffer without being able to express them. It is very difficult for them. They themselves would be glad not to do that! But they are driven by the unconscious, that is, the visual vector, which wants to experience emotions at any cost.
When hysterics and all sorts of demonstrations exhaust themselves, the teenager finds another, more "effective" way to attract attention to himself through self-harm to the skin. And yet, not every teenager will do it this way.
The role of the skin vector in the cause of self-cutting and self-harm in adolescents
Not all visual adolescents will inflict self-cuts and other self-harm on themselves.
In my practice, I observe that self-cuts and self-harm to the skin are inflicted on themselves for the purpose of emotional blackmail, first of all, by those adolescents who were subjected to physical punishment in childhood.
A child born with a skin vector needs affection and tenderness. All of his biochemical pleasure processes are tuned to this. When he is beaten, spanked, his delicate skin experiences much more pain than a child without a skin vector. If this is repeated often, then the child learns to get pleasure not from tenderness, but from pain. The skin vector is flexible and adaptable. Biochemical processes are being rearranged, and now, in response to pain, hormones of pleasure - endorphins are released, a tendency to masochism is formed.
The teenager himself does not understand what is happening to him. Someone will threaten to jump out of the window, someone - to throw themselves under the train, someone - to poison themselves with pills, since "they don't like me." And a teenager with a broken skin vector will unconsciously strive to inflict self-cuts and self-harm on himself, often on his hands, demonstratively threatening suicide. Such behavior can be so entrenched that the psychiatrist makes a diagnosis of self-harm syndrome or self-harm disease.
In addition to the visual and skin vectors, adolescents can also have a sound vector, then the clinical picture is aggravated. Read about it in the first part of the article.
How to help a teenager avoid self-cuts and self-harm on his hands
To help a teenager, it is very important to understand him, what is happening to him and why, it will not work just to “rein in” him. The condition of the parents themselves, especially the mother, is also very important - it is from her that the child, from birth to the end of adolescence, receives a feeling of safety and security. Or it does not, and this becomes an important factor hindering its development.
A teenager who cuts and self-damages the skin on his hands is in great emotional distress, and it is in your power to help him. Register for free lectures on system-vector psychology by Yuri Burlan to learn more about the psyche of your child and establish a connection with him.
