What do you do when you meet on Social Media, kids who self cut?
I’m done…I want to die…My dad’s too strict…My nightmares are back
These are the painful words of a teenage girl I met on Instagram by virtue of the work we do at Defying Mental Illness. Her words were heart breaking yet carried a desperate cry for help.
Annette, that’s the assumed name I will call my friend, was a girl that was desperately looking for love (family love) and constant reassurance. On the face of it, Annette could easily be the envy of her friends.
She spoke several languages fluently, lived in a foreign land with maids and servants at her beck and call. Her family by the lifestyle she described, minted money.
But father was working hard, perhaps too hard. Did not have time for Annette let alone to notice her. Mother spent her waking hours in shopping malls probably thinking that life was all perfect.
But life was far from that. She knew her daughter was not eating. (Self harm and eating disorders can often go together). But in mother’s mind, did she think this was the growing pains of a teenager? Especially one trying to adjust in another foreign land, probably just missing friends and family from back home?
Annette’s mum had a sick child. So sick she was was cutting several times a week and hiding it from her watchful eye…if her eyes were indeed watchful. After all, she had no cause to think that her daughter would self cut. Which parents does?
Parents, learn how to break the codes your kids are using on social media
For Annette to go 3 days without cutting was real cause for celebration. Her situation was dire.
Annette had siblings but had no relationship with them. In fact she barely spoke to any of them. She admitted she was always in her room. In short, here was a young girl feeling isolated and so alone and constantly thinking of death.
Sadly, very sadly, Annette had no outlet – she hated school with a passion. Her outlet were the friends who cut like her. Friends who she met on Instagram. One of her physical friends had died accidentally through self harm. So Annette was surrounded virtually and physically by people who thought like her.
With one friend dead, that was not enough ‘threat’ to stop Annette from doing what she was doing.
Zoe, it has been 3 days and I have not cut…
It’s been 5…
Zoe, you gonna kill me, I cut last night!
This was the yo-yo cuttings of someone who was trying to come off self cutting. And there was me with my desperate ‘virtual’ helping hand to someone who lived half way round the world in some country. My confidence was elastic…hey, Annette was using an alias on social media and was surrounded by this cloak of choking self harm darkness.
I had entered ‘virtually’ into the world of self cutting, courtesy of Annette. This self cutting, self harm, self injury planet was a horrific jungle of a world where the unthinkable needed serious thinking about for the sake of these desperate kids.
I counselled Annette through Direct Message in as best as I possibly could. What would you have done? What could you do? Who could I call to help her?
I urged her to speak to a trusted ADULT rather than her friends who were not helping at all.
Some of the images on social media and Instagram were so horrible and squirmish…Hmm, those times, I would have smoke coming from my ears, by reason of just catching a glimpse of them. And Annette would dare to repost them!
How could people post such grotesque shockable images? No wonder the kids who were cutting were finding it difficult to stop. Including dear Annette! All she had to do was log into her Instagram page and there was some horrific picture as a banner on her page. And to crown it all, sometimes she would post her own images of her cuts.
Pictures of self cutting is not something to applaud! Hell no! Yes, there are lots of kids who do this, and these kids are not in their right minds. But adults posting these images too…how has any of these images helped O-N-E person? Re-posting your cuts do not help though on one hand it is a cry for help. But how can we help when you hide behind aliases?
Annette and I had several conversations over a given time; I probably saved her life a few times; Well she seemed to imply this by her own admission. But how else could you help someone whose number, email and details are not in your possession? I did not even know her real name for goodness sake. Let alone her surname.
I needed Annette to build her confidence, to tell her she was lovely even though I did not have her photo. My words were a soothing balm to a crying soul. She put on a kilo in weight here and there. I thanked God every time she told me she ate. The cutting dwindled, peaked at times, but gradually I was getting to her.
I could see her issues. An elder sibling trying to prove herself to her brothers and sisters as someone who had it together when she had lost control of her young mind…
A young girl trying to seek approval from her workaholic dad who made sure the family never lacked…yet the one thing that was lacking was a show of love to Annette. She lamented of his withering criticisms of her. Was he aware that his words were coming across as such? Then, her mother who thought all her daughter needed to do was just eat and stop this teenage tantrums.
I had to come into Annette’s world to see things from her perspective in order to help her. I had to be a friend the good friend, not her other friends who themselves needed immediate help themselves. I needed to become a child like her and see things from her view and not from her parent’s which would have been so easy for me to do. But I could not, would not even dare condemn her parents either over this self cutting issue!
It was a journey. I prayed for Annette day and night. My heart always skipped a beat when she replied to my DM messages hours later (as we were in different time zones). It meant she was alive and WELL… not in hospital or the emergency room. It meant there was hope.
Eventually, Annette told me her mom was taking her phone away from her as her parents thought her grades were suffering. Our only contact was now being cut. Thankfully she gave me this pre warning else I would have wondered about our loss of communication.
But she had come a long way and she said she was no longer cutting as before. The urges though still there were much diminished. I languished in my soul that this was actually so and would continue to be her story. I clung to ounces of hope that I could see she had changed…her language, i.e. her talk, had changed in the year or so we had ‘met’. She was no longer talking about death. That was one good thing.
And I held on to that hope that wherever Annette is today, she is doing well, has finally got counselling, and has defied self harm.
Let’s think twice about the images we post about glorifying self harm on social media (if you are one person who is reading this post and does that). There are very vulnerable young teenagers, kids basically, that see these images and feel that they can continue harming themselves.
And if you are doing self injury because all your friends are doing so, speak to a trusted friend or counsellor as soon as possible. There are people who will listen to you and not condemn you.
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