LIFE

One of my friends is cutting themselves and I don't know what to do! She told me that she was going to stop doing it, but now I noticed that she had more scars on her wrist than she did before! She isn’t stopping and I think she needs serious help. Her grades are slipping and she is losing all of her friends and she has been very cranky and rude lately. Anytime I try to look at her scars to see if she has more she yells at me.  I want to tell her mom, but I am afraid that her mom will tell her I told or that her mom won't believe me and say I'm lying!  Help!  What do I do?
 
-Tori
 
 
Unfortunately, cutting is becoming more and more of a widespread problem among teens your age. And even worse, some of them don’t realize how unsafe it really is. One wrong cut and they could cause a world of problems more serious than the ones they had in the first place – including death.
 
But instead of just harping on your friend about the dangers of cutting, you also need to get down to the bottom of what’s causing her to go to that extreme. She may be bottling up a lot of stuff and just needs to get it out somehow. Help her come up with better solutions to those problems and remind her that cutting isn’t going to solve any of them. She could cut until her arm falls off, but her problems will still be there (not to mention she’d also be missing an arm!).
 
As for her mom, try to convince your friend to talk to her about it herself. Tell her she needs to get help, and that’s the best place to start. If you think your friend might be in any immediate danger, definitely go to her mom, or even your own, for help ASAP.

 
<3 Jessie M. 

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7/8/2008 11:23:00 AM