Posted on 09/13/2010 8:56:53 AM PDT by stillafreemind
Why do teens and adults self-mutilate? There doesn't seem to be clear cut answers. Some tie the self-mutilation to abuse and not just to physical abuse but also neglect. Some cutters have said that when they cut they can regain control of their anger. While no one appears to have pat answers to cutting, self-embedding and self-mutilation, no one denies that it is a troubling trend.
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Some months ago I was with my mom, and some of her siblings. My uncles were a little drunk. And they were talking about all the fun they had as kids. In the suburbs in the 60’s playing outside all day.
I love the video games I played all day as I kid but I was kinda jealous.
I hadn’t heard of self-embedding either. The tattoo thing has really shocked me. I just didn’t see it getting as huge and lasting as long as it has. (But then .. I’m kinda of an old fart).
I helped a friend get his daughter over her goth phase by showing her pictures of myself back in the 80s. We were doing more or less the same thing 20 years earlier.
I didn’t dye my hair or paint my fingernails but we wore all the black clothes and were the goth of the day. I don’t remember anyone having a name for us but it was the thing we did. I still prefer black shoes and shirts. Black jeans are pretty rare for adults these days.
it was back when life was real.
Pun not intended?
Teens do this because they are full of all sorts of hormones and adrenaline and who knows what else racing thru their body and the energy has to go somewhere. They do crazy and stupid things to get a rush, feel cool, stand out, or push their reality to the edge a bit.
Hollywood and pop cultures capitalizes on and magnifies it even more and spreads it like poison. Hence the reason we are where we are today.
“While a few doctors still think that cutting and embedding are attention seeking teen stunts..”
Count me in agreement with those guys.
Yup, 60’s kids played outside whenever weather permitted, and sometimes when it didn’t. There was always a street game of football, baseball, or basketball, going on somewhere, often actually in the street, and then the ensueing arguments and fistfights. Those were the days.
Too funny, we did the same things. I think kids are just bored.
That,of course and I think they're perplexed to the point of self-destruction. They see their parents carrying on as if they're the center of the universe, and, being kids, they're not stupid and they know better. They must feel like Oliver Wendell Douglass in Hooterville. I imagine it's very frustrating.
"Please, Mom?....only until I need glasses?"
“Black jeans are pretty rare for adults these days.”
Oh no! I wear mine almost every day, just like I did back in the seventies, eighties, nineties, and last decade. I had no idea they weren’t fashionable anymore.....
LOL! I intend to keep wearing them until I die, but just for information’s sake, is it more fashionable just to wear the blue ones?
The equivalent back in the fifties and sixties was the pinball machines. I envied anyone who played pinball because I rarely played them in my childhood and teen years. Our fun was enacted mostly outside the house. In my twenties when I finally had a fulltime job and enough money to indulge, I decided to visit a place where they had pinball machines. There, I could indulge my desire. For about two months I played the pinball machines on my days off. Then it was over. I've maybe played a pinball machine five times in the last thirty years. However, if I had one in my house, I might be playing it right now. But it's probably better that I couldn't play them much in my childhood. Basically a waste of time.
Good families can end up with Emo or Goth kids, too.
It is the culture. No matter how we may try to isolate our kids, the culture is just pervasive and sooner or later, they find these kids, too.
And sometimes, they will be fine or seem to be fine until they are 35 or older and suddenly, one day, it turns out they have been into destructive things of various sorts. I have heard, seen and experienced this over and over for decades. Wish I had a solution.
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