Admit it. You or someone else you’ve met has made fun of someone. Like someone who was not as skinny as some other people or someone who ate a lot. Though making fun of people may make you feel better about yourself, it is not all fun and games. They might not take it as a joke like you. They might be getting worse and worse every time someone makes a comment about them. Self-inflicted injuries and eating disorders are such a wide-spread issue. Teenagers everywhere are harming themselves by physically hurting themselves, not eating, and even more. This cause cannot be neglected any longer, so many people’s lives are being taken over by self- harm and eating disorders and they need help.
When you can’t handle so much emotion bottled up, you feel like exploding. Self- harm is a mechanism some people use to try and take away these emotions. More often than not, self-injury is simply a mechanism for coping with extreme emotional distress. It can relieve intense feelings, anger or anxiety. It can provide a way for someone to break emotional numbness for feel some sort of reality.
It is very harmful for these behaviors to control a teen’s life. Self-harm and eating disorders can cause accidental death to the teen who is just trying to cope with something that could be fixed with counseling, or different treatment of those around him or her. More than one in four people under twenty five years have no idea what to say to a suicidal friend. If you don’t step up and help someone struggling with this could cost someone their life.
There are so many treatment options and phone lines for teens struggling with depression, anxiety, eating disorders, Etc. If you see someone harming themselves you could help them even just by being there for them. Singer, Demi Lovato went through self-image problems. She suffered from depression, cutting, anorexia, and bulimia. She has gotten so much better and is very healthy now. She is living proof that teens can make it through their struggles and get treatment and help for their problems, that they can get better from self-image problems and come out better from it afterwards. Demi says treatment changed her life and that she relearned how to feel and picked up new, positive ways of coping. “The real reason why I’m sitting down with you, she said in the interview, is to open up the eyes of so many young girls, that it doesn’t have to be this way.
When someone is having problems like these, you should let them come to you first. If anyone you know is harming themselves or even thinking about it, then you could let them know you are there for them, and willing to help. Give them safer and healthier options for expressing their stress, anxiety, depression etc. If a person is trying to deal with these issues they, more or less, affect everyone around them so please help them in times of trouble.