Teenagers Self-Harming: Recognizing the Signs and Offering Help
Adolescence is a turbulent period with many ups and downs in the emotional plane. However, to some teenagers, such challenges become unmanageable, and they are forced to resort to self-harm—the disturbing phenomenon that has come to be used as a coping mechanism for emotional turmoil.
Knowing the nature of self-harming behaviour and its nuances helps to avoid it and supports what teens counselling in Dubai offers.
What Is Self-Harm, and Why Do Teens Turn To It?
Self-harm refers to the process of intentionally causing physical harm or injury to oneself, often from emotional pain. For many teens, it becomes an outlet to regain control.
Reasons why teens turn to self-harm may include:
- Parental Traumas, absent parents, critical parents, emotionally unavailable parents, conflicts and constant fights and abuse at home.
- Raw Trauma: Abuses, bullies, or significant losses can be traumatic experiences from which a teenager may never escape.
- Psychological conditions: anxiety, depression, and personality disorders can also deepen feelings of hopelessness.
- Peer Influence: Peer pressures to “fit in” or be like everyone else can sometimes result in “risky” behaviour.
- Inability to Vent, because nobody is available to hear them: Teens who are not in a better position to express themselves are driven to “self-maiming.”
Indicators of Self-Harming Behavior
Self-harm often goes unnoticed due to a teenager’s fear of judgment or shame. However, there are a few signs that caregivers and friends can watch for:
- Unexplained injuries: Cuts, burns, or bruises with vague explanations are often red flags.
- Wearing Long Sleeves in Warm Weather: Teens may try to hide their scars or wounds.
- Social withdrawal: Isolation from friends and family is a common coping mechanism.
- Recurrent Mood Shifts: Irritability, sadness, or angry moods may indicate more critical issues.
- Changes in habit patterns: Sudden alterations in sleep, eating habits, or academic performance can point to emotional problems.
The Role of Teens Counseling in Dubai
Self-harm issues need a sensitive and caring approach. Professional assistance will do wonders, as it can offer a space for the teens to speak out and learn how to deal with the situation appropriately. Teens counselling in Dubai works specifically on adolescent emotional turmoil.
Professional counselling can benefit in the following ways:
- Counselors meet parent(s) to Coach about ways to support the teen in a proper Positive Psychological ways. Furthermore, counselor analyzes the environment of the teen and provide parents with potential causes of the teen’s turmoil
- Teen’s Trigger Identification: The counselors provide teens a place where they find understanding and not shaming, together the teen and counselor find out the true causes of the problem and solve it with compassion and empathy.
- Teach positive coping skills: Counselor will coach and explain to the teen, other ways of getting relief or attention, replacing self harming with other more healthy appropriate habits, such as journaling, mindfulness, or other skills.
- Improves Communication: Counselors coach communications skills to both the parents and the teen to create a safe space for the family to clearly express their feelings without the fear of being judged, criticized or blamed, instead creating better environments and better relationships amongst the family members.
- Building Resilience: Teens learn better coping skills to deal with stressful moments in life and overcome problems without the need for self-harming.
Why Parents Play a Major Role in the Process?
Parents play a very influential role in a teenager’s recovery journey. Although it will always be required, a loving home environment makes a big difference in a teenager’s mental well-being.Open Communication: Designate a non-judgmental space where your teen feels comfortable discussing feelings.
- Educate Yourself: Learn about self-harm to approach the topic sensibly and avoid stigmatizing your child.
- Be Patient: Recovery takes time. Try not to pressure your teenager to “get over it.
- Set an example: Model healthy ways for your teenager to cope with stress.
- Seek Professional Help: Engage services such as teens counselling in Dubai for your teen to be seen by professionals.
Teaching Teens Healthy Coping Skills
Helping teenagers to learn healthy ways to deal with stress and emotions prevents self-harm and increases resilience. Encourage the following activities that will help them boost their emotional and mental health:
- Creative Expression: Through art, music, or writing, teens can express themselves positively.
- Exercise: Physical activity is a known stress reducer and mood elevator.
- Social Connection: Teens may feel less isolated when strengthening friendships and family relationships.
- Mindfulness Activities: Mediation and yoga help individuals regulate their emotions.
Reducing the Stigma Surrounding Mental Health
Despite increased awareness about it, mental illness areas like self-harm and more are considered taboo. Let alone teenagers, this attitude would make anyone shiver to open up their genuine emotions. In the United Arab Emirates, 54% of school-age adolescents exhibited age-adjusted suicidal behaviour.
Normalizing assistance like therapy and emotional well-being in families and institutions helps break the stigma among youths and parents. Teens counselling in Dubai emphasizes the need to treat mental health early by being as crucial as physiological well-being.
If your teen or a loved one is struggling, Positive Living UAE offers specialized teens counselling in Dubai to guide them toward recovery. Their experienced counsellors provide teenagers with a safe, nonjudgmental space to come and work through their emotions to build a positive outlook on life.
Teens who self-harm are not attention-seekers but, rather, they are a cry for help. The first step to healing is identifying the signs and providing support. The right approach and support from professionals like those in teens counselling in Dubai make recovery possible and very achievable. With a blend of therapy, empathy, and practical tools, Positive Living UAE equips teenagers to tackle the issues head-on and rise to their full potential.
Let’s work together to create a world where teens feel safe, loved, and heard—because no one should have to face their battles alone.
