Kids get angry, just like adults do.  The key to helping any person, including yourself, is to practice techniques to stay calm or to help calm down while you are, in fact, calm.  Trying to practice something while you’re upset can be like trying to pull the emergency break on a car when it’s speeding down the highway.  It may eventually stop, but disastrous consequences can happen during the process. Here are some tips to help you work with your child on how to manage difficult emotions before they happen. Learn more.

Emotional and mental abuse are often misunderstood as “not as severe” as physical or sexual abuse.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.  In particular, when you grow up in an emotionally and mentally abusive home, there can be serious ramifications to long term mental health in adulthood. Gaslighting, as explained in this article, is serious business.  But, with treatment (hopefully to both the caregiver causing the abuse so it doesn’t continue, and to the child effected by it) psychological wounds can heal.  This also often happens in relationships defined by domestic violence.  Even if the perpetrator doesn’t hit you, this is just as damaging, if not more so. If you think this has happened to you or is happening to you, there are resources.  Learn more about gaslighting here.

It is typically a mystery to parents and other friends and family members why a child or teenager may engage in self injurious behaviors. These can range from cutting to promiscuity (and some also include food issues). There is always a reason behind the behavior.  Here is a great article with some recent research that has come out about non-suicidal self-injurious behavior. Learn more.