You Can Help Your Child Eliminate Cutting or Self-Harming
Learn what you can do to ELIMINATE—not just manage—the self destruction. Really.
Step 1: Watch this video.
Step 2: Click the button below to begin transforming your life as a Ridiculously Effective Parent.
Do You Have a Child Who is Cutting or Self-Harming?
In the video above I taught you:
- The REAL reason your child is cutting or self-harming (and it's not what you think).
- Why you just can't seem to help him or her be happy, no matter what you do.
- What you can do to ELIMINATE—not just manage—the self-destruction. Really.
- How you can replace cutting and self-harming with genuine peace and happiness in your child.
Cutting or Self-Harming
Over the years, the terms used for this condition have evolved, to include cutting, self-harming, self-injury, and others. I will use the terms cutting and self-harming to mean the same behaviors in your child, including any one or combination of the following:
- Making cuts or scratches in their skin
- Picking at their skin and creating sores
- Pulling their own hair (trichotillomania) or eyelashes
- Banging their head against the floor or wall
- And any other self-inflicted wounds to the body—burning, punching, and more
Cutting is NEVER an isolated condition.
It is always an expression of severe emotional pain, and other behaviors are inevitably involved: depression, personality disorders, schizophrenia, and suicide, among others. No group of people is more likely to succeed in killing themselves than the young women (most common) and young men who harm themselves.
Cutting is a very serious mental health problem itself, as well as an indication of other problems—present and future. Cutting used to be seen primarily in teenagers, but more and more children are trying it, and it tends to continue in some form into adulthood.
Look for the Signs
Unexplained cuts or scratches
Do you see ANY unexplained cuts or even scratches on your child? These are often barely hidden by clothing, and it is almost never true that “the cat did it.”
Change the way they dress
Have they significantly changed the way they dress? Do they cover body parts in a new way? Is she suddenly wearing long-sleeved shirts or blouses?
Poor self-esteem
Do they have poor self-esteem, saying things like, “I’m just a loser”?
Out-of-control behaviors
Have you seen recent out-of-control behaviors, changes in relationships, snotty attitudes, or decreasing school performance?
Denies hunger
Do you see any signs of an eating disorder?
Perfection
Do they have to do a job—or even play a game—perfectly, because they can’t live with making mistakes?
Pessimism
You might sense pessimism, that nothing works out for them. You might hear, “Why try?”
Social anxiety
Do you see their uneasiness being around other people? Do they avoid gatherings?
Peer depression
Do they talk often about friends or peers who are depressed, anxious, or suicidal?
Examine
If you see even one scratch, do you examine—or have a trusted woman examine—every square inch of skin not covered by underwear?
Body Image Issues
Does she or he have body image issues? Do they refer to themselves as fat or ugly? Does she make comments about the bodies of others?
Mood changes
Have you seen recent mood changes like depression or anxiety?
Fear of making decisions
These children and teenagers often are paralyzed with a fear of making decisions or by a generalized anxiety that they can’t even put their finger on.
Isolated
Do they spend a lot of time alone?
Worry
Does your child just have a look of worry on her face much of the time? There might be words, there might not.
Depressed
You might hear them talk about how bad things are in the world, or in his or her own life.
Stressed
Do they feel pressured to take on greater and greater burdens, until the stress just crushes them?
Feelings of guilt
You might see more than usual feelings of guilt or worthlessness—perhaps expressed in the common phrase, “I can’t do anything right.”
The Serious Nature of Cutting
You MUST look for the signs, because without close attention from observant parents, many of these children and teens come across as “normal” kids who are just “finding themselves.”
Without a proper diagnosis, these kids don’t get help, and their problems multiply in school, relationships, and careers. Their ability to respond to stress in a healthy way spirals downward, so that cutting and other twisted forms of coping become addictive.
They don’t just “grow out of it.” Suicide is a very real possibility.
Suppose you have seen the signs above, or you already know that your child is a “cutter.”
Do you cringe when you see the new and old cuts, burns, and bruises?
Do you cry into your pillow at night because of the screams for help that you know are represented in the marks on their body?
Are you so very frustrated at the hours of talking, the visits to the therapist, perhaps in-patient treatment?
And it’s all accompanied by your blaming yourself for the obvious misery.
Are you not tired of it? Are you not desperate to help your child?
There IS a Solution—
How to Help a Child with Cutting or Self-Harming
There IS a solution, and we’re not talking about controlling or minimizing the cutting. That’s not nearly enough.
We’re talking about a real transformation where your child becomes truly happy, fulfilled, responsible, and, well, a human being again.
In most cases, what you get is a child much happier than they were before they began to fixate on food and body image.
Welcome to the answers you've been hoping for.
For a long time now, you’ve been looking for ways to help your child. I greatly admire what you’re doing right now. You’re looking for answers — you’re trying to love and help your child — which is way more than most parents do.
And finally, you’re in the right place.
You've Been Desperately Looking for Help with Your Child
It’s like you’ve been paddling around in the middle of the ocean, desperately looking for help, and now—almost unbelievably—it’s here. This is the ship you’ve been looking for.
How could I possibly make such an extravagant promise? Because I KNOW how to teach parents how to help their children who are hurting themselves—cutting, self-harming.
I’m not trying to sell you something here that we’re GOING to do. You don’t have to wait. The training begins right now. In the next few seconds, I’ll be teaching you things about your children and yourselves that you’ve never known.
I repeat: I’m not here to tell you ABOUT what I’m offering you. I’m beginning now to GIVE you what you need. It’s my gift to you.
What a relief to know that right now you’re exactly where you’ve wanted to be. You can learn what you need to learn. Finally, you can feel encouraged. You can feel hope. You can help your child.
And I’m going to help you do that.
Your Child is Cutting
and You Want to Do something About It
I know you’ve tried to change things: You’ve talked and lectured. You’ve watched their every move. You’ve read books and tried programs. You’ve begged and nagged. Maybe you’ve taken them to counseling, maybe in-patient treatment. But your child still injures herself or himself.
And you’re frustrated and tired.
You’ve been looking for something that works, and here it is: principles that have proven to work hundreds of thousands of times all over the world.
You would not be here unless two things were true:
If parents are thoroughly committed to learning and practicing what I’m going to share with you, predictably I see children stop cutting. Instead they become happy—even after everything else has failed.
You become happy too.
It is NOT hopeless.
I’m here to help you, and I’ll be using the insight and experience of counseling with thousands of parents, and from writing 20 books and endless articles on the subject, as well as appearing on 1600 radio and television shows and presenting seminars all around the world—and much more.
You are about to change the world around you, and you don’t have to do it alone, which is miserable and frustrating. You’ve already proven that with your own experience.
What You Will Learn That You Don’t Already Know
So now the question that has to be on your mind: what am I going to teach you about childhood or teenage cutting and self-harming that you don’t already know?
What am I going to say that you haven’t already read in a parenting book or heard from a program somewhere?
This is going to be revolutionary for you to hear, so slow down your brain and listen with your soul: What does a child NEED more than anything else? After food, water, and air, the answer is SO obvious, and yet we keep missing it—over and over.
To see the answer, let’s start with an infant. When an infant cries—other than from obvious physical pain—what does he want? You already know, because you just pick him up. You’re pretty smart. You already know that every child wants to feel cared for. Every child wants to feel LOVED.
Picking them up and holding them is just a demonstration of that. And if you’re genuine in caring about them, they FEEL it.
But infants are relatively easy to love. They smile and melt your heart, make cute little noises, and laugh in ways we never hear anywhere else. They’re adorable.
But when they get older, they learn to spill things, make messes, ferociously say NO when you tell them what to do, scream in their car seat, fight with their siblings, refuse to listen to you, say ugly and hateful things to you and other people . . .
And sometimes give up the fight with the world and turn to CUTTING themselves. They get a LOT harder to love, and when that happens, we really don’t know what to do. Usually we try to control their behavior—and we might even temporarily succeed—but it doesn’t last, and we end up with kids who are still anxious and unhappy.
We’re not so happy either.
Loving Your Children Unconditionally
Let me say this another way:
If our children become more difficult to love as their behavior changes, that proves we don’t know how to love them UNCONDITIONALLY.
If we love them unconditionally, we’d love them no matter what.
But if loving them becomes more difficult when they refuse to eat or make themselves vomit, for example, and keep using harmful behaviors—our love is conditional.
Unconditional love or Real Love means caring about another person without wanting anything from then in return, but we DO expect something in return for the “love” we give our children: respect, cooperation, gratitude, and a certain level of reasonable and relatively easy behavior, which does not include cutting themselves.
The Real Effect of Anger and Disappointment
Now more about unconditional love: That kind of love would mean that our love would not be affected by what they do. That’s what unconditional love means.
But we really don’t know how to do that. How do I know? We PROVE it every time we become angry, or disappointed, or impatient, or irritated at them. Our anger and disappointment and frustration are undeniable PROOF that our love is not unconditional.
Deep inside, you know that what I’m saying is true, but let me demonstrate further: When other people are angry at YOU, do YOU like it? NO, you don’t. Not ever. Nobody does. When other people are angry at us, or when we’re angry at other people, we’re all saying, “Look at what you did to ME, or failed to do FOR ME.”
In anger, we’re focused on OURSELVES—Me-Me-Me—and in that moment other people—notably our children—hear only four words, “I don’t love you.” When we’re angry, we’re far too occupied with ourselves to unconditionally love another person.
I repeat:
When we are angry at another person, including our child, they hear only, "I don't love you."
I promise you that this is true.
No, we don’t MEAN to say that, but what else COULD people hear while our words, tone, and behavior are screaming ME-ME-ME? “I don’t love you” is what YOU hear and FEEL when people are angry at you—think about it honestly—and it’s what our children hear and feel when we’re angry at them. And then we have an anxious child or anxious teenager.
It’s little wonder that they respond with their own anger.
Again, we do NOT mean to do this. We do not mean to hurt our children.
But it was inevitable, because WE were not loved unconditionally—which means being consistently loved without disappointment or anger. We were not loved freely, without conditions—so how could we possibly have learned how to unconditionally love our own children? IMPOSSIBLE.
Nobody is to blame. Our ignorance of Real Love simply perpetuated over generations. We don’t know how to love unconditionally because we’ve never seen it or felt it with any consistency.
Childhood and Teenage Cutting and Self-Harm is a Reaction to Not Being Loved Unconditionally
For emphasis, I’m going to say all this in a slightly different way:
When children behave badly—when they cut themselves, for example—it is almost always a reaction to them not feeling loved unconditionally. They do not feel loved with no disappointment, irritation, frustration, or anger.
This could sound discouraging, even bleak. In some ways it IS bleak. Look at the world—at the utter obsession with things that are distractions from our pain, from our not feeling loved: like endless entertainment, addiction to electronics, anger, controlling people, drugs, alcohol, sex, and on and on.
THERE is the proof—in our addiction to all those behaviors—that overall we do not know how to love people unconditionally. If we did, and I speak here with vast experience, these behaviors would not exist.
Children and Teenagers Who are Loved Unconditionally Don't Cut or Harm Themselves
I’ve been teaching unconditional love now for so many years to so many parents that I can tell you this with complete certainty: When a child truly feels loved unconditionally, he or she DOES NOT cut himself or herself.
Instead they’re HAPPY—and responsible, and have all those qualities you wish they had.
With sufficient love, there is simply no NEED for kids to cut themselves, or have low self-esteem, or otherwise behave badly. Happy people don’t behave badly—like cutting, for example. Period. Full stop.
It seems almost like this statement is too broad, too much. It’s not.
Why You're Not succeeding in Helping Your Children with their Cutting and other Self-Harming Behaviors
How many times have you wondered why a child isn’t hearing what you’re saying? There’s an answer, and here it is: Because when you’re irritated, your child hears only “I don’t love you,” and that is so devastating, that he or she hears none of the rest of the content of what you say.
So THAT is what I'll be teaching you:
How to LOVE your children unconditionally,
which then gives them a REASON to LISTEN to you.
If you love them unconditionally, they can HEAR you —what you’re really saying—because they’re not distracted by their fear, not blinded and deafened by the “I don’t love you” message. Then it becomes possible for you to teach them anything—like how to be loving and responsible themselves.
And if they have that powerful trifecta—they feel loved, and they are loving and responsible—they are guaranteed to be happy, which is the ultimate goal for any parent, or, frankly, any person.
Your Children Can Learn to Be Happy
Your children can learn that being happy is way more fulfilling than crying out in pain as they cut and otherwise hurt themselves.
Take my hand, and we’ll talk about what you can do—and how I will support you. It will almost be like starting over in parenting. You’re going to LEARN how to be a real parent, and your child will learn the lessons of life that will benefit him or her for the rest of their lives.
If you implement what you learn here, and if you do it consistently, you simply will not believe the differences you’ll see in your child, and in you, and in your family.
Imagine it:
no more cutting or depression,
no more sadness, withdrawal from the family,
no more loss of interest in everything,
no more expressions of futility and giving up,
no more ugly words,
no more tension in the family.
Our children are not bad. We’re not bad.
We just have not known how to love and teach them.
Loving and Teaching Eliminates Cutting and Self-Harming in Children
What we’re doing with our kids with their anxiety IS NOT WORKING.
Loving and teaching them does.
Rarely is it too late to change whatever unproductive behaviors you’re dealing with, not if you’re really willing to learn and to apply these principles to the interactions with your child. I can promise you, learning how to be a parent is WORTH IT.
You’re about to learn how to ELIMINATE the cutting and self-destruction in your children that are hurting them and making you crazy. Really.
I make you another promise:
Learning to be a loving, effective parent is EASIER than everything else you’ve done as a parent.
Transforming, Not Managing Your Children
We’re really going to get into this. This is not a casual effort. We’re not looking to make your children more manageable. That’s not even close to being enough.
Our mission is to help you to become a powerful and effective parent, and to help your child feel loved, and to be loving, responsible, and genuinely happy. It’s a transformation.
If you ARE truly committed to learning how to parent, I’M fully committed to teach you, and I will bring resources to the table you never thought about. The rewards are spectacular—as we have seen in uncounted thousands of families.
There is not a single thing you’ll ever do that will ring through the ages more powerfully than being a loving and effective parent.
You can do this, so let's get started.
Click the button below—it’s free—to begin transforming your life as a Ridiculously Effective Parent.
