Self-Harm Intervention Ceremony

Self-Harm, as expressed by cutting behavior, has become an alarmingly prevalent, though often secretive, coping mechanism for teens who find themselves cut off from friends, family, and the institutions which are supposed to be there to provide someone in need with support.

By the time someone who practices self-harm is found out, typically much time has passed since the first cutting incident, they’re deeply into a serious addiction, and the reason they’re cutting often revolves around circumstances of extreme isolation and self-hatred.

Serious cases of addiction often require a serious form of intervention in order to pressure the addict to change their self-destructive ways. Instead of the more typical intervention strategy, which is often demanding, judgmental, and can further isolate the addict, we are proposing an Intervention Ceremony.

On the pages of Mind of a Masochist you will find a rationale and a recipe to create your own unique Circle of Souls ceremony and support program for the person who is harming themselves. The ceremony will be designed to bring a circle of friends and family into the addict’s life in an ongoing and committed way to provide the unconditional support and connection that was driving the self-harm in the first place.

It is our hope that the Circle of Souls Intervention Ceremony will spread throughout our land as loved ones band together to create a more positive and effective means for those afflicted with self-harm practices to not only recover but finally thrive in a world where they no longer feel connected.


AS FOUND IN THE BOOK

INTRODUCTION

Self-Harm, as expressed by cutting behavior, has become an alarmingly prevalent, though often secretive, coping mechanism for teens who find themselves cut off from friends, family, and the institutions which are supposed to be there to provide someone in need with support.

By the time someone who practices self-harm is found out, typically much time has passed since the first cutting incident, they’re deeply into a serious addiction, and the reason they’re cutting often revolves around circumstances of extreme isolation and self-hatred.

Serious cases of addiction often require a serious form of intervention in order to pressure the addict to change their self-destructive ways. Instead of the more typical intervention strategy, which is often demanding, judgmental, and can further isolate the addict, we are proposing an Intervention Ceremony.

On the following pages, you will find a rationale and a recipe to create your own unique Circle of Souls ceremony and support program for the person who is harming themselves. The ceremony will be designed to bring a circle of friends and family into the addict’s life in an ongoing and committed way to provide the unconditional support and connection that was driving the self-harm in the first place.

It is our hope that the Circle of Souls Intervention Ceremony will spread throughout our land as loved ones band together to create a more positive and effective means for those afflicted with self-harm practices to not only recover but finally thrive in a world where they no longer feel connected.

1

THE PERFECT STORM OF DISCONNECTION

GROWING UP STRONG, healthy, and well adjusted in today’s world has become an ever increasing challenge for teens. A serious disconnection from community, from their nuclear and extended families, and an even more powerful disconnection from their own interior, authentic Self, their Center, is at the heart of why so many not only struggle to find themselves, but look down one day and see an arm or a leg laced with scars from self-harm practices. Like an oak seedling cut off at the roots, no one can flourish unless they find a way to nourish their human and spiritual connections.

Therapists report seeing increasingly growing numbers of patients dealing with such disconnections, and presenting with self-harm symptoms. Without the ability to access their emotions or experience any real inner joy, they’re turning to cutting as a way to at least Feel Something.

This Perfect Storm of Disconnection from Self and from others can be so powerful and so pervasive that there must be layers of causes interacting in such a way that they can form an impenetrable wall. This psychological turbulence traps teens in a vortex of disorienting forces driven by technological toys, pop culture pressures, peer group and class warfare, gender expectations, bullying, and overall a loss of connection to one’s authentic self.

A significant disconnection force is saturation by Technology. Digital devices are constant companions. Cell phones are always ringing while iPods spew out endless sound bytes. The keypad clatter of text messaging allows people to pull back even further from actually talking to communicate each other. Our email inbox is now impossible to empty. Computer gaming continues to be potentially addictive. Video digital recorders have created another inbox for television programming, sapping even more unstructured time from our day.

Because of this constant drumming of digital distraction, teens have forgotten how to entertain themselves by exercising their creative imagination. They can no longer just be still. A walk in the woods has become a waste of time that could be spent online. Activities and interests close to nature used to help keep people connected to their Center, to their inner rhythms. The ever-present chatter of technology is much more compelling than being quiet and listening to your heart. Because of technology, the time needed for truly creative expression no longer exists.

Pop Culture is another driving force disconnecting teens from their spiritual Center.

Media messages and images constantly expose our teens to violence and sexual stimuli long before they are mature enough to understand what they are seeing. From Barbie Dolls to supermodels, from actors and musicians to professional athletes, media stereotypes offer kids unrealistic role models leading to starvation diets for millions of girls and an epidemic of boys taking steroids to bulk up so they can look like the perfectly sculpted six-pack bodies they see on screen.

Beyond surface images, teens can internalize the violence and sexuality they see, then, soon begin expressing aggression and sexual exploration in their personal lives. Cultural messages support competition over collaboration. The powerful media message coming from the sports, political, and corporate world is that winning is the only thing that matters.

The vicarious thrill of victory and agony of defeat is experienced by millions who religiously follow sports teams. Shouldn’t our emotions be based on the admirable struggle, not the outcome? The disconnect is obvious. It’s one thing to participate in a close soccer match and emerge victorious. Through your physical efforts you deserve to feel the pride of accomplishment. Merely watching should not give you the right to feel the same exhilaration in victory, or become depressed in defeat?

The emphasis on winning at all costs trivializes the important role of dedicated training, perseverance, and pushing yourself during competition, which is the true value and source of satisfaction in sporting activities. The wisest athletes understand this important principle. In the corporate and political worlds, the win-at-all-costs paradigm has led to many high profile examples of white-collar crime and political scandal.

Those corporate executives who have stay connected to their Center see their role in business as providing a good living for their employees, not amassing as much wealth as possible at the expense of their workers and investors. Similarly, truly successful politicians place a higher value on public service instead of campaign contributions, kickbacks, and notoriety. Unfortunately, the media tends to glorify the sensational, lighting the wrong path to success for our youth.

The third driving element in this Perfect Storm of Disconnection is the continued practice of Gender Stereotyping.

Although women are much farther along today than they were in the past, our awareness of this ongoing issue lies just below the radar screen, enough so that parents are not paying enough attention.

In this example, a mother’s awareness is awakened during a visit to her daughter’s school. It was Mad Science Day, a once-a-week after school interactive science program. Mom walked into her daughter’s room to pick her up and was both shocked and disappointed to see that she was one of only three girls enrolled in a class of twenty three.

Hoping this was an anomaly, she pulled her teacher aside only to learn this was typical and was told that all the other girls are enrolled in a dance class that meets at the same time.

Parents, even in this enlightened liberated age, need to look at ways they may be contributing to the continued negative influence of gender stereotyping that clearly is still affecting our children.

Cultural messages perpetuate these stereotypes. To fit into American society’s expectations, girls are supposed to be pretty, thin, and smart, but not too smart. They’re supposed to be nice, not aggressive, rude, or crude, and emotional and strong, but not too strong.

On the other hand, boys are supposed to be athletic, tough, rebellious, cool, and macho. These stereotypes, then, affect the choices our children make, often not reflecting their true interests and passions. As parents we have to be proactive in order to counter the prevailing winds of these powerful cultural and constant media messages establishing artificial gender stereotypes.

Many who self-harm will cite the disconnection of not being able to present to the world the person they truly are. It’s that profound suffering in silence that often leads to cutting in silence.

Teens need to understand that these stereotypes exist, and are pulling them away from their authentic Self. They also need to know that they don’t have to buy into them, that they can and should follow their own true Calling coming from their Center. That their personality should emerge based on who they really are inside. The true definition of what it means to be masculine or feminine simply comes from being true to one’s Self. Become the unique individual that you are, connected to your Spirit, your Light.

Another driver of this Perfect Storm of Disconnection is the Strain on the American Family.

Family life has become a series of brief passings, cutoff conversations, and hurried moments. The typical greeting has become, “Oh, hi, I can’t talk now, I’ve got to get going or I’ll be late.”

Because of our hectic lives, the lack of quality time with our children has caused the disconnection of not being present with them. In her book, The Price of Privilege, Madeline Levine describes the paradoxical result of families with means who pressure their children to overachieve.

Impossibly hectic schedules rob families of time to make and maintain the critical connections needed for interpersonal cohesion. The result is a generation of unhappy kids showing up for therapy complaining of addictions, eating disorders, feelings of emptiness, and depression. This phenomenon leads to the next driver of disconnection, Kids Cut off from Themselves.

Over time, teens treading water, trying to just survive, will lose their lifeline, that critical connection to Center. The further they drift, the more difficult it becomes to reconnect to their core beliefs and make good choices—to feel true Joy.

Teens who harm themselves often cite the need to reconnect with their emotions, especially happiness, even if that means inflicting pain so that the absence of pain might be experienced as pleasure.

When a child does not have an internal compass they will depend on external guides to make them feel valued. Feeling empty and disconnected, they turn to material things, money, grades, appearance, social status, for approval and comfort, and find shallow and fleeting victories even in self-destructive behaviors such as cutting. With respect to cutting, girls seem to be the primary victims.

In her book, Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher describes the changes girls go through in our culture.

Just as planes and ships have disappeared mysteriously into the area of the southern Atlantic Ocean known as the Bermuda Triangle, so do our girls drown in droves—they crash and burn in the Bermuda Triangle of the social pressure to conform—in the psychological storm that is our American culture.

In the book, Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood, William Pollack describes the cultural forces of indoctrination that force boys’ true feelings and emotions underground in order to present a stereotypical face of manhood to the public. The resulting disconnection leaves so many unhappy and confused leading to much of the anger we see. When teen boys are cut off from experiencing a full range of feelings, one emotion that seems to be able to break through is Anger.

The Johnson Institute followed thousands of kids in a landmark study finding they tend to give up the personal interests they were passionate about around the time of transition from grade school to middle school, when peer pressure and cultural forces begin to exude more and more influence. Clinically, this period leads to large increases in depression, the beginnings of sexual exploration, and related addictions.

Disconnected from their spiritual core, unable to experience the true high of a life lived from one’s Center, they seek and find external “hits” of ecstasy that don’t last, are not real, and aren’t healthy—like the temporary endorphin rush from cutting. To impress and please others, they have sold their souls to popular opinion. At this point our children can develop a false, divided Self resulting in potentially dangerous behavioral and psychological problems.

Parents may notice their children developing an attitude of entitlement. During a period when they should be individuating, teens may atypically be drawing closer to dependable emotional parental resources. They may turn to drugs or self-harm to break through the internal numbness. Pushing their estranged bodies, they might starve themselves, and or binge then purge.

Looking for acceptance, they may offer themselves as objects to please others. Body piercing may be a symbolic way to penetrate to their spiritual core. Tattoos may be a way to express their desire to be accepted as a unique individual. Ritual cutting allows some girls to actually feel and express deeply-submerged or inaccessible emotions. Feeling worthless, they may compensate by demanding perfection from themselves or punishing themselves though self-harm. Although these problems with our children often develop within the context of a family, parents should not blame themselves.

Most parents commit to the struggle for the wholeness of their children. Unfortunately, they wrestle with strong agents of disconnection from pop culture, peer groups, magazines, movies, television, and advertising.

As powerful as these forces are, I believe we can overcome and transcend the challenging realities of our times. Turning the tide on the Perfect Storm of Disconnection begins with awareness, consciousness, and being present in the lives of our teens.