Teenage suicide cases are on the rise. Children as young as 8 years are commiting suicide. Parents are wondering where they are exactly going wrong.
Here is one of the psychological explanation of suicide or how a teenager can get to decide to self harm through suicide. First, it is good to understand that suicide is a reaction or tragic response to emotional distress where one feels extremely helpless. There must be something that is bothering a teenager to an extent that they feel they need to escape from the traumatic experience.
Teenagers will always have issues they're struggling with. It is a very difficult stage for every child as they seek to understand themselves as they transition to adulthood. They might be struggling with bullies, negative body image, peer influence, academic performance..... Now, how they react to these emotional struggles is shaped in their childhood. Some may be withdrawn, others become aggressive while others engage in self harming behavior like self mutilation or suicide.
Let us focus on the teenagers who engage in self harming behaviours (like those teenagers who cut their wrists when stressed) and those who committ suicide. Inflicting extreme pain on the body is a trauma coping mechanism. A person who uses self pain inflicting behavior to deal with emotional struggles feels releived after they hurt their bodies. A person who attempts suicide believes that physical death will take their pain, trauma or emotional distress away.
But why would a person especially a teenager feel good hurting their body? This is where dissociation comes in. DISSOCIATION is a situation where a person feels cut off from their body. A person feels their body from outside rather than feeling physically inside themselves. (Feeling like your body is not part of you but an outside entity). When a person is dissociated from their body, it is very comfortable for them to self mutilate or commit suicide. (After all the body is not an important part of them).
Why do teenagers dissociate from their bodies?? One of the major reasons for bodily dissociation is physical punishment or use of violence as punishment during childhood. Remember hitting a child leads to trauma (from the pain) and not better behavior. If a child behaves better when hit, they are behaving that way out of trauma but not because they have learnt good behavior.
Therefore, when a child is exposed to violence especially the first seven years of development, they might dissociate from their bodies. They might feel that their bodies are not part of them. They start feeling that their bodies are an outside entity that deserves being beaten and feeling pain all the time. They might even end up not valuing the body. So when a parent beats their child for everything every day for the better part of childhood to adolescent, the child will DISSOCIATE (trauma response).
A teenager with dissociation can comfortably mutilate their wrists or commit suicide.
Therefore, when we see our teenagers commiting suicide, let's not say that they're not being beaten enough. They're doing it since they have been beaten too much until they perceive their bodies as not part of them.
Let's not blame the devil and demons. It all comes down to childhood experiences. Don't say they need prayers. They need parents who are not traumatizing them.
Let's teach our children that their Bodies are important. Let's teach them that their bodies don't deserve intentional pain. Let's teach them that their bodies are sacred. How do you do this? Stop beating them!
When a teen knows that their body is sacred, they cannot self mutilate or commit suicide since they love their body too much.
© Joyce Mwai
Writer/ Teenage mentor/ Trainer
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