Emotional Intelligence | Stevehein.com
Depressed / Suicidal / Self-Harming
Teen Chat Support Group
Here is a little about a few teens who spend a lot of time online and want to help other teens. They all feel suicidal at times and most of them self-harm, or have. The idea is to share their MSN's so you can talk to them directly. If you'd like to be added, please write to me at steve27 @ eqi.org. (take out spaces) Note, this is a temporary address. It could change in April or May.
Please also write if you'd like to volunteer to help. Here is my page on teen suicide if you haven't already seen it.
Steve
These are my sites on teen suicide and self-harm.
Notes for teens who want to help other teens
Kelly is 16 and has been physically and sexually abused by quite a few pple including relatives. Her mom is nearly constantly nagging her and because of all this she's run away from home more than once. She has also been kicked out. Different people from social services have been working with her but haven't been all that great. She drinks beer, smokes and takes ibuprofin pills to try to numb her pain. She is very caring and seems to never sleep.
Jen is 14 and lives in England. She self-harms a lot. She thinks she is selfish and a wimp because that is what people around her have been telling her, in particular her mother - a mother who often invalidates her. She also thinks she is stupid, because that is the image of herself she has been given. But in fact, she is very intelligent. She just isn't like the rest of the people around her. She is like the beautiful swan in the book "The Ugly Duckling." She simply is not in the right environment. She feels responsible for keeping everyone else in the family happy, so she let's them dump all their negative emotions on her. She goes to an expensive private school where she has almost no freedom at all. Her whole day is controlled. They even tell her what religious beliefs they want her to have and punish her if she doesn´t go to the church inside the school 4 or 5 times a week. She is very smart, very very caring, and a very loyal friend. She has been betrayed before by someone who she thought was her friend at school, so she stopped telling people at school the truth about her harming and her feelings. Her friend went around telling people that she was doing it for attention. but I know that this is not why she does it. And if you self-harm, you know it, too. She doesn't have a lot of time online because her parents, like nearly all parents I've known, think grades are more important than helping people.
Sarah L. lives in the USA and smokes pot and cuts. She is pretty gothy, and very smart and sensitive. And let's not forget rebellious and defiant! She's been one of my best friends since she was about 12 years old! I have learned so much from her. Adults have kept trying to change her but she has kept resisting them. She has been locked up in a mental hospital which she says was no help at all. She's smarter than most, if not all of her teachers. Her mom died when she was around 10. Her dad smokes pot and would leave her home alone all the time to look after her little sister while he would go off with his girlfriend or buddies. He used to punish her by taking the Internet away, even though he knew this was one of the only things keeping her somewhat sane. Instead of caring about her feelings, he would be more likely to just complain that she hadn't done the dishes or cleaned the house.
She likes Eminem, Marilyn Manson, Bad Religion, Mudvayne, Three 6 Mafia
Here's more about Sarah
This is what I had on Ocean before her parents found out that she was talking to me:
Ocean is 17. She has also tried to kill herself in the past. "Ocean", btw, is not her real name. She doesn't want me to use her real name because, like so many teens, she's afraid of her parents finding out she is doing this. She doesn't really want them to know anything about her life. She avoids them as much as possible and is only living there because they would call the police if she tried to escape. Like Jen's parents, they have been convinced a person has to make good grades and then go to college. They are too close-minded and insecure to consider anything else. But Ocean has already told me definitely does not want to go to college. She doesn't buy the whole "get good grades, go to college, get a job, make a lot of money and then somehow magically be "succesful"'. She is a person who thinks for herself. She's never worried much about her grades and calls herself "unbrainwashable." She is very intelligent, very articulate and very sensitive. We have conversations about feelings that I suspect very few PhD's in psychology could ever have.
Right now she is planning on coming to work with me when she turns 18. For a long time she has been thinking of living in, or helping start, some kind of alternative community. We are starting to make plans along those lines and looking for people who also want to live in an alternative community.
Ocean is not available to help right now because of her parents. Here is more on what happened.
Search terms: Suicidal Teen Chat; Depressed Teens, Self-Harming Teens, Cutting