SELF-HARM: CAUSE AND ANTIDOTE

Self-harm has achieved epidemic proportions in the USA, especially among teenage girls. Emily Baumgaertner of the New York Times reported:

• Up to 30 percent of teenage girls in some parts of the United States say they have intentionally injured themselves without aiming to commit suicide, researchers have found. About one in four adolescent girls deliberately harmed herself in the previous year, often by cutting or burning, compared to about one in 10 boys. The overall prevalence of self-harm was almost 18 percent. (7/2/18)

What are we doing wrong? Such data demands a reexamination of both our feel-good culture and psychological care. Perhaps our attempts to feel-good, self-trust, and self-actualize have produced contrary results.

For many, questioning these bedrock goals is perplexing. After all, what else is there, right? Let me make a suggestion. The West has become extremely self-centered. In contrast, many places in this world remain family and God-centered, and these places have far lower rates of depression, self-harm, and suicide.

The reasoning is simple. When your prime concern is God and family, you don’t harm yourself. Instead, these concerns drive self-obsessions and self-disappointments far from mind.

In Cambodia, I have been privileged to meet several young women who have even sacrificed a chance to get married to care for an ailing parent. I have also met foreign migrants who are working unbelievable hours to send money home to their families. With this as their prime concern, self-harm is unthinkable. They have a vital and honorable role to perform.

Self-harm only becomes a reality when we fail ourselves and our expectations. Often, self-punishment is a means to temporarily relieve stress and guilt. The logic of our internal script informs us that we have failed and deserve to be punished. Consequently, many harm themselves to experience a moment of relief. Hence, sadomasochism!

Ironically, the self-centered West once had the perfect antidote for this epidemic - the God who paid the price for our sins, moral failures, and self-loathing. I continue to fall short of His standards, but I don’t need to harm myself because of this God. He has paid the price for me, and now I am assured of his love and forgiveness:

• If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? ‭‭(Romans‬ ‭8:31-32)