14 Year Old Female: Self Harm/ Adoption/ Depression
14 Year Old Female: Self Harm/ Adoption/ Depression
Listen as a 14 year old freshman in high school shares her story about how she overcame depression and self harm.
In this episode of A Teen’s Perspective, host Dr. RJ Jackson helping parents see the future. In this episode, Dr. RJ interviews a 14-year-old high school Freshman, Sneaky Pen.
To start off, RJ speaks to Sneaky Pen about her family background. She says she had a very normal childhood until she turned 8. When she was 8 she learned that she was adopted, then just a few years later her parents decided to divorce. Around the time of the divorce, her dad was not around much and her mom had severely distanced herself from the family. This left her and her sister (who is 8 years older) to fend for themselves, she remembers this time as very isolating as each family member felt very distant to her.
During this time, she also became more interested in learning about her biological parents. Sneaky pen learned that biological mother was a teen mom who was in an abusive relationship with her biological father. This led her mother to put her up for adoption. Learning this information eventually lead Sneaky Pen to meet her birth mother in Utah when she was 12-years-old. In addition to meeting her biological mother, she also learned she had four other siblings from her biological mother.
From here, the conversation with Sneaky Pen led to the topic of depression. She describes having the deep feeling of needing something or someone that she didn’t have around. This began around the time that she ended elementary school. She believes that the depression came about in the fallout of her parents divorce. Her family began to notice some of the depression symptoms in her behavior and got her connected with a counselor to help her with her struggle, but during the beginning of her counseling, she became very aware of some of her struggles. He she explained that her internal dialogue was severely self deprecating, which led her to self harm to cope with the thoughts and feelings that she was wrestling with.
Eventually, Sneaky Pen’s sister saw the scars on her arm and she told their mom. Seeing the pain that she caused her family was the catalyst that began to help her on her road to recovery. She describes the steps of healing as a journey of learning to love herself for both the good and the bad. She began to cope with the depression and urges of self harm through exercise and her school work. It was a long road, but now she is finally starting to feel like herself again.
Sneaky Pen leaves the conversation with an encouragement to people her age who are struggling with depression and self harm. She begs them to learn to love themselves, escape negative thoughts an look at themselves through the eyes of the people who most love them. She also asks them to push out the negative influences and voices in their lives and begin to look towards the positive thoughts, people and activities in their life.
If you are interested in learning how to coach your teen, visit coachyourteen.com
Follow A Teen’s Perspective on Facebook