Some journal writing about suicidal teens - July 27
So many things inside my head. What do I write. What don't I write? When do I use people's real names? How can I best help someone? Yesterday I talked to one of my teen friends in the USA. She told me she had gone to a rave party and someone had given her ecstasy and pot. I have never heard her like that. She kept saying things like, "Hi.... I love you..... The lights hurt my eyes..... I fell down and this guy fell on top of me.... My head hurts.... Ouchie."
I am not sure I have ever talked to anyone on ecstasy before. But her voice was so different. I would have hardly known it was her unless I had called the number myself. I really don't know what to do. Her mother has told her she can't talk to me. Social services won't talk to me. They say it is to protect her. But I don't see how it helps her for them not to talk to me. I am going to start asking them that, and taking down their names. I am so frustrated. How can I best help her? She said a lot of guys were touching her breasts and she liked it. She said she "made out" with two guys. She said one was about 24.
Her parents didn't notice that she was on drugs when they picked her and her friends up. Or if they did they overlooked it. Yet they don't want her to talk to me. They say they are looking out for her best interests. Another teen, Stephanie Potter, wanted to run away when she was 14. She was cutting herself at 13. I was trying to help her too and her parents have stopped her from talking to me. The last thing I knew she was also going to parties and doing drugs. She told me she lost her virginity to a guy she didn't even know. She said she was so drunk she doesn't even know if he used a condom. She was crying when she told me, saying she might be pregnant.
She is not the first teen who has told me they are afraid they are pregnant. Or the first one who told me they lost their virginity to a stranger when they were drunk or high. Steff said it was at her mother's house on New Years eve. I talked to her father and she said that is impossible. He says only a few friends of her mother were there. So is she lying or did one of her mother's adult friends take advantage of her? Her mother claims I was manipulating Steff and that I was taking advantage of her. But I never met Steff. I never touched her. I did want her to come work for me. Later I will post some of her writing. Well, okay I will post some of it now. Here is some of her writing from when she was 14. I have decided to use her real name in the hope that someone will give her some real help. I don't expect this to happen. Instead I expect to get threatening emails and phone calls again from her mother, or from Steff. Steff now is defending her mother and father. Steff will probably deny that she ever wrote those things and make all kinds of accusations against me, but anyone who knows the family can judge for themselves. I am not sure whether to put the name of their town on here or not. I put it on then took it off. I will just say it is in England in a shire that starts with a B. I will also say her father works at BMW, or he did the last thing I knew. He is more likely to give you honest answers and less likely to be defensive and hostile, in case anyone wants to try to help Steff. Like many of the teens I talk to, I am afraid she is going to self-destruct every relationship she gets in. She quickly learned, from her mother primarily, I'd say, how to tear someone apart with her tongue. Here is something Steff helped me put together. When she was 14 she would have answered about 90% of these questions with a "yes" answer. It is what I call sometimes call the abusive mother test.
Steff's story is one of the things which haunts me. I made some mistakes in trying to help her. I was very needy myself at the time. I regret some of the things I said and did. Maybe I will regret posting this. I actually received threatening phone calls from Steff's mother. And I was receiving threatening emails which stopped at the same time I stopped talking to Steff. Well, actually, at the same time her mother thought we had stopped talking. Steff kept calling me and writing me for a couple months after that. When her mother took one mobile phone from her, Steff got a hold of another one. She once sent me a text message saying they weren't going to stop her from talking to me. She wrote, "They can make it hard, but they can't stop me." Well, time has proven her wrong. Not only did they stop her, but they convinced her that they were only trying to protect her from dangerous me.
Yesterday I also chatted with a teen that tells me social services is investigating her family because she has reported abuse. She is telling things that someone needs to know if they are going to give her the help she needs. Like so many abused teens, she is cutting. She is a wonderful person. I hate to see what is happening to her. Social services is helping somewhat, but they are not doing enough. She is still living in the same abusive environment. The people who have abused her are now trying to get her to change her story. They are laying guilt trips on her, trying to intimidate her. She told me she cried and cried after one family member threatened her. I am not sure how best to help her. If I say too much, her parents will likely pull the plug on her computer, as Steff's parents did. She was forbidden to even read my eqi.org site. This is a little humorous now. I have thought of putting a banner on the site saying "This site has been banned by parents. They don't want "their" teenagers to be informed. It is too threatening to their image as good parents." I don't know why some parents don't like me. lol. Can anyone help me understand that one?!
So I am struggling with what to do. How to help teens while meeting my own needs. I am so lonely that I would gladly pay for a teenage female to come work with me, travel with me, live with me the say she is legally free. A lot of people will judge me for that but I am caring less and less. At least I am honest about it. lol. I don't think I could be anymore unhealthy for them than their own parents. Maybe I could. But who is to be the judge of that? Different places have decided when it is ok for a teenager to leave home, decide who they want to talk to, who they want to sleep with etc. and they have passed laws which are enforced with people with guns. I don't agree with the laws. I would rather see them based on some kind of test of maturity than based on age. Or based on the individual circumstances. For example, would it have been better for Steff to come live with me and possibly marry me or be my "lp" - life partner - as we used to talk about, or is it better to have her going to parties, doing drugs, getting drunk and having sex with random people? Those were two real options around December of 2002.
Steff's parents seem to believe it is in Steff's best interest to keep her in England where she can go to parties etc. and do all the things that normal teens from dysfunctional families do. Steff used to want to come work with me. She was afraid I wouldn't still want her to work with me when she turned 16, the legal age of freedom in England. We had a bet of 3,000 pounds, or about 4,500 US dollars, that I would still want her to work with me when she turned 16. But later she got jealous of Sarah, and afraid of her parents and of me reporting them to social services. She started threatening me herself. Saying that if I reported her to social services she would report me to the police. I am not sure why she was so afraid of me reporting her parents. I wonder if she had lied to me about things to get me more emotionally involved, like Sarah did. It is kind of funny having two teenage females "in love" with you. They are really wonderful, but when they are smart and from abusive and emotionally neglectful homes, watch out! I think the main reason Steff didn't want me to report her parents, her mother in particular, who she lived with, is that she knew her mother would just make her life more miserable. She had already taken away her mobile phone and her computer. At a time when Steff needed more freedom, her mother gave her less. Her father even agreed with me on that. But Steff wasn't being honest with him. I am not sure what she was telling who. I feel sorry for her. But she is smart and capable and she will survive. I am afraid of who will get damaged along the way, though. I don't have much faith in human nature, but I don't have any faith in anything else. So I am hoping that eventually everything will work out. I am hoping Steff will get some helpful counseling one day; that she will realize she was right about her mother at 14 and wrong about me at 15; and realize she was really emotionally abused (and physically abused) by her mother; and that she needs to do some major healing and recovery work before she can have a good relationship or become a good mother. Steff felt so undeserving that she could never believe that I loved her for who she was and that I cared about her. So she probably won't believe it now. She will probably think I am just doing this to get back at her. But I would never even consider such a thing. lol. I hope one day we can laugh about all of this. But mostly I hope she gets as far away from her mother as soon as she can. What really discourages me is how many abused teens stay with their abusive families even when they are finally legally able to leave. I tried to convince Steff's father to get Steff her own place when she was 14. She really needed to be away from her mother and didn't want to live with him. He had the money to do it. I hope he will still consider it if he ever reads this. I could email this page to him, but he hasn't been very interested in my suggestions so far. I tried several times to work with him and he never took me up on my offers. So I wonder if he feels good about his decisions or if he feels defensive. I'd put my money on the latter.
So anyhow, time for more firewood.
--
Now it is about ten a.m. I have been chatting with two teens. I took a break to make some lunch. I wrote "been making lunch." Then I added "PBJ." One wrote "ok...good to know.: Another wrote: "yum." Which one do u think is older? Which one do you think has a better chance of making a relationship work. A few minutes later the first one wrote: "I am bored." Then she started changing her fonts. This is one of the most intelligent people I talk to. So my question is how did she get so sarcastic and why is she so bored? Then after she has played with fonts for a while she writes, "I miss u." How do I tell her that I am worried about her? How do I tell her that she is going to push away the people she most wants to be close to? How do I tell her she has been unloved, underestimated, unvalued and unsupported for so long that she has become so emotionally needy that no human being can meet her emotional needs? How do I tell her that I feel drained and monopolized and guilt-tripped and manipulated when we talk -- how do I tell her this without making her feel worse, more unlovable, more inadequate?
So I copy this and I show it to her. I say "I love u but I really don't know what to do." She writes *crying.* Then she writes: "don't do anything!" and disconnects. Then she comes back,on line, changes her name from "I'm afraid to be alone..afraid you'll leave me when I'm gone. I'm afraid to come back home" to "You give me so much and then take it all away!"
Here is what she wrote next:
You give me so much and then take it all away! says:
*cries*
You give me so much and then take it all away! says:
i'm sorry i'm not fucking perfect
You give me so much and then take it all away! says:
like her
You give me so much and then take it all away! says:
or any other one of your friends that will have normal fucking
relationships
You give me so much and then take it all away! says:
sometimes i just really fucking wonder
You give me so much and then take it all away! says:
why the hell i'm not dead by now...
You give me so much and then take it all away! says:
i just want to fucking scream!!!!!!!!!!
You give me so much and then take it all away! says:
nothing i say or do
You give me so much and then take it all away! says:
will ever be good enough
You give me so much and then take it all away! says:
and it never will be FOR ANYONE
You give me so much and then take it all away! says:
*crying*
This is the kind of thing I talked about in my article on the dark side of EI. These emotionally intelligent teens from emotionally abusive and neglectful homes become defensive, resentful, sarcastic, pessimistic, self-punishing, self-harming, self-destructive. Society in general doesn't understand how early self-destructive behaviors, attitudes and feelings are formed. How is this person ever going to keep a relationship? I have watched these teens be slowly poisoned by their parents and teachers, but especially their parents. This person has been invalidated, mocked, attacked, rejected, lectured to, not listened to for years. She is desperate to feel loved, accepted, wanted. Yet her counselors and psychologists and psychiatrists don't do a single thing about her abusive home environment. Instead, they try to put her on drugs. All she has needed in her life is the emotional things I have been talking about. In a word, all she has needed is love. But all the "professionals" who are being paid by tax dollars to help her are not even asking her simple questions like: "Does your mother hug you when you are sad and crying? How much do you feel loved by her from 0-10? Does your father hug you? Does he tell you he loves you?" These are the simplest things to ask. The professionals don't want to ask because they don't want to know the answers. They don't want to face the reality that the parents are poisoning these beautiful people. People who are smart and sensitive. People who were born caring about others, but are now only trying to stop their own pain. No one takes this person seriously. No adult at least. This person, like so many other emotionally abused and neglected teens, has already turned to drugs, alcohol, self-harm, and sex with strangers at parties to try to numb her pain. All of society is missing out on the gifts she was born with. Instead of doing something productive with her time, she is just trying to stop her pain. She is contributing to the sick economy of drugs (legal and illegal), alcohol, cigarettes, hatred filled music, videos and other forms of distraction. She is not contributing to a solution to the problems in society. She is only trying to stop her pain. What will her life be like?
What is most frustrating to me, is that the people who are being paid, with our money, are not doing anything to really help her. This is costing all of us actual dollars. It is sad to have to put it in terms of dollars, or Euros, or pounds, but the reality right now is that this is what politicians and the rest of the public respond to more than anything else. They don't really care about an individual's feelings. They don't really care if a teenager is slowly dying inside from the poison of their emotionally incompetent parents. When I wrote my page on EIPD - emotionally incompetent parent disorder, I was not completely joking. I wrote it to mock the current "mental health" system, but there is a lot of truth in what I wrote. Alice Miller said once that writers were way ahead of so called professionals. I hope that the professionals start trying to catch up.
Some of the most talented and beautiful teenagers are killing themselves because the professionals and the politicians don't want to face reality. Or they are simply uninformed or misinformed. By the way, if you are a student and you really want to help teenagers, I would say one of the worst things you could possibly do is get a university "education." You will be taught about every "disorder" under the sun -- except EIPD -- and you will be told that intelligent, sensitive children and teenagers have a "chemical imbalance." You won't be helping them one bit if you believe this. The professors and their textbooks will make it sound very convincing. But start to ask them questions about their beliefs about parenting, and about how their own children are doing, and you will find, I suspect, that they get defensive very, very quickly. Start asking them to use feeling words. Start showing them some of the things on this site. Watch their reactions. Ask them if they would rather have you spend all night trying to help a suicidal teen or spend the same amount of time working on one of the academic assignments they have given you. Ask them when the last time was they actually talked to a suicidal teen. Or better yet, actually listened to one. Then ask if you can talk to some of the people they have helped, or tried to at least. Find out how much this person really felt helped by them.
I may not have any "qualifications," to say any of this or to do anything I try to do, but I am learning very quickly. I didn't spend 6 years in a university reading about teenagers in books. I have spent two years finding out for myself. This reminds me of watching the moon and the sun this morning. The moon was in the sky just above the sun as the sun was coming up. Not long ago the moon was in the same place at midnight. I thought about Copernicus or whoever it was that watched the movement of the moon, sun and stars and came up with his on theory about it. He rejected the commonly accepted, church supported, beliefs. He didn't believe what he was told by the "experts" or what he read in the books. He used his own powers of observation and thought.
By the way, the teen that said "yum" is three and a half years older than the teen who said "ok...good to know." I point this out because usually teens get cynical and sarcastic as they get older. The younger teen in this case is years ahead of most of those her age. Yet the same laws apply to her, and the adults around her try to treat her as a "typical teenager" for her age. I will say it again -- All of society is losing with this kind of thinking. These people who are getting paid to develop the minds of our young people are failing miserably case after case. Would you want to pay someone to look after your garden and then find out they had poisoned the most beautiful flowers? This is what is happening in the countries I am most familiar with, but I will use the USA as an example. The USA is the leader in many areas. Many countries are following the US model of "treating" depressed and suicidal teens. It is not working. That is as simply as I can say it. It just is not working. I know this and I intend to prove it.
S. Hein
July 27, 2003