Recently I received a call from a tik tok blogger. The gist of our minute-long conversation was that she warned me that a girl who cuts her hands would soon call me. And, indeed, she called me and in a calm voice told me that she was cutting herself. Since the blogger (as the girl called her) did not introduce herself, I thought that it was the girl’s mother who asked for help with her child. But no, the girl had a bad relationship with her mother; according to her, their relationship was built on conflicts. When I asked her why she was cutting her hands, she said, “I hate myself, I want to die. Sometimes I think about pressing the blade harder to make it end.” Honestly, hearing such words from a child is very painful. But then I immediately remembered that my function as a psychologist is not limited to “just feeling sorry” - I need to help her understand that it is better to experience strong emotions in a different way. Of course, I understood that she hated herself “through her mother,” who was not interested in her, did not ask where these cuts on her hands came from - but at the same time, I knew that my mother was who she was, she was and would be, and we would take her nowhere. not during the day. Therefore, I based the entire dialogue on what the girl was going through. In general, teenagers cut themselves when they cannot survive strong, painful emotions. If we translate these actions into the language we are familiar with, they shout to us: “Look at me! I’m in pain, I’m suffering.” But what do parents usually do when they see that their child is hurting himself - anything but try to understand what is behind it, how they can help. Some fall into hysterics and lament “why are you doing this to me?” others begin to look for hospitals where the child will be treated, because they think that normal children do not cut themselves. But few parents will try to calmly talk with their child and ask the question , maybe he really is not giving him something emotionally. After all, teenagers often harm themselves in order to attract the attention of those people from whom they expect love. They usually have a secret desire to make their loved ones feel guilty for neglecting them and for making them feel this way. But this is not because they are so bad, they just don’t know that there is another way. By the way, with the girl we had a conversation with, we did a visualization technique to search for internal resources. I invited her to imagine a sprout (a symbol of the awakening of life) inside her and describe it in as much detail as possible. The first thing she said was “he’s black, like he’s been burned. doesn’t even move.” We devoted some time to her growing a new sprout and as a result it turned out to be “luminous, smooth, like a lily of the valley and swaying in the wind” - that is, it became alive)). I suggested that she draw it and, in difficult moments, always reproduce this image, which would awaken her desire to live. I can’t be 100% sure that it will work, but when at the end of the conversation she said “you helped me” and I felt a smile on her face, I was proud of our joint efforts. I felt both her pain and her nascent hope and understood that this is life in all its manifestations - sometimes cruel, but always giving hope and faith that everything can get better.