There has been a dramatic in­crease in the hospitalisation of young Australian women who have intentionally harmed them­selves, according to a new report (Deborah Rice, 24 August, 2013). Figures released this week (i.e. August, 2013 — HZ) by the Austra­lian Institute of Health and Welfare show that in 2010-2011, there were more than 26,000 hos­pitalisations for self-harm across Australia. The majority of those treated were girls in the 15 to 19-year-old age group, and the rate for girls was almost three-times that of boys. Over a 10-year pe­riod, intentional poisonings and overdoses among young women rose significantly and the number of cases of self-harm using a sharp object more than doubled.

Making Yourself Feel Better⤒🔗

Self-harm is a way of ex­pressing and dealing with deep distress and emotional pain. As counterintuitive as it may sound to those on the outside, hurting your­self makes you feel better, say those who commit these acts. In fact, you may feel like you have no choice. Injuring yourself is the only way you know how to cope with feelings like sadness, self-loathing, emptiness, guilt, and rage (http://www.helpguide.org/articles/anxiety/cutting-and-self-harm.htm). The physical pain functions as a distraction, an override as it were, however temporarily, to the emo­tional, psychological turmoil.

In many cases self-harm is not intended to be fatal. It is estimated that the number of young people who have engaged in self-harm is 40-100 times greater than those who have actually ended their lives. Evidence from Australian studies suggest that 6-7% (!) of Australian youth aged 15-24 years engage in self-harm in any 12­ month period. Evidence also sug­gests that more than 90% of peo­ple who present to hospital with self-harm have a mental disorder, the most common being depression. For many young people self-harm is a coping strategy, how­ever maladaptive and damaging, that allows them to continue to live rather than an attempt to end their life (http://www.headspace.org.au/what-works/research-information/self-harm-and-suicidal-behaviours). Some of the many quotes that could be obtained read as follows:

I get really angry and I don’t know how to deal with it. I end up punching walls until my hands bleed, trying to get the an­ger outAnna, 15 yrs

The physical pain when I cut takes the focus away from emotional pain — and the physical pain doesn’t feel as bad as the emotional pain.David, 15 yrs

When I’m down I feel helpless and hopeless, like things are never going to change, and I feel angry with everyone. After I cut, I feel less angry, like something has been released.Sarah, 16 yrs

What God Says←⤒🔗

In the Scriptures we may read that God commands us to love our neighbour as ourselves (cf. Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”). Oftentimes Christian readers remember well that they are to love their neighbours with a self-sacrificing, self-giving love (which, by the way, I have found to be the reason that so many seek a career in ser­vice to others, e.g. nursing and teaching), but they forget the sec­ond part ‘as thyself.’ The statement presup­poses that the person who loves his neighbour loves him­self as well. To some this may come as a bit of a shock in an era where so many psy­chologists and educa­tors tout the importance of self-esteem for people. Yet, the Lord insists that those who belong to Him love themselves — in order to love others. And there is a logic to this.

God loves those who are His. He loves them beyond anything that a human being can imagine or measure. The ultimate evi­dence of this is that He gave His only begotten Son to die for us. Philippians 2:5-8, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not rob­bery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Furthermore, He caused God the Holy Spirit to indwell His people (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:19); God makes His home in those who are His.

If God loves His own so much, it follows that those objects of His love — in thinking God’s thoughts after Him — do well to love them­selves also. However, this self-love is not founded in the convic­tion that I am worthwhile in and of my natural self, it is because I affirm the love of God vested in me; it is supremely, divinely rela­tional. As one young lady put it, “I know that God loves me and that is more than enough to enable me to love myself and oth­ers” (Life with Paul de Jong, Aus­tralian Christian Channel, 22/02/2015). Being the apple of God’s eye (cf. Zechariah 2:8) enables the born-again Christian to accept himself and — conse­quently — reach out to others from a position of strength and God-centred stability. We are priceless in God and Christ, God loves each of us as if there were only one of us (Augustine); we simply are therefore priceless. We are no longer a den of Satan, we are a temple of God.

What we value we are inclined to fix if it needs fixing. For that reason we fix ourselves continuously, which we call sanctifica­tion, conforming more and more to the image of God (with the Holy Spirit’s help). Likewise, we are concerned about the state of being of others. However, it is hard for you to guide someone else up a mountain when your own legs are broken. A person with a healthy constitution can more readily be the one for someone else on whom to lean. A well equipped person has the surplus to share more easily than someone who is poorly equipped to begin with. And so, the axiom is: I love me, because God loves me.

The Focus on Self←⤒🔗

The problem continuously en­countered in our materialistic so­ciety is that we tend to value what we have or do rather than what we are in God. As author Neil Postman in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death put it with more than a hint of sarcasm, “Successful is he who dies with the most toys around his bed.” Not so, says the church father Augustine, “Thou (God) hast cre­ated us for Thyself, and our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee.”

We see many restless hearts around us, many of them in young people from all layers of society. Yet, they are aggressive, negative, depressed, isolated, without hope, diagnosed with all kinds of syndromes denoting emotional and spiritual imbal­ance, summed up in their own self-concept, “I am worthless.” The remedy lies not in taking the knives away, in Ritalin, or anti­depressants (I am not saying that these medicines cannot be used sometimes to give someone a bit of ‘a leg up,’ but they will only al­ways be a band-aid) when the entrapment to self-harm is es­sentially, but to no avail, aimed at filling the hole which Augustine signalized so many ages ago.

Created in God’s image, no one is worthless, but seeing this for oneself, the self-harming young one needs to be brought back to the source of human worth, Jesus Christ. Only then the self-destruction of Satan’s hell-hole will be supplanted by the self-affirmation of God’s temple. By the grace of God, Christians young and old have experienced this, especially those who at one time were ‘without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Is­rael, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: But now in Christ Je­sus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace’ (Ephesians 2:12-14). The Church has a job to do.