Emily's Story "I was masking my emotional hurt with the physical hurt that cutting (myself) gave me."

Emily and her mom, Sheila, had been joined at the hip since Emily was born. The little girl wanted to do everything her mom did and be with her mom all the time. Their family seemed to be picture perfect, and Emily was a straight-A student.

But when Emily entered her teen years, she became withdrawn and began to suffer from depression. She didn’t confide in Sheila because she believed -- as many teenagers do -- that her mother wouldn’t understand how she was feeling. Sheila began traveling frequently for work and Emily felt that her mom didn’t have time for her.

By the time Emily was in 8th grade, she began using alcohol and marijuana to try and relieve some of her bad feelings, but neither seemed to help. So Emily turned to “cutting.” Cutting is a form of self-mutilation that afflicts some teens, who cut their skin deliberately and repeatedly until it bleeds. Cutting is an addictive behavior, and can be as difficult to control as drug or alcohol addiction.

“I was masking my emotional hurt with the physical hurt that cutting gave me,” says Emily. “My bad feelings would bleed away and I would feel better.” Emily’s cutting became so severe that she had cut scars from her wrists to her elbows. “It was hard to stop thinking about it (cutting). I would think about it all the time,” she says. She wore long sleeves even on hot days, so that no one would find out she was cutting.

Luckily, Emily’s school guidance counselor noticed something was wrong. She put Sheila and Emily in touch with EMQ’s Addiction Prevention Services program, which works with teens and their families to stop high-risk behaviors that can lead to addiction.

EMQ worked with Emily to address the underlying problems that had led to her cutting. EMQ counselors began by helping Emily and her mother to reconnect and start communicating again. Emily was resistant at first -- she thought the EMQ counselors would probably come in and talk at her instead of listening to her. But to Emily’s surprise, she soon found out that her EMQ counselor listened and understood her feelings. She began to use the sessions with her EMQ counselor as a way to communicate with her mother. Once Sheila and Emily were connected with EMQ, “I felt that there is hope today when I thought that there was none when this started,” said Sheila.

After much counseling and therapy through EMQ, Emily is no longer cutting. “I can wear short sleeves now,” she says with a smile. But the most important thing is that she is free of addiction and once again feels close to her family. “I actually tell her (mom) how I’m doing and feeling and I know that she’s there to help me if I need it.”

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Confidentiality of EMQ children and families has been preserved
through the use of models. Some stories may be composites of multiple cases.