Self-Injury

In ""Self-Injury"", Dr. Wendy Lader demonstrates her brief analytic approach to working with clients who purposefully injure themselves.

Self-injury, which often takes the form of cutting or burning, is best viewed as a coping strategy: Clients usually injure themselves because they want to avoid some painful emotion, and self-injury brings a sense of control over these unwanted feelings.

Dr. Lader's approach is to analyze early childhood beliefs and relationships and then incorporate psychoeducation and cognitive - behavioral strategies into the session.

Interventions are designed to reduce self-injury by increasing awareness of impulsive behavior and expressing any avoided emotions.

In this session, Dr. Lader works with a teenage girl who began cutting herself soon after her mother remarried.

Dr. Lader talks with the client about the loss of her father, then gives the client a tool to help her monitor the emotions she experiences preceding the impulse to cut herself.

This is an excellent example of a first session with an adolescent client who self-injures.