1.  Jessie is a young teenager.  She has a razor blade and cuts herself when sad or angry.  The physical pain takes her mind off her emotional pain and the feel-good endorphins generated make cutting addictive.  Jessie wants someone to ignore the cutting and listen to her.  

 Her mother Connie finds it hard to help because this bizarre self-expression and negative emotions seem such an unfair condemnation of her mother's parenting efforts. 

 

Jessie needs to find a person to listen to her and help her feel less isolated while providing an accepting and safe environment for her self-expression.

 

Other activities like cutting are, carving,  scratching, branding, marking, picking, and pulling skin and hair, burning/abrasions, biting,  head banging, bruising, hitting, tattooing, excessive body piercing

2.      Gary, age 10, found a cigarette lighter on his way home from school.  He lit a dry leaf and found it exciting.  Since then he has routinely set objects in his bedroom on fire.  Some studies suggest that Gary may have a low heart-rate.  The excitement of fire-setting makes him feel better. Anything under your control that makes you feel better can become addictive.  Perhaps his parents can find him activities that are more acceptable that increase his heart-rate.  They can also make an appointment with the local Fire Chief to explain the down-side of fire-setting that Gary may not be considering.

3.   Bobby, age 7 was found in the living room watching the family cat frantically trying to release its leg from a rope that Bobby had tied around it.  The rope had burned a bloody rash. Bobby would poke the wound to hear the animal cry out.  It is important that Bobby's parents figure out if this was just childish immaturity or an outlet for his anger. Bobby probably is exhilarated in the control he can exact on another living being, being fascinated by emotions it produces. 

4.  Tommy, age 8, would wake up screaming.  He could remember the dream that scared him, but that didn't help his parents know what was bothering him. 

It was a dark black sky where colored flat plastic objects would fall silently down.  Then they would bounce on a mattress until they stopped moving.  Afterwards the ends of the mattress would begin to curl up on the plastic objects.  

 Tommy would wake up screaming. He had started wetting his bed two years ago.  Everybody thought it was the move to a new school where Tommy was constantly bullied.  Tommy's mother talked to the teacher about it, but that resulted in the bullies isolating Tommy so that nobody talked to him or noticed him.  Tommy felt detached and isolated. 

5.  Suzy age 13 likes to eat shoe polish. Eating non-food items is called Pica and is sometimes brought on by severe food/nutrient depletions from poor eating habits, poor health or mal-absorption situations.  The shoe polish could be a low iron count.  Other pica items are eggshells, clay dirt, handfuls of salt, baby powder, chalk, paint chips, and feces.  Composted hoarse, cow, chicken, worm manure and rotting fish is commonly put on plants for their nutrients, so perhaps these items have desirable nutrients for humans.