Cell phone usage: support or crutch?

[MidnightRunner]

My 14-year-old daughter will likely be discharged from an inpatient hospital tomorrow. We need to discuss her use of the cell phone when she comes home, which will not go over well to say the least. Besides being on it too much (which I suppose is the complaint of every parent of a teenager), she often uses it at night when she can't sleep to text or tweet about her emotional pain to her online friends. Her latest post was: "Today is a horrible day. I hope it's my last." Then everyone naturally answers back how much they love and care about her. She has become reliant on this validation of her worth... .and dependent on the short-term alleviation of her pain at the expense of developing better long-term coping mechanisms. How can we place restrictions on her phone usage that don't feel punitive? Or that we're taking away an important means of support for her?

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[No-One]

To get rid of one habit, it's generally helpful to develop a new and healthier habit.  What might the new habit be?  When someone is anxious and can't sleep, situations can seem more dramatic and become overwhelming at night.

Might her therapist, or someone at the hospital, have some suggestions for late-night support? 

Just throwing out some thoughts.  Perhaps there can be a progression of tools to use for coping.  There are some great guided meditations that can be found on YouTube, that can be helpful.  Perhaps you could lead her to some choices to consider.  The voice and the specific meditation can be a personal choice, but you could lead her to some options and perhaps facilitate ways she can have these options readily available.  (i.e. download onto phone)

If she reaches out to an mental health message board (that accepts teenagers as members),  It might not be all bad, in limited measures.  Journaling your thoughts can be therapeutic, but a listening ear can step that up to a higher level, as long as it doesn't get out of hand and excessive.

Maybe you evolve into the new habits?  Give her a chance to replace the old habits with new ones?

[wendydarling]

No-One gives good advice that I personally relate to with my 29DD.

replace old habits (which I ignored) and gently introduce, encourge new ways of coping. Anything self soothing my DD gained comfort, we gradually transformed DD’s bedroom into a calm haven, soft blankets she’d wrap herself in, cuddly cushions, mood lighting, new bedding – self soothing box with colouring books, pens, journal, hot chocolate, favourite perfume, creams, etc

My DD’s online journaled her journey from time to time, it’s been helpful for her to look back 3 years and see how far she has come and recognise how very ill she was. I can understand your concern about being safe online my DD’s on twitter and I had concerns to begin with – however she’s part of a group who share their BPD learning, support each other when they have a bad day, share DBT tools, skills, interesting articles (eg see The Mighty website) and helpful ways to manage.  This has really helped her recovery working to destigmatising BPD/mental health, reaching out to help others, she’s not alone. Her greatest moment was receiving a tweet back from Blaise Aguirre, she read his book when she was diagnosed, he is her hero  

What do you think your daughter may find helpful?

[MidnightRunner]

Thanks for the replies! These are great suggestions. The key I think will be to make my daughter feel like she'll still have access to support tools when she needs them. But it's important to find tools that build up her internal strengths as opposed to always relying on others to fill that void in her.