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5:33pm March 30, 2012

➸ "You don't need this junk. You need a cat.": Does anyone know any good resources on how to stop dermatillomania or trichotillonania?

feliscorvus:

youneedacat:

Therapy is out of the question. So are most drugs, although I’m going to probably try a supplement that had some good effect for around half of the people with trich who tried it. (And which seems the most promising anyway. And it’s one I’d been meaning to try for physical stuff anyway.)

I may…

I’ve had this sort of thing, though with me it seems to come and go rather than being constant. Like I get in and out of the habit. Last year it got bad at one point after I had an allergic reaction to hair dye because it made the skin on my ears start peeling off by itself. Weirdly enough the thing that got me to stop again after that was realizing that my ears were swelling up asymmetrically.

Mind you, I don’t think asymmetrical faces/bodies are inherently unattractive or anything like that — I just have a weird obsession with my own body being symmetrical, or at least “balanced” in a particular way. Same reason I part my hair in the middle rather than on the side. No clue if that has any relevance at all to your situation but figured I would at least mention it. And obviously it won’t stop picking-in-general even if you do have a similar symmetry fixation, but it might help keep the impulse away from more dangerous areas.

Another thing that might at least help deter picking of actual skin is to (I’m serious here) smear Elmer’s glue on parts of your arms, etc., wait for it to dry, and then pick that off. I used to do that in class all the time as a kid, almost unconsciously (once I discovered the delightful properties of that particular substance, that is). It didn’t generally lead to picking the skin underneath, either, for whatever that’s worth.

I’ll try the glue. But the symmetry thing? Recently caused me to spend an hour gouging my right ear with my fingernails until it had holes in the skin like my left ear does. :-/