10:02pm March 31, 2012

Damn damn damn.

So I somehow managed to yank half of a (reasonably flat) mole off. Maybe more. It of course bled all over the place, and since my skin is thin in a lot of places it’s got these bright red areas from all the scratching right near it. Managed to get antibiotic ointment and a bandage on it but I don’t know how long that will last – whether this will heal or just become a protracted battle like always.

Worse in some ways, I took a fair chunk of skin off my right nipple in one spot a couple days ago. It’s worse because my nipples have no sensation so I honestly had no clue how bad it was until blood got everywhere.

The reading I’m doing about this is absolutely necessary but it always feels like if I think about picking I pick more. And I get this ridiculous mindset that goes “I am going to slip up constantly so why bother?” or “If I slip up that’s horrible and so I need to pick even more” that makes zero sense but makes it all the worse. And then there’s always “I’m just going to look, not pick” that always ends in picking.

(I pick more at areas that look or feel different from other parts of my skin: Moles, scabs, scars, freckles, blackheads, cuticles, toenails, etc. I don’t do it out of any desire to make it go away or fix it, I just automatically fixate on those areas. So looking at my skin increases the likelihood that I’ll pick. I honestly feel like this is the same instinct that animals use to groom for bugs and stuff, except totally gone overboard until I’ll dig at anything.)

I’ve mostly got it confined to my ears, because that’s not visible to most people. Other places, when it happens, I do all kinds of things to hide it. Which is a pretty good trick considering that other people clean my body for me.

Gah. It’s like I need it not to be in my ears because bad place for infection. And I need it not to be visible because I absolutely cannot afford (for the sake of actual safety) to be sent to a shrink. These things conflict a good deal.

I’m really hoping that once I’m done reading about this I’ll have a better idea how to approach it. My RL friend has been watching me fight this on a day to day basis and she’s realized how serious it is – even watched my hand picking of its own volition while I was unaware of it, during conversations about picking or even other things too. I’m hoping that between the two of us we’ll be able to handle anything that would normally be done in therapy. (My guess is yes. She’s already done things no therapist ever managed to do for me. And I think this will be much less intensive on her side of things because I’m far more self-aware than I was when she basically saved my life. I’m pretty sure if I get the basic principles down, she’ll just be someone I bounce stuff off of periodically. Like she already is.)

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