I learnt something very interesting in my psychology session the other day after I asked my therapist whether or not she thought it was possible that I could have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) due to my inability to maintain relationships and feel attachment to people. I dated someone with BPD whose similarities to me were uncanny and this, along with the fact he continually told me I suffered from it, prompted me to finally get up the courage and ask my psychologist once and for all. Turns out, there is a very fine line between simply having the traits and having the actual disorder. The way she explained it was this:
My relationship problems (and she’s been my therapist through 6 relationships now) stems from my choice in men. I choose men who “need me”. Men who expect their needs to be met before my own. And that is where the problem lies. As demonstrated by the main female character in “The Silver Linings Playbook” – “Time after time, I do all this shit for other people. And then I wake up and I’m empty, I have nothing.” It is also when I am putting other people’s needs before my own that my picking gets worse. I pick at myself both metaphorically and physically.
When I am happy in life and happy in myself my picking lessens because I feel worthy! When I am in a relationship and my needs aren’t being met or are just outright being ignored I take this out on myself by picking at my skin. I also do this when someone is bothering me and instead of telling them I have a problem with what they are doing; I go to the bathroom instead and PICK PICK PICK! I need to stop internalising other people’s problems and picking myself because of it. My therapist said I need to realise that their issues are their issues and I don’t have to take them on. Their issues are for them to deal with – I have my own that I need to sort out!
Now this is hard for me to do because I like to help other people. In fact my dream in life is to help others. I feel like I have experienced so much pain in order to help others through theirs. I am also a good listener. BUT I realise now that I am not in the correct mental space to be taking on other people’s issues while I am still sorting out my own. This does not mean I have to stop being a kind, caring friend to others – it simply means I do not have to beat myself up (pick at my skin) when I cannot solve their problems. The best thing I can do right now is BE HAPPY and show them how they can be as well; and also to stop dwelling on the negatives and start focusing on the positives. Life is what you make it… and I choose to make life FANTASTIC!!
It’s been a week since I started on this stop picking journey and for the most part my skin has been getting better. I haven’t stopped cold turkey but I have definitely cut down! I was going to post a picture for you all to see my improvement but I had a little slip up last night and turned two almost healed scabs on my face into two nice open wounds. I started to get angry at myself when I saw my reflection in the mirror this morning and then I stopped. I decided to be kind to myself instead. I told myself “You’ve been sick in bed with gastro for the last two days and it’s stressed you out. You’ve only made two sores so just leave them alone from now on and don’t be so hard on yourself.” This is a big change from the negative internal dialogue I used to succumb to.
Anyway sorry all for the delayed post – this stomach flu has really knocked me. And also the conversation I have written about between me and my therapist is not to be taken as medical/psychological advice and may not be accurate word for word. This is what I remembered from our conversation and I thought the theory she discussed might make sense to others as it did to me. I have also told her I want to stop picking, I don’t need it anymore to which she replied something along the lines of “Wow this is the first time I’ve ever heard you say you actually want to stop; before you would always hold onto it because it was your only coping strategy.” So now, together with her help, we will be looking for healthy coping strategies that can be used to replace the picking as she mentioned I can’t quit until I find something to replace it with. Otherwise what will I do when I’m stressed? How will I cope without my picking?
Ok so I woke up today aware of the fact that I have made a commitment to myself to quit picking. So far I have only played with two pimples on my face and I have given myself permission to do this. I am not going to get upset with myself (as this only causes me to pick more) and I am not going to assess the damage in the mirror. I am simply going to be understanding and compassionate towards myself today. I can’t change overnight after all!
This morning I have been laying in bed reading Pearls by Christina Sophia Pearson which is a book of meditations on recovery from hair pulling and skin picking. One of the lines in the first meditation really resonated with me, it reads: “Today I know that living behind bars of compulsion closes me in, and I no longer wish to stay there.” Many skin pickers refer to their struggle as feeling like they are stuck in a Dermatillomania prison, forged by their compulsive behaviours. I no longer wish to be in this prison. I want to break free. I want to experience freedom and taste it on the tip of my tongue. I want to be able to shop carelessly, dress carelessly, dance carelessly, love carelessly… basically experience life out of prison and without the constant fear of wondering if my skin is still covered (have my sleeves ridden up?) or if my makeup has run off (can people see my spots?). I want to experience life! I want to LIVE! Because as we all know, life with Dermatillomania ain’t really living!
I will keep you updated on my journey (daily if I can!) and share with you my successes and my failures along the way, as I know I am bound to experience the occasional slip up. So far I haven’t put any strategies in place so it kind of feels like I have set out on a journey without a road map, unsure of the final destination… BUT I WILL get there and SO CAN YOU! For now I will read a meditation daily from Christina’s book, gently tell myself “no” every time I am aware of my fingers touching my skin (it’s important to be kind to yourself) and go about buying some fidgets. Can anyone recommend any good ones?
That’s all for now but may I add… far out it’s hard not to pick at healing scabs… they are so dry and flaky and crispy and I just wanna… NO dermagirl NO!!!
Woke up… Started picking. Completely forgot that today was the day I was meant to start trying to stop. Got angry with myself. Went to the mirror, grabbed my tweezers and picked every spot I could find on my face. In this picture you can even see the indented scars by the side of my eye. They look like pock marks from acne but they are just from me picking continuously at the same sore over and over again until I’ve created a “crater”.
Decided not to let my picking, depression or other people’s “not-so-nice” words and lack of understanding get to me tonight. Sooo after I posted my blog post and made my video I shouted myself a Jacks n Coke and took myself to see a movie – The Internship. First time I’ve ever gone out on my own and I LOVED it!
I think for me, when trying to stop picking, even if I relapse I need to push myself to get out there and not curl up into a ball under my doona. Which is tempting… BUT unproductive and doesn’t help me feel any better. Now that I’m home though and it’s past midnight I think I’ll give myself permission to make a cuppa and curl up under that doona… just got to make my bed first… ooops!
Started blogging and ended up vlogging after my blog post triggered me to remember an incident when I was in year 6 at primary school. Sorry for the crummy quality (light across my face). I’m not very techno savvy!
I hate it when people “just drop by”. As a skin picker it is not only one of my biggest fears but also my greatest annoyance! I know that my skin, especially on my face, is nowhere near as bad as it used to be but I still struggle to see myself any differently and I am still caught up in certain ritualistic behaviours that have been created by my Derma. This includes jumping every time my dogs bark as well as anytime I hear a car on my street because I think this means someone is coming to my front door. I will also hide from my phone and my laptop in case someone is trying to call or message me wanting to catch up. And if someone does “just pop by” unannounced, and I don’t have any makeup on, my hands will constantly be playing with my face trying to cover up any spots and scars while they are talking to me. All of these behaviours may seem extreme but there was a time when there were almost as many open wounds on my face as there was skin and for some reason I still see myself as that girl… that hideous monster who people would ogle at because they thought I had some kind of contagious disease.
To people who don’t suffer from this condition they may not see the harm in “just dropping by” for a visit or coming over to say hi and even if they know about your Derma they may try to make you feel better by saying things like “but the way you look doesn’t bother me”. What they don’t understand is – IT BOTHERS ME! I CARE how I look! And no this does not make me vain. It makes me INSECURE! I do not find myself attractive with all these marks on my skin and thanks to many many people telling me the same thing over and over again for the past 20 years, I’m not sure I ever will. And if you don’t understand that then you don’t understand my Dermatillomania!
Sorry for the rant… I’m having a bad night 😦
After receiving a lovely comment the other day that my old YouTube videos helped someone discover they were not alone in suffering from this illness, I decided to put myself back out there online in video form. About 4 years ago (maybe more!) when I first found out what my skin picking was I uploaded 4 videos or so to YouTube depicting my struggles with Dermatillomania. When I find these old videos I will re-upload them to my channel!
Over the past few days I have been trying to think of ways to help me achieve my goal of stopping or at least cutting down my picking. While I was standing in front of my bathroom mirror the other night I thought to myself “I know how I can stop picking: Cut my hands off!!”. If I chopped my hands off I quite literally would never be able to pick again, I mean I wouldn’t even be able to pick up my tweezers! But of course this is silly, one simply cannot do this. So then I started thinking what is it about my hands not being there that would help me stop my picking. Obviously I wouldn’t be able to pick up my tweezers anymore so that would certainly help but then I clicked onto a bigger discovery! I would no longer be able to feel for imperfections… no longer be able to run my fingers over my skin, searching for scabs, bumps, pimples, cuts, etc. So this is a trigger for me! Never before have I thought of what triggers my picking. I mean I know certain emotions usually trigger a session but I’d never paid much attention to the physical things I do that trigger my picking. So now I have to work out why I feel this desire to search for “imperfections”? What does it satisfy inside of me that keeps me doing it? This is something I will think about and perhaps even pose to my psychologist in my next session.
So now I know feeling for “imperfections” is a trigger, so are my emotions (stress, anger, depression, etc.) and when it comes to picking at my face mirrors can also trigger me. Steps that I may be able to take then include: every time I touch my skin (and am aware of it as I often dissociate) immediately pull my hand away and tell myself “no”, learn to deal with my emotions using healthy positive strategies (maybe meditation for stress, boxing for anger), cover up my mirrors, shower in dimmed light or the dark AND throw out my tweezers (curls up into a ball and starts rocking back and forth at the thought of doing this… eeekkk)! I have thrown out my tweezers before and literally felt as though I was going insane. I probably looked as though I was as well… I was screaming, crying, pulling at my hair, hitting things, so basically throwing a 2 year old tantrum fit!! Perhaps I’ll take that step after I’ve taken some of the others first hehe!
Anyway back to my exam revision… only one more to go for this semester! YAY!!! I just couldn’t stay away from my blog though, I felt compelled to update and it is thanks to all of you who hit “like” on one of my posts, comment under my posts, contact me on my Facebook group, send me messages and basically encourage me with your kind words to keep on going! So thank you to all of you who inspire me and encourage me to keep up the fight! 😀
I have decided that I want to quit picking… for years I have been holding onto this behaviour because I don’t know how I will cope with my feelings and my life without it. My picking has been a constant companion to me over these last 20 plus years… a “friend” even… helping me out in times of stress, calming me down when I’m anxious, not letting my excitement over things get out of control, entertaining me when I’m bored, helping me hide from the world and the list goes on. But my relationship with picking (despite the good things I have gotten out of it – if that’s even possible!) is an unhealthy one! It has destroyed my skin to the point I am badly scarred all over (both the darkish scars from recent sores and the white lumpy scars from old sores), it has made me hate myself to the point I don’t even know how to love myself, it has almost driven me to suicide on numerous occasions, it has caused severe depression and anxiety, it has kept me from forming friendships and spending time with family, it has stopped me from loving others out of fear that no one could ever possibly love me while I look like this, it caused me to fail year 11 (almost twice!) and drop out of high school, it has lost me jobs, isolated me, tormented me, tortured me, trapped me and taken precious time away from me that could have been spent enjoying my son’s early childhood!
IT IS TIME TO STOP!
For these last 20 years I have made a new year’s resolution each and every year to quit picking and I have never been able to do it. I would also set myself goals… I’ll stop picking by the time I’m 13… ok 16… then it was 18… 21 came and went and now I’m almost 25! Every milestone when most people would be excited to become a teenager (13), be able to legally consent to sex (16), be recognised as an adult and be of legal age to drink (18) and basically to party it up (21) my focus for each of these milestones was instead on stopping picking so that maybe I could wear a dress and start to feel good about myself. But again each milestone came and went and still I picked.
25 is now my new milestone! I’ll be a quarter of a century old! Still young enough to hopefully have some fun, enjoy my life and let the scars heal. And hopefully my scars will recover (as I’ve already noticed my sores and scars aren’t healing as well as they used to)! Maybe just maybe I could wear one of the many dresses I’ve bought over the years that still hang in my closet, tags attached, for my birthday this year. I turn 25 on the 15th October. My final exam for this semester is on the 14th June (and then I get 6 weeks off) so if I put this plan into action on the 15th June that gives me 4 months exactly to get this under control! Perhaps 3 months to stop picking… 1 month to heal? Now my question is do I try and quit cold turkey, like I did when I quit smoking, knowing that I will probably go insane and experience incredible withdrawal symptoms or do I try and lessen the amount of picking I do each day? And the second question is do I 100% never pick again or do I still allow myself to target a small area that I can hide so that I can keep the urges at bay? I’m not sure what to do yet but if you have any suggestions please let me know!
I’m nervous about putting this out there and especially online because what if I fail, like I have so many times in the past? Well you know what – I might just fail but if that happens I will have at least documented the journey and hopefully other sufferers will realise they’re not alone in their struggles because I surely am not the only derma sufferer in the world who has many failed attempts at quitting under her belt. Wish me luck!!
There’ll be more to come after my exams… Wish me luck for those too 😛 hehe
Exam stress… be like making me pick!
Dermatillomania 