• she/her

healthcare bureaucrat in philly, v adhd, orthodox jew, ect ect, im love my wife



hey if anyone seeing this has/had dermo/tricho-tilomania (skin/hair picking) and has any tips or resources at all that would be really helpful. surgery triggered it to come back for me and I haven't had to deal with this since middle school so im very drowning, the advice I've seen online or gotten from therapists so far has been,, lackluster,


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in reply to @numberonebug's post:

I mean. Following

The only thing that has ever helped me is using a watch. I set a short timer, and if I make it to the end without picking I start a longer one. If I notice myself picking, I immediately end the timer and start a shorter one. (I use the apple watch timer increments, which is like 1 minute, then 3, then 5, then 10, but you could also Fibonacci or whatever). This usually gets me paying attention in a way that has sometimes broken me out of it for days or weeks, but it does usually come back.

I hav teh skin kind, meowf. It used to bee way worse in my teens but these days I only hav a few relapses when I am really stressed, hehe.

I would need to think a lof about whaf exactly changed and whaf I am doing to cope... I tried a lof of things, including trying to keep my hands busy wiff trinkets and all teh way up to wearing gloves, meowf, buf neither really worked.

I guess one thing I've learned to do was Halt my thought process; if I feel a urge coming I try to change what I am thinking about, what I am doing, and that tends to help a bit. (easier to do when I am not in a big depressive episode and can go to another room or smthn, hehe)

Talking to friends also helps a lof, both wiff that and intrusive thoughts, but I am too shy for thaf to possibly bee a consistent strat, hehe.

I will try to pay attention and if anythink else comes to mind I will tell u, meowf.

The only things that have ever helped me with my trich/derm are Adderall (which is currently causing me Problems, because.... gestures at the general ADHD medication availability situation) and speaking out loud to myself about what I'm doing (e.g. "What am I trying to accomplish" "Do I need to do this right now" "Ok I need to be done" "Ok I'm stopping now").

The talking out loud to myself situation came from my previous therapist, and I was so mad about it when she made the suggestion, because I was like, if it was that simple to stop then I wouldn't have a problem!!

But then I actually tried the thing and, it turns out that actually vocalizing the thought forces me to get out of my own head and helps me actually stop when I'm stuck in the compulsion. Doesn't help me from getting caught in the first place, but it's helped me lose less time when I do get caught.

I sometimes use tapping based phone games as attempts to redirect the compulsion when I'm in a situation where I've frequently gotten caught before (like going to the bathroom) but I wouldn't say that actually helps very much, because that almost always ends up causing more problems than it solves. It sometimes helps me do less damage to my body, but I almost always end up stuck on the game instead of on picking/pulling, and when I do, I sometimes catch myself doing the thing anyway with the hand not holding my phone 😩

I know that therapists who specialize in Narrative Therapy have had some success with trichotilomania, and it’s a very different kind of therapy than you’ve probably been exposed to, so if you can find someone near you who does that modality it might be worth a shot.

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