How Do I Stop My Compulsions? (What’s Wrong With Me?)

[@janelleg597]

Pulled my eyebrows, eyelashes, and leg hair out throughout middle school. Got scared and despressed, went to counseling, used Zoloft for awhile, phased out of it. Love you girl. One day at a time

[@whittenaw]

Oof i feel this. Thank goodness i don't pick at my eye lashes or hair but i am straight up merciless to my fingers and lips. I've only kicked it a few times in my life but i haven't given up

[@skwerlee]

Yup it’s Trichotillomania 101. I’ve been pulling my eyelashes out off and on during high stress periods since I was a child.

[@janelleg597]

I did also, except it was also eyebrows and legs. Then it went away with puberty. Also went to counseling

[@chanj2109]

I pull out my edges, eyelashes and Eyebrows.... not enough to be bald, but some small patches. It's so frustrating

[@brookemoore8369]

I found this out about myself as a person with OCD, and I believe it to be true with other people who struggle with it. We believe without knowing it that we can think our way out of a problem or think our way out of everything that is wrong around us. The problem is that this creates that feedback loop where we constantly ruminate and use compulsions to sooth this belief system. You can’t think your way out of problems, you have to act and break the internal cycle. People like us have a VERY strong internal voice and internal receptors, so we have to learn to get outside of our mind and get into the external world. When I start to feel the compulsions, I literally have to MAKE myself get outside and get my brain active outside of itself, and the compulsions go away. Mine come from fears of the unknown or death. However, I’ve learned over time that everyone faces this, and I know consider my OCD a gift to be able to shed light on things other people cannot figure out for themselves. Without my OCD, I wouldn’t be able to think through complex issues so well or help the people I love so much work through theirs. I’ve just learned to control it and realize that I have to get into the external world to turn it off and realize that I cannot simply think my way out of all the problems in the world. There is also nothing wrong with me!

[@killercurvez]

Thanks for sharing this! I literally just sighed out of relief, after reading this.

[@brookemoore8369]

You’re welcome! I’m always willing to talk to think through these things out loud :)

[@calibrial]

Oh my gosh. I feel so understood. I've been a compulsive picker for as long as I can remember, and rumination has been my coping skill during heartbreak and heavy times. Exercise has been a positive shifter for me.

[@brookemoore8369]

@@calibrial ugh Same. I don’t pick, but I do these small “checking habits.” I don’t even notice it because I’m so used to ruminated and being hyper vigilant all the time, but when I do catch it, I quickly realize it just means my body is calling me to action. I can’t sit there a think away my problems. I can’t to actually get out into the real world and solve them by action or work off my internal energy by working out like you said. I really wish OCD people wouldn’t think of themselves as weird. I really think we just have different hard wiring that requires more action.

[@gracefruit__]

Thank you 🤍

[@oscarpicon7164]

I’m one of these people. Thank you to the caller for her courage and to Doc J for the words that come out of his mouth.

[@Aubz47]

I have ocd, ptsd, depression, anxiety and trichotillomania. I have had different ways my brain and body has come up with to cope. I didn’t have good coping skills taught to me. I developed an eating disorder. I began patterning. I counted to 7 every second of every day for most of middle and high school. At 11, I began ripping my hair out, specifically my eyebrows. My family teased me mercilessly. I repressed it and began picking at my scalp so no one would notice. I began engaging dangerously in eating disorder behaviors. I’ve been in Ed recovery for a decade. I no longer count to 7. I’ve come a long way but I also am grateful for my brain when it tries to pattern. I acknowledge that it’s a sign of my stress level. My therapist was super helpful in making me realize that these coping mechanisms aren’t always a bad thing. For me, I still have my trichotillomania pop up from time to time. It’s my least destructive of my ocd behaviors so I use it as a sign post telling me that stress is piling up. I give myself room to let it happen but I also begin my other healthy coping skills. It’s ok to acknowledge that our brains are doing their best to protect us. I hope that this caller finds freedom from shame and lets herself grow new coping skills.

[@justmorbid9196]

Awe man, I've been pulling my eyelashes out for the last 10 years. Bad habit now, started when I was in stressful situations. Like biting fingernails.

[@mickeyzimmer4357]

I am currently 67 years old. I started pulling my eyelashes and eyebrows out when I was around 12 years old. It wasn’t until I saw a show about trichotillomania on Oprah when I was in my 20s that I realized I wasn’t the only one who did it and I wasn’t crazy. That was such a relief. I started taking Prozac and it helped but I still did it off and on until I was in my 40s. My eyebrows eventually quit growing back. Thank God for permanent makeup, which I just had done about five years ago. It’s hard to describe how hard it was to quit. Sometimes I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I was so self-conscious, because there was not really a way to hide it even though I colored in my eyebrows with an eyebrow pencil and tried to cover up my missing eyelashes the same way, but that didn’t work too well.

[@gessrinky9129]

I pull my eyebrows when I’m stressed. It helps not to if they’re filled in and I have brow gel on

[@BitterComments]

I’ve had this same issue since childhood. The only way I’ve been able to manage is to pick hairs from less visible parts of my body.

[@omgsicle]

not me watching this while gnawing at the skin around my finger nails 🫣

[@salonsavy6476]

Yup !,, so relatable!

[@emsquare2775]

Pulling something out of your vision - that's an eye-opener....it started at age 15, when puberty struck, and i hated being a woman, treated like a piece of meat. Pulling out dysregulation from my eyes. Thanks for this explanation 🙏 😊

[@Hamyhamster24]

I bite my nails since I was in middle school. I managed to quit cold turkey for about 7 years. And then I picked it back up and now struggling to quit again. I’m in my mid 30s. It’s honestly an addiction 😭

[@ChubbyUnicorn]

I understand she thinks this is special issue, but anyone trying to quit smoking, to stop eating, stop cracking knuckles, tapping, even stop being a jerk or reacting with PTSD (my issue)....there are all kinds of compulsions. The only answer is to just not do it, sweat through the desires and eventually the compulsion loses its grip. Good luck to her.

[@haileeroxana]

I pick my cuticles. Sometimes it’s so bad they’re bloody, and I agree it’s embarrassing. I haven’t stepped foot in a nail salon in almost a year because it’s embarrassing

[@bluecat2741]

I tend to skin pick when I'm stressed, somehow my brain seems to find it relieving. For me it was helpful to find a "substitute" for my fingers to pick on/play around with. A rubber band around my wrist, a fidget toy when I'm not at work, such stuff. A friend of mine loves to eat really nasty menthol candies when her urge to bite her finger nails gets to strong. 🙈

[@dearbrave4183]

A rubber band and figdet toy are good ideas for subtitutes

[@Cheesecake819]

My mom and grandma both had this condition. My mom constantly had scabs on her arms and legs. My grandma pulled her hair with tweezers every single night.

[@maryhemmingsen9169]

I pull eyelashes and brows. My son started pulling whiskers on his chin.

[@lrlforfun]

Girlfriend has an ADDICTION. A constant behavior that takes her out of her feelings. The fuel for addiction? Toxic Shame....the true belief that who I am is NOT adequate, loveable, valuable and worthwhile. The reality is that we are all born adequate, loveable, valuable and worthwhile. Perfect beings created in our maker's image. That is the BEING. The DOING? Totally different. Treatment? To learn she is adequate, loveable, valuable and worthwhile and that is a given because she was born. Her performance is different . Learn this and learn to let yourself off the hook for doing, past an present. Take responsibility and move on. Demythologizing mom and dad, learning your feelings, grieving the loss and y'all are on the road to healing. Remember, it's fragile, a day at a time!

[@angelicacabiles6918]

🙏🏼

[@Aubz47]

There’s a subtle but important difference between addiction and compulsion, especially when you’re talking about a compulsion like trichotillomania. An addiction is a behaviors that become compulsive. When you talk about an ocd compulsion especially one that starts at a young age, the behavior begin subconsciously with an impulse. Typically they are stress induced. Your brain sends an impulse to do something like rip your eyebrows out. It’s not something you’d choose to do or something you’ve done before but suddenly your brain tells you that you have to do it. Then it doesn’t go away. I know because I’ve had trichotillomania for 17 years. I also have had addictions before. My point being that referring to this as an addiction implies that at one point there was a choice to engage with the behavior. That’s not the case with something like this. From the first moment, you have no idea why you’re doing this thing and why you can’t stop.

[@anneshirley9560]

@@Aubz47 I'm starting to think it could be genetic. I started doing this as a kid, and then when I gave birth, my kid is almost 2 now, but she's been picking at her hair, and most recently her eyelashes, sense she was a newborn. I don't do it in front of people, so I don't know where she could have learned it from. She also self soothes by rest her head on me and playing with my hair or her daddy's beard, but if she's mad, she'll just straight up start ripping her hair out. The back of her head looks fried now. Trying to figure out how to stop this while she's young.

[@maryhemmingsen9169]

I believe she is genetic!!!!!!

[@patray162]

I spent four years helping a former partner with many simple tasks in our home, due to the erosion of their fingertips and near-total loss of fingernails from what I assume is the same condition. Fortunately it does not prevent them from working and pursuing interests, but it's a constant source of pain and distraction for them. (Not a bother for me whatsoever unless they were being a silly lazybones i.e. taking advantage of the "service" lol.) Even then, the idea of taking professional guidance to learn how to overcome the dependency was overwhelming. They believe it started as a discreet expression of anxious feelings in their childhood home where emotional expression wasn't particularly welcome; and they still suffer from anxiety yet are high-functioning and not willing to receive professional help at this point in their life. So I was always happy to help efforts to "quit" but would never put pressure on the issue and just help how I could. In their case it was very serious and beyond my understanding. So I see how the word "habit" as they called it can both be technically accurate, yet inaccurate and very unfair when somebody who DOESN'T get it tries to include it with a cookie-cutter understanding of what counts as a habit & how to deal with them.

[@jacqshippy]

I've pulled my eyelashes out since I was 5. I'm 36 now. It takes 3-4 months for them to grow back, I can keep them for a while without touching them, then something will trigger them to start "itching" and I find myself pulling them out again. I've been on SSRIs at a few points during my life but they didn't help. I've been doing much better about recognizing when I'm spinning out from my anxiety and doing something to stop it, but with my eyelashes it doesn't take much so they're gone before I realize the extent of the damage. I'm slowly getting better about it, though.

[@ejaptiankid]

Taking notes! I pick my skin too--mostly on my lips, but also around my nails/cuticles. I do it when I'm thinking, when stressed, or sometimes even absentmindedly when there may not even be a defined trigger. I think part of it is seeking smooth lips, rather than dry & flaky. There is a sense of satisfaction I get when I feel like I've rid my lips of every dry patch. Unfortunately, I pretty much always end up bleeding every time I pick. And I do this multiple times a day. I get embarrassed at work or with friends sometimes because I end up picking around them, and it is hard to control myself not to--I wonder if they notice and think I'm weird.

[@joshuacorbin221]

Recent studies suggested that this is a biological thing? Maybe my experience concurs with that. I have plenty of early memories of this. The tension grows until I pick. mosquito bites, acne, scrapes, sweat, ... The stimulus load is always greater than my capacity to process it. I have a really uncomfortable job, 12 hour shifts in temperature and sound extremes 12 hours at a stretch. The longer I wear thise socks, the worse these loops get.

[@jet4415]

My aunt used to pull out her eyelashes. After a while they never grew out again. But I’d see her on the phone picking.

[@thepodcasthaven]

ERP is the the gold standard therapy for OCD. I've done tons of it. Find yourself an OCD specialist.

[@AshleyLebedev]

Sarah, as an eastern practioner and natural healer who is very well trained, please see a TCM DOCTOR (doctorate in acupuncture) to be pulse and tongue diagnosed and put onto correct diet and herbs to help the imbalance. Also please get self checked for the following: Lyme, parasites, adrenal saliva cortisol, and inflammation. Only the last of those three will be checked in western allopathic medicine, see a naturopath that is very experienced and well trained just for those medical tests. Further work on seeing if any foods or medicine have damaged your gut. Check into on your downtime polyvagal theory & limbic system things. Start with the KZbin channel Irene Lyons. Things will start to make sense.

[@krystelhardesty9960]

OMG I'm a hair puller have been since I was very young (I'm 41 now) I was also diagnosed with ADD at age 8, hair pulling and skin picking calm me down. I have able to move from hair pulling to just picking off the dead/split ends honestly its the only way I got through school it looked like it I wasn't paying attention but it was the only way I could pay attention. The other thing that helps now is doing things with my hands I like to knit and cross stitch and pulling back my hair.

[@krisbe026]

I started pulling my hair when I was 16. I'd do it every day, was on the verge of baldness. I always had thick, long hair since I was a kid-almost as thick as my wrist when in a braid. Took about a year to where it was thinner than my pinky when in a braid. I was so scared to tell my Dad, I couldn't bare for him to know something like that about me. So I lied the whole time, said my hair was falling out. I FINALLY set aside my pride and shame and told my sister about it-sort of as a run up to telling my Dad. When my Mom told me a few days later that they wanted to take me to get checked by a doctor to see why my hair was falling out, I finally told her-I didn't want them to pay anyone to figure out what was happening when I could tell them myself. So I told her, and asked her to tell Dad, since I just couldn't make myself do it. We've always had a special relationship, and it broke my heart to tell him I wasn't the perfect girl I wanted to be. He was so gracious and kind, told me all the things I KNEW he would, but just couldn't believe until he did. He told me I could never do anything to make him ashamed of me, and that was what I needed to hear. It took months of him catching up with me, asking how I was doing, for me to finally quit. I hated having to tell him I was still doing it, so every day I worked hard to be able to tell him I'd not pulled any hair that day. I made up my own calendar, and would put a neat little check for every day I'd made it through without pulling any hair. If I slipped up, I'd scribble and make that day on the calendar hideous. Somehow seeing the ugliness of the bad days was an incentive to stop pulling my hair-and I was finally able to tell my Dad I hadn't done it for a month-and so on until a year had passed by. I was finally able to cut off all my thin hair, and have beautiful, thick shoulder length hair. I praise God for the amazing Dad He gave me to help me get through my depression during that time. 4 years later, and I have hair past the middle of my back, and though it's not quite as thick as it used to be, since the top layers take longer to grow, it's working on it. I have recently begun struggling with the compulsion again, but now I know I can defeat it, and am not afraid to do battle again😁 Just tell someone you can trust-you'd be surprised how well equipped they are to help you through it!

[@MuzzyBarker]

I think this is the first call where I heard John acknowledge that there's a biological component to these disorders.

[@tiffanynicoley]

When she said it was like a person tapping at her I was like ding ding ding! Ha Her body is desperately trying to tell her something but she is only focused on the external symptoms.

[@motherofhellaphants]

Bites nails... what has my body been trying to solve for the last 30 years?

[@LaurenAshleyVideos]

I have this and I had to start wearing wigs in High school and the bullying was tough.

[@siegfriedbraun5447]

I pull em out when I feel the loose ones irritate my eyeballs. Then I stop. Wierdo, huh?!

[@blah7694]

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. LOVE LOVE THIS.

[@dropofgrey]

I’ve pulled my eyelashes and eyebrows out for 34 years until this year. I decided I needed to find another way to release my anxiety and so far it’s going well.

[@gracefruit__]

Good! What's been working for you?

[@KinderDev1]

first

[@user-oy9zy4ds9m]

I used to do this a lot when i was in 4-6 grade. Luckily i was able to stop but i think i just replaced the bad habit with biting my nails

[@marcgetz81]

I bite my nails constantly. My wife stops me at times but its uncontrollable at times. I used to bite the skin off my fingers too but I stopped that. Ive been biting my nails since I was 5 and I am almost 28 now. I wish I could stop biting my nails. I have anxiety and panic attacks. I take medication but they arent gone totally. I bite my nails when I am anxious or stressed. I need a better way to calm down plus the medication I take🤣.

[@laurensande4]

This speaks to me so much! Best of luck!

[@chrissy9171]

So do I every few months. I also pick my skin. 🤦🏽‍♀️ Lord help us.

[@Bamboosh00ts]

Seconds

[@HoneyandJubilee]

Actually I did this as a kid because my eyelashes were really long and poked my eyes. It wasn’t OCD. I knew a guy who had to get eye surgery because he had the same thing where his eyelashes poked his eyes.

[@furryplantsandcoins9070]

Same thing for my daughter She's got extremely long eyelashes and she will pull her eyelashes out. The first time she did this freaked me out! I wasn't sure what she was doing when she started yanking on her eyelashes! Sometimes I've thought about doing this because it feels like I have something in my eye but there's nothing there and I can't see without my glasses to see if it's my eyelashes.

[@maryhemmingsen9169]

My upper and lower lashes would hook together at the outer corners of my eyes and bug the hell out of me. I would pull those with the tweezers. Then..... from what I remember, I pulled the feathers out of the corners of my bed pillow, and my eyelashes, before I went to sleep. That was 60 yrs. ago. I started in on my brows 8 years ago when I got cancer. Now, the past 4 years I've started chewing on my upper lip. It's frustrating!!!!!

[@susieare]

CBD & sleep hygiene. Perhaps nicotine could help too

[@dearbrave4183]

Curious to know how sleep hygiene helps with this

[@susieare]

@@dearbrave4183 It think it's so much easier to be curious about what's going on in your mind and body if you've had a proper night's sleep. I have small kids so I know how poorly I function if I don't get a full night's sleep. I've also watched my husbands mental health completely transform by attending to the three things above. He's very protective of his sleep now. CBD is very helpful when it comes to good quality sleep. We both take it every night before bed. Just don't eat garlic for dinner! The combo gives you nightmares 😬

[@susieare]

@Bok Choy True! This is really important too. I forgot about that - thanks! Time for a mug of bovril :)

[@mirabella2154]

Ouch. 😖

[@jenniferhuerta9824]

Sarah. Get longer fake nails. Play games on phone.