Okay, now that we’ve got the basics out of the way, let’s talk some more. I know, you’re probably thinking “TMI, Penny. I’ve learned more than I ever wanted to about you, and then some,” but hey, nobody’s forcing you to read. You can stop any time--it is I who has the obsessive need to not only document the details of my disorder, but to put it online for anyone in the world to read. Not you.
A lot of the stuff I’ve been telling you about is certainly weird, but I think a lot of people can just shrug off and write it off as quirky or strange. Today I’m going to talk about the somewhat gross and socially un-kosher. I’m talking about Rhinotillexomania (nose-picking), Dermatillomania (skin-picking), and Trichotillomania (hair-pulling). Nobody wants to talk about these things, because they are unsanitary, ugly, and juvenile. If you do it, you do it behind closed doors (usually). Now, if you do any or all of the above, once again, this does not automatically mean you have a disorder. I’m sure any of us would scratch off a loose scab, or pop a rampant pimple. I’d like to hear from the three people in the world who wouldn’t shape their eyebrows or wax unwanted hair from their legs, face, or wherever (not really though, I’m just making a point). My point is, just like with anxiety disorder, if you pick your nose, that doesn’t mean you have a compulsive disorder. The difference is “mania”. According to Merriam Webster, mania means: an excessive or unreasonable enthusiasm. In other words, if you can’t go a day without thinking about it, if it brings you an unusual amount of satisfaction, if it is literally getting in the way of you living a normal life, then it’s a problem.
Before I talk about it, I want to make a note that people with any of the below disorders don’t automatically have OCD, and vice versa. Plenty of people have the uncontrollable urge pull hair or pick skin, without any other obsessive or compulsive behavior. I’m just lucky enough to be blessed with both OCD, and these three as well.
Let’s start with Rhinotillexomania.
There’s a lot of nose pickers out there. It’s a disgusting habit, I know. Ever since I was a kid, I struggled with trying to keep this one secret. I mean, think about: seeing someone stick their finger into one of their orifices, extracting bodily excretions, and then depositing it somewhere (hopefully in a tissue, but really, it could be anywhere). People who pick their nose are seen as unsanitary, socially inept, and therefore unintelligent and juvenile. This is why I’ve fought it as best as I can, keeping other people from seeing, washing my hands when I did, and on and on.
I’m not sure what is the cause of this in other’s, but for me, I feel unclean if I don’t pick my nose. I obsessed over keeping it clean and clear, constantly scraping it out. I felt like my airways were blocked, and I needed to be able to breathe. It got really bad when I was a teenager: it happened more and more often that I would start a heavy nosebleed, and have to stand over the sink for ten minutes, waiting for it to stop (I still don’t know a good way to stop nosebleeding, but it’s probably for the best). I finally quit when I moved out west. Due to the lack of humidity, my nose would start bleeding when I smiled too hard. I quit pretty fast, then, and didn’t pick that up again until at least a year after I moved back. Luckily, I don’t do it nearly as bad as I used to.
On to Dermatillomania.
This one is the hardest of the three for me to deal with, and has caused me the most misery. I feel like it’s also a lot more common than the others, but I have no proof to back that up, so I could be wrong. Dermatillomania is compulsive skin-picking. This doesn’t mean just picking at scabs: it also includes pimple popping. If you pick scabs, or pop pimples, you aren’t necessarily a dermatillomaniac (I feel like a broken record, but as a lifelong hypochondriac, this definitely needs to be said). The difference is intent. If you look in the mirror, and you see a pimple, and you pop it, that’s pretty normal. If you spend hours in front of the mirror, searching for pimples--that’s dermatillomania.
I’ve done some research on addiction, and it’s scary the similarities. I have the urge to pick every day. One time, on a relatively stress-free day, I kept track of the number of times I got the urge to touch my face. It came up to about thirty. That means that every other minute I was thinking about my face, touching my face. That isn’t healthy.
When I’m stressed out, it’s worse. I need to pop my pimples. When I get the chance, I go in a bathroom, and find one, the bigger the better (if they’re tiny, I need to do more of them). I find one, and I squeeze it. When the pus comes out, I get this sense of... relief. I feel cleaner, better. I have to roll it between my fingers, every time. When the pus doesn’t come out, I keep squeezing, and keep squeezing, even though it hurts like a mother trucker, squeezing until I bleed and everything comes out.
That’s dermatillomania.
I always prefered doing it in front of a mirror, but over time, I couldn’t wait that long. I had to pop it now. I learned different ways of doing it: there’s the two hands (from whatever angle it takes), the one hand squeeze (for my arms), and then the combination one hand squeeze and scratching (for my back). Wherever I was, you’d find me sticking my hand in the back of my shirt, in my hair, on my arms, and (of course) my face, constantly scratching and picking and squeezing.
I can’t stop. I’ve used various methods to try and quit: several kinds of anti-acne wash and exfoliation, trying to find things to fiddle with so my hands are occupied, and then there’s always reward systems. I came up with this idea, of folding a paper crane every consecutive day that I didn’t pick. There’s a legend that says if you fold one thousand paper cranes, then you get a wish. I figured if I could go one thousand consecutive days without picking, then I would be free, and that was my wish, so it would be true. Also, I started thinking to myself “okay, Penny, if you want to earn your wings today, you won’t do this.” It worked, too, for fourteen days. Then I caved, and made it another seven days, then four days, then three... It’s been almost a month since I went without picking.
I’ve been doing some research lately, for the next attack on my disorder, and we’ll see how it goes.
Last but not least, Trichotillomania.
I’m less qualified to tell you about this one, because I don’t think I have true Trichotillomania. Trichotillomania is hair pulling, but what I have is a hair obsession, which happens to include hair pulling. If you want to know more about real Trich, go watch videos by Becca, who has real Trich.
My Trich started around six or seven. I liked pulling on my eyebrows and eyelashes, but that was it. It never got to the extreme point, with missing chunks. I just did it whenever I felt like I had “loose hairs”. I started actually tweezing my eyebrows when I was eleven, but once again, it wasn’t really that far out of the ordinary. I did, however, love my hair. I started studying hair (like seriously, getting library books, getting videos, and eventually using the internet, when I started learning how the ‘world wide web’ worked), practicing on my sisters, trying out all sorts of different things on my hair, trying to get it absolutely perfect.
I don’t know if that’s weird or not, considering how girls tend to care about their appearances, but for me it was insane. I started cutting my own hair at fourteen, and no one else has touched it since. I started dying and highlighting for friends and family soon after, although I didn’t get very good at that, because I didn’t get the chance to practice much. I went through dozens of brands of shampoo and conditioner, testing out different leave-in conditioners and shine serums, but it never came out quite right.
Every time I was having a hard time, every time I was depressed or stressed, I would cut my hair. After I started college, my bangs started doing some... interesting stuff. I cut them all sorts of different ways. But I never dyed my hair: I was convinced I wasn’t allowed to (some off hand comment my mother made once. Another side effect of OCD: not only do we remember certain things very clearly, but they are then exaggerated to the extreme, so that we cannot ever let them go). So I cut it.
But it still wasn’t perfect. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get it right. It never did what I wanted it to, and it was driving me insane. I became convinced that I should shave my head and start from the beginning. I obsessed over it, I truly believed that if all of my hair was gone, not only would I be happier and healthier, but I would also look better than I ever had. (I still think that I could pull of bald, but we’re not going there right now) Problem was, that comment my mother made. I thought that if I did anything, anything out of the ordinary to my hair, that my whole family would reject me. Which is ridiculous, considering how much I know they love me, and how much weird stuff they put up with on my account anyway. So, I developed a plan.
If I were to cut off one inch of hair a week, my hair would get shorter, but they wouldn’t notice. They hadn’t noticed my other haircuts, after all. By the time all my hair was gone, they’d be used to it. So I set to work. It felt wonderful, every time I cut it. But soon, it wasn’t enough. I started cutting every other day, instead of once a week, and then, I gave up, and chopped off the final four inches. Over about a month, I cut off probably about a foot and a half, to two feet of hair. Then they noticed. My mom flipped out, and I guilt-tripped her (not something I usually do, so it was hard), and she got over it. The rest of the family was pretty chill about it, although I could tell it kind of bugged them. I kept my hair that short for a couple of months, I’m not sure why. I just couldn’t go through with it, cutting more off, and I couldn’t stand letting it get any longer.
Over the last few months, I’ve decided to let it grow out again. I’ve gotten four inches since then! I realized that the only way for me to accept my hair, is if I realize, it’s gonna do what it wants, no matter what I do. There’s no point in spending hours every day, trying to “fix” it. And the funny thing is, it looks better now than it ever has in my entire life, no joke. I spend about a minute and thirty seconds a day on it, no lie.
So, let’s get to the second half of my hair obsession: the true Trichotillomania. See, like I said, I do suffer from hair pulling as well. Excluding the hair on my head, eyebrows, and eyelashes, all my life I have hated my hair. I have a unibrow: gotta go. I’ve got a mustache and goatee: gotta go. Hair on my belly? Gotta go. Bikini line? Do I even have to ask? Then there’s my legs, and my feet. Seriously: I’ve got maybe thirty hairs total on each foot, but to me, it looks like I have flippin’ hobbit feet. I’ve waxed, shaved, and plucked. I’ve tried Nair, but it didn’t work and it kind of stung. I tried to teach myself that string method, but I couldn’t get the hang of it, and epilators were too expensive. I’ve tried everything. I have spent hours, sitting there with tweezers, removing hair from my face, my belly, legs, and feet. It takes forever, and you can never get it all. I remember one time, I spent a couple hours in the bathtub, plucking (because hot water makes the hair come out easier, and it washed away the blood from sensitive areas). Like I said, hair obsession.
I actually stopped pulling out my eyelashes when I got old enough to wear mascara: I hadn’t noticed I was even doing it, until one day I ripped out half my eyelashes with one pull, because they all stuck together. So, I managed to quit. But about a year ago, I stopped wearing makeup altogether, and over the last couple months, I’ve even started that up again. It seems certain things aren’t as easy to quit as it seems...
I feel like I should have some way to wrap up this entry. It seems like every time, I end with something saying “not all OCDs are alike,” but it’s true. And I’ve only begun to tell you what mine is like. I don’t know what it’s like in a “normal” person’s head. I’m not even one hundred percent sure what it’s like in the head of someone else with OCD. All I know is me.
I will say this, though. Today, not just once, but twice, I have joined in a conversation with complete strangers. Not only that, but I’ve been happy. I haven’t been ticking as badly, and I’ve forced myself not to watch me feet as I walk, so I don’t know whether or not my feet have “broken the rules”. Writing this blog is helping me. I didn’t know if it would, I was afraid if I talked about it, I’d actually make it worse, because that’s what’s happened before. But it’s not. Things are changing. Slowly, but they are.
So, if you’re still reading this, thank you. I don’t know if I’m making a difference in anyone else’s life but my own right now, but that’s a great place to start, if you ask me. I hope someone will read this, and know that there is hope. Even though it’s hard and scary, it is possible to change. To become stronger, braver, and better than ever.
Good luck, my friends.
Penny
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