Content warning: skin and hair picking/pulling

This is not an easy subject to breach. How does one confront that they have a compulsive disorder? The answer is, they usually don't. It is much easier to pretend that nobody notices the disgusting habit than to undergo intense counseling and treatment for an anxiety driven behavior.

You've tried everything you've read online to overcome the urge: the fist clenching, snapping the rubber band on your wrist, chewing pencils or carrots, the spinner rings, everything. They just don't come close to the satisfaction of picking yourself apart. Day to day, you literally lose more and more of yourself, and the external pain doesn't phase you until someone brings it up.

"Why are you pulling out your hair?" "Quit picking at your face." "Do you have lice or something?" "Biting your nails is really gross."

The shame and embarrassment grip you as you struggle for an excuse. You say it's nervousness, a way to focus, or it's just a weird side effect of the shampoo you're using. The truth is, most of the time you have no idea you're doing it, even though you're in broad daylight and surrounded by people. It gets that bad. At some point, the blood on your hands snaps you from your daze and you sit on them for the rest of class, wishing you could have just stopped ten minutes ago. What a nightmare it's been to deal with this. There's a scar on your arm from where you kept picking for a week. Now it's been there for a year. Will it ever fade? Will you ever normalize in time to maintain a healthy body image? How many people saw me today and were disgusted? All of these questions surface as you see yourself in the mirror, face raw and red, a tuft of hair sticking up after taking years to grow back... but you still can't stop. These little habits can become such big, ugly problems.

I live with an excoriation disorder.

It's incredibly embarrassing for me, but it's been on my heart to talk about it for a long time.The farthest back I can remember it was in the fifth grade when a classmate asked me why I pulled my hair out. I couldn't give an answer. I still can't.

From the research I have gathered over the years, and visits to counselors, I've learned it's a compulsive behavior that triggers high levels of dopamine when indulged. According to Wikipedia, 1%-5% of the population suffers from different forms of excoriation. It's mostly found among women, especially in cases of hair pulling.

Throughout my life, I have gone through many phases of the disorder. I've pulled my hair for years, resulting in a bald patch on the top of my head. I told people it was a bad haircut, or I accidentally signed it off with a flat iron. Fortunately, it has grown back to a normal length, and I am proud to say I have substantially lowered the behavior.

Unfortunately, I still pull when I'm overly stressed. My current compulsion is to scratch my head until I have sores. I don't realize I'm doing it, and when I catch myself, my face burns and my stomach sinks. For the first time in my life, this year, I had long natural fingernails. My mind was blown when I looked at my hands, I had no idea they could be so beautiful. One day, I got dangerously stressed out and they disappeared, along with my cuticles. That's just how it goes for me. From my research, nobody knows the exact cause of the behavior, only that it rivals the behavior of drug addiction.

How encouraging is that? I have the tendencies of an addict.

I certainly don't see myself as an addict. I have three jobs, good grades, and lots of goals I hope to achieve. I do, however, see myself as stressed out and overwhelmed as a result. Even when I was eating the most healthy and sleeping eight hours, I still did it. I've never understood my compulsion, and I couldn't begin to expect for anyone else to understand it.

So why isn't anyone talking about it to figure it out?

Well, disorders are a very taboo subject. They're largely invisible, but not in this case. Is that what makes it so embarrassing? From my experience, yes. Picking is so much harder to hide than anxiety. You can do it in private, but the physical effects show so much sooner. People just don't know how to handle it. It's nerve wracking to go to the doctor and explain your situation, the last thing I want to do is be medicated. I also don't want to ever sit through another hour of hypnotherapy.

Disorders are scary, and they are becoming increasingly prevalent among people my age. It's nobody's fault, but we need to go further than skin deep on this subject and explore the emotional and spiritual side effects of harmful coping mechanisms.

It's incredibly cathartic to pick apart the subject of excoriation. How else can we learn to conquer these setbacks? My advice to anyone who picks, whether it is occasionally or compulsively, do something nice for yourself. You just damaged thousands of cells because you're unhappy with imperfection.

Life itself is an imperfection, and it reveals so many things to us in the strangest ways. Embrace your flaws, but do not let them consume you. Confront your issues head on, and seek to be healed. Seek to grow from your wounds. Don't be afraid of who you are, and if others don't understand you, do not be embarrassed. Find two things that you love about yourself for every one thing you dislike.

I hope we can all learn to accept each other a little more because you don't deserve to be picked apart and left an even more flawed state.