Psyche logo

But Do You Really Get It?

Picking and Pulling

By redPublished 6 years ago 6 min read
Like

When I was in fifth grade, there was a boy in my class named Will.

Will had no friends. Will had no one to sit with at lunch. Will was always the last person picked for team sports or group games. Will never had a partner or reading buddy. Will sat around all day during class time, reading time, recess, lunch, and he would pick at nonexistent scabs on his body until they slowly became bloody scars. His arms and legs were covered in scabs, some tiny and some large. Blood streaks stained his skin. Old, healed scabs would quickly turn into fresh bloody ones as he sat there and picked at them.

People thought Will was a freak.

People thought Will was weird.

People looked at Will and automatically thought he was gross.

And I was grouped in the term "people". I thought Will was a freak, weird, and gross. And now, looking back ten years later, I am incredibly ashamed and embarrassed at the fact that I never gave Will the benefit of the doubt because Will had dermotillomania, a disease that I would slowly develop within the next ten years of my life.

I thought it was interesting when I searched the term "dermotillomania" on this website and found only one post about it, but I found ten posts regarding "trichotillomania", which is a compulsive disorder that typically pairs with skin picking.

For those of you unfamiliar with both terms,

Dermotillomania: a mental illness related to obsessive-compulsive disorder; characterized by repeated picking at one’s own skin, which results in skin lesions and causes significant disruption in one’s life

Trichotillomania: a compulsive desire to pull out one's hair

Last semester, I wrote a paper for my Writing in the Medical Professions class regarding the link between dermo- and trichotillomania and the specific treatments that doctors and psychologists had used to treat the patients of each disorder. What I didn't get to type in my research report was how incredibly fucking debilitating and awful each disease was, and how they impacted your life on a level that no one else in the world could possibly understand.

I started showing symptoms of trichotillomania at a very young age, but it was minor. I would pick at my eyelashes and eyebrows, but my hair is red, which means my lashes and brows are blonde and barely noticeable in the first place unless I'm wearing makeup. The desire to pick at my facial hair slowly faded when I hit high school and actually started wearing makeup, and around my senior year it started back up again. But instead of facial hair, it was the hair on my head.

The craziest part about trichotillomania is that you don't even notice you're pulling your own hair out 90% of the time you're doing it. I would sit in my AP Literature class and the entire time I would pull strands of my long red hair out of my head without even realizing it, and then by the end of class I would look down at the white linoleum floor of the classroom and it would be covered in red hair. One of my worst memories of high school was the day one of my teachers pulled me aside after class and the conversation went something like this:

"Hey, Kat, are you seeing anyone about the hair pulling?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the maintenance people are starting to ask me about all the red hair near your desk at the end of every day. They think you're going bald. A few other students have asked me about it too."

"I don't know what you're talking about." And I walked out of the classroom.

Once I was out of high school, I decided the best way to treat my problem was to just cut all my hair off. And it actually worked! With short hair, there is a lot of extra effort that goes into pulling it out. You have to physically lift your arms up and make it incredibly noticeable just to get a few strands. So that was taken care of.

Then, when I got to college, the stress and workload from high school doubled, and without my long hair to pull out, I had to resort to another compulsive disorder.

Short hair=exposed shoulders=tiny bumps on my shoulders that are really easy to pick at.

Yep, this was when the dermotillomania really set in. It started out very innocent- I would see a pimple or pore on my shoulder or face, pop it, and then let it be. Like any normal person would. But then I started seeing pores that weren't there in the first place. Pores that were so easy to pick at that I would stand in my bathroom, nose on my mirror, and find every single pore, bump, acne, and scar on my face that by the time I was done (which was hours after I began), my entire face would be bloody, red, and swollen. Shoulders were a lot easier to get at. I could pick at my shoulders during class or work, while I was driving, even while I was just sitting in bed watching television. Then shoulders progressed to my forearms, which really didn't have any pores at all, I would literally just pick my skin off until scabs formed. My chest was an easy target to get while I was lying in bed because I could just lift my neck on my pillow and look straight down. My legs came after the forearms, which I picked at when I was wearing a dress or shorts and were easy to get at during lectures and school. It was a slow progression- two years worth of picking, scarring, and scabbing–– until I looked into my mirror one day and looked like a straight up leper.

My shoulders and chest are now defined by tiny red spots, bloody scabs, and extra white bumps that represent the healed ones. I am ashamed to go to the beach because wearing a swimsuit shows off my scabby legs and red, swollen shoulders. I ask my boyfriend if we can turn the lights off when we have sex so that he doesn't have to see my boobs, which are splotchy red and have "pick marks" on them. My grown out hair cannot be put up into a ponytail because random, short patches of hair that I pulled at stick outside of my head. My life has completely changed due to compulsive disorders that I developed.

People will ask me, "Why do you have so many scabs on your shoulders?" when I wear a tank top. My mom will buy me tiny band-aids to put on them to "prevent the picking". My sister whacks my hand every time she sees me even looking at my shoulder or chest. My doctor will point out the scabs that are infected because I picked at them too many times. My boss will hand me a tissue to clot the fresh blood that forms every time I pick off a scab. Even my friends will say, "Kat don't do that. It's weird."

But none of these people get it. At all. Do you people really think I want to look like this? To have infected scars on my body, to be embarrassed to be naked, to avoid wearing revealing clothes because I look gross? It's called a compulsive disorder because that's exactly what it is– a compulsion to behave this way. A compulsion to act this way. A compulsion to hurt myself emotionally and physically because it satisfies some weird desire I have in my brain. This is my story with compulsive disorders, and it sucks.

disorder
Like

About the Creator

red

young adult anecdotes from my past, present, and hopeful future

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.