MeetGist

TW: Discussion of hair-pulling and body-repetitive compulsions. See the full MHAW19 series here.

This is a post I've wanted to write for a while. I don't exactly know why I've been putting it off - perhaps it seems less serious to me than my other symptoms and disorders, or perhaps it's because I feel like a fraud.

You see, like a lot of my co-existing mental health issues, I seem to fall somewhere on the spectrum of severity that causes me significant enough distress but pales dramatically when put beside other peoples' experiences. I see it all the time on social media, the comparing ourselves to other people and invalidating our own experiences, and I know I shouldn't but it's difficult. I have the distressing parts of Borderline Personality Disorder, but by the time I saw a psychiatrist I was engaged with a career - she ruled out BPD because of that and instead told me I have "BPD traits" (which I think is  sometimes referred to as "quiet borderline" but I'm not 100% sure). I don't experience mania so my mood disorder can't be "full" bipolar disorder and is instead cyclothymia/cyclothymic disorder (I [un]affectionately refer to this as my "baby bipolar") which I rarely see discussed. These things have been inherently invalidating and although I most certainly do not wish to have these diagnoses or for my symptoms to get worse, it often makes me feel like a bit of a fraud. I'm suffering...but am I suffering enough to deserve a voice?

So here we land on Trichotillomania, which as far as my melting pot of neurosis goes is probably my oldest companion. I've been lucky in the sense that my compulsions have always focussed on my eyebrows and eyelashes, and any hair-pulling beyond that was fairly low-key and not so damaging.

I can remember exactly when it started, if not why it did. I was 10, getting a haircut, and the lady who cut my fringe accidentally cut some of my eyebrow hair. When I touched my eyebrow, I was shocked at how easily some of the hair came away without much effort.

And that was it.

I'd pull my eyebrows and then when I had created sufficient damage, I'd move onto my eyelashes, finding great satisfaction in pulling out the thickest or coarsest ones followed then by instant shame, fear, and regret. A relative once commented on what lovely eyelashes I had and I wonder now if I was trying to punish myself by ruining them, and I lament the fact that I have. I would feel terror at how badly I'd pulled, barely able to look in the mirror, afraid to see, yet I couldn't stop.

It's a horrible feeling, having bald patches on your face, especially when hair on females is so connected to our body image and perceived beauty. I came across old photos from dance shows where my eyebrows are patchy and non-existent in places.  I remember walking into school one day and my friends being shocked. When they suggested that I never go back to whomever had made such a mess of waxing my eyebrows, I said nothing; better they think it was a beauty treatment fail than self-inflicted, better they think I was a passive victim rather than the active cause. Even now, my eyelashes are my biggest targets and I hate it. I hate applying mascara and getting the well-ridiculed "Yzma" eyelashes, I hate having gaps and short, stubby eyelashes. I hate having eyelashes longer in one eye than the other. But I can't seem to stop.

I'm in more control than I used to be, but it still seems like the only time I can reign myself in is when the damage is done, rather than before.

So...why do I do it?

The truth is, I don't know. It doesn't seem to have triggers like my other disorders, although it's often when I'm stressed. Physically, it feels like there is something in my eye and the only way to make the discomfort go away is to pull at my eyelashes. I sometimes find that rinsing my eye with cold water helps, but it's not always possible. I was told my a counsellor that when we respond to stimuli such as this discomfort with an action like hair-pulling, it hardwires the brain to think of that as a solution, as  something that brings relief which is why every time I do it, it consolidates that even more.

Trichotillomania is a body-focused repetitive impulse control disorder, similar to Dermatillomania (skin-picking) - it is not, as one co-worker staggeringly tried to argue with me about -  a "habit". As I was growing up, it was actually classed as a form of self  harm and although general psychology is distancing itself away from that terminology, it should show how distressing and damaging it can be to live with.

I don't see a whole lot of  discussion about Trich out there, so I wanted to kick off my week long blog series of the lesser-discussed diagnosis with this. To my fellow Trich sufferers: it sucks but you are not alone and you're not a freak.

If you are concerned that you may be affected by anything discussed in this post I would encourage you to see your doctor.