I am smart but I do this stupid thing.

Oh God...where to begin.

I have thought about setting up a blog to deal with my Trichotillomania and my weight issues for a long time now. There is always the fear that someone will find out that I do this weird thing, I pull out my eyelashes and my eyebrows. Trich sufferers can pull hair from any areas of their body, but those are my areas. Shit, I hate it! Here I am, almost 42 years old and I am doing this stupid thing.

I have been pulling for 30 years now. Even when I'm pulling, I'm telling myself I should stop, but it's just like when I'm eating too much chocolate ice cream - I know my cholesterol level's high and I shouldn't have eaten any of it, but there I am eating it to the point of getting diarrhea from too much of it. What the hell?!? I am not stupid...I really try not to beat myself up over my eating or my pulling. I am smart but I do this stupid thing...

The trich comes and goes. I have times that I do not pull, and it all grows back in and I am sooo happy, and I think to myself, 'that's it, I will never do that again'....I might even exclaim to myself how 'crazy' it was that I did that, how could I do that? What a nutty thing to do.
And yet, there it comes again, seemingly out of the blue.

I do know I regress my feelings. I love my family but they drive me nuts. I can't blame my husband and kids for it, because ... bingo! They weren't around me 30 years ago, so there is nobody to blame but myself, but here I am talking blame again.

I remember the day it started...I can't remember now exactly how old I was, but I am pretty sure it was in about 1977. I was analyzing myself in the mirror the way most teens do, when I noticed a white eyelash. That was strange to me. It bugged me that it existed. It took some work and boy it was painful but I finally got that eyelash hair out (now I wouldn't feel that pain at all). I had an immediate feeling of relief. That is what it was.

So it all started on my right top eyelid. Now most of the time, my eyelashes are patchy at best.
Even when I've only pulled my eyelashes, I'd tell myself, "well, at least you aren't pulling your EYEBROWS!" What happened after that? I ended up pulling my eyebrows of course. Now I have those freaky drawn in eyebrows that aren't fooling anyone except the most oblivious people. And now I say to myself, "at least I'm not pulling the hair on my HEAD..." and that of course makes me worry that I will indeed do that eventually. The ingesting of the hairs that I have read some people do seems strange to me, but if Trich teaches a person anything, it has taught me not to judge. I could be there too.

And you know what? I am getting less and less fearful of admitting I have Trichotillomania. In the past, if someone asked about my eyelashes, I would claim I had an allergic reaction to some mascara. But now I am more likely to matter of factly say I have a neurological problem that causes loss of hair. I will probably avoid saying that I am the one doing the pulling though!
But maybe all people with Trich just need to come out 'of the closet' so to speak.
The TLC (Trichotillomania Learning Center) website says that it's estimated that 2% of the population has Trich. On Wikipedia it says 5%. I woudn't be surprised if it was almost 8-10% in reality, because we are all so good at hiding this thing that we think is a weakness of our characters.

I am of the opinion that it's a mix of stress but also genetics. I definitely think that working more on the assumption that it's genetically based somewhat will allow me to forgive myself.
Whenever I had therapy for my Trich, the therapists didn't know much about Trich. They always wanted to base it on some past abuse. Maybe in some cases it could be the root cause, but overall my family life was solid. Not perfect by any means, nobody's life is, but there wasn't anything I can think that would be awful enough to cause this.

MY TRICH PLAN OF ACTION:
Try to post to this blog daily about my pulling disorder
Clench my fists and count to 15 when I have urges to pull my hair