It is funny, it is so much easier to talk and write about being recovered from trichotillomania (trich) then it is to venture back in the past and talk and write about being in the midst of the condition. I am writing this to help myself in a sense as well as others. I spent most of my life feeling ashamed and alone for having this condition, and perhaps writing this will help me move through a portion of my past as well as help someone else with the condition not feel so alone.
While much of my hair pulling became and unconscious habit, I very vividly remember the day it started. I was eleven years old and I was working on my homework. Homework and schoolwork in general were stressful times for me. Schoolwork did not come easy. I was attempting to write a report on Benjamin Franklin and could barely get started. My hand went to my eye and rubbed it and an eyelash fell loose. I became fascinated with the fact that I could lose and eyelash and not feel it. I tugged on my eyelashes to see if more would come out and nothing happened. I went back to writing my report and the tugging on my eyelashes turned into pulling. I remember pulling a chunk of eyelashes out that night. Maybe I was naive, but I thought it would just grow back overnight. From that night on through fifteen years whenever I did homework or worked on a project I would pull out my eyelashes and when I did not have any of those to pull, I pulled out my eyebrow hairs as well. At times I did not know I was doing it, and sometimes I knew I was pulling but could not get myself to stop. If you had asked me at the time why I was pulling, I could not of answered, now I can tell you that it relieved my stress. Some people bite their nails, I pulled on my eyelashes.
When I was young I was so ashamed of the fact that I was pulling, that when I was asked about my lack of eyelashes from my parents, I lied and told them I didn't know what was happening. Eventually my parents realized that I was actively pulling them out, but at the time my parents had little to no resources about what was happening to me. As fate would have it, a few years after the trich began my mother happened to find an article in a magazine about hair pullers and trichotillomania. It was the first time we had a name for what I was doing to myself. It was a relief, I was tired of hearing, "why can't you just stop!". At the time we were offered medication as a treatment, but it did not help me, and eventually I was taken off the medication and my parents and I assumed that this is just how I was going to be. I did not seek treatment again until my twenties, and medication again was offered but a different kind, and again it did not work for me. Out of frustration and a lack of information I gave up. It took another few years for me to attempt to seek treatment again. This time I read about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on the Internet, and it was finally the answer I was looking for. I can't say when I was finally "over" trich, there was not a day that I simply stopped pulling. It was a gradual process where the urge to pull slowly went away. I do remember having one of those "light bulb" moments when I was in my late twenties and finishing my undergraduate program at San Diego State University. I was putting the finishing touches on a final paper for one of my classes when I realized I had made it through the editing of my paper without feeling the urge to pull or the need to use any of what I liked to call my "anti-pulling" techniques. The elation I felt at that moment was unlike anything I had felt before, I finally felt free. I think that somewhere in the back of my head I hold a fear that it could come back some day but as of today, I have approximately six pull free years under my belt.
