Trichotylomania

I don't remember the first time I did it or why I did it but when I was about 17 years old I started pulling my hair out.  It was a very stressful time in my life - my older brother was at his worst in being emotionally abusive to every member of the family and my baby brother was just about to be born not to mention I was about to graduate from high school with no plan what so ever - I knew I didn't want to go to college (at least not right away) but I had no clue what I wanted to do instead.  I just couldn't handle it so I went to bed one night and didn't get out of it for a week, it was the closest I could bring myself to dying I just removed my life instead of ending it.

Eventually my parents got me in to see a therapist and a psychiatrist, had I resisted one more day they were going to have me involuntarily commited so that I could get treatment.  Both the therapist and the psychiatrist told me one thing I already knoew - that I was depressedand had an anxiety disorder, the thing they told me that I didn't know was that the fact that I pulled my hair out (I had a nice big bald spot by then) was not that uncommon and in fact had a big fancy name - trichotylomania, and that it was related to OCD.  After 6 months of paxil I was okay, back to where I had been before anyway and so I ditched the pills as soon as I could, they just made me feel so robotic - I couldn't stand it.

The depression I can manage, it comes back sometimes and I have always managed to find someway past it, the anxiety has subsided enough for me to function, but the trich just won't go away.  I find myself with my hands in my hair more often than not, and when I realize it I can't always make myself stop right away, but it is not the handfuls a day that it used to be and I no longer have a bald spot but I think that I will spend the rest of my life pulling my hair out and cringing everytime someone talks about being so stressed out that they were pulling their hair out.

The funny thing is - I can't bring myself to pluck my eyebrows.