Trichotillomania

I wrote this for another site I use, but I thought I’d share it here.

What is it?
Trichotillomania, or Trich, is an impulse control disorder where the person has a difficult to control urge to pull out their hair (e.g. head hair or eyebrows/eyelashes) and from this receives a feeling of pleasure. It can also be described as self- harming behaviour. Trich is an official psychiatric disorder, which can be characterised by noticeable recurrent hair loss; a feeling of tension before pulling out the hair or trying to resist and a feeling of pleasure when the hair is pulled; the Trich can’t be accounted for by another medical condition and finally, the act causes significant distress in functioning. The distress can be caused by unwanted attention, guilt and low self esteem from doing it.

Why do it?
Because it feels good, and sometimes it’s an impulse you don’t even realise you’re doing.
Who does it?
Facts and figures are far and few between, but it is thought around 1 in 50 people suffer from Trichotillomania. Pulling is 5 to 10 times more common in girls around the ages of 12 and 13 than boys.
I’m a trich. I’ve pulled my hair out since I was about 11/12 (I’m now 19) and throughout this time, especially during high school, I was frequently bullied for my lack of eyebrows and eye lashes. I always knew I was doing something bad, especially because my parents would ‘have words’ with me about my lack of lashes and how it wasn’t healthy etc but I always kept going, just I wouldn’t do it publicly. A couple of years ago, I realised how it was affecting me: everyone in my family has long, thick lashes whilst I had none, so I wanted to stop. I was given advice to keep my nails short, put Vaseline/oil on my lashes and to just resist the urge. None of this worked, but what I have found is that if I’m aware of the whole thought process I can do it less. I’m working down to doing it less and less, but it’s very difficult; for me nothing rivals the feeling.
Resources
Trich isn’t a well known about condition, even medical type people aren’t wholly aware of it, so there is very little information around on it, but try googleing if need be.