After I wrote "Loving Lacking Secrets" I was so touched by all of the support and great responses I got. It took me a while to respond to those kind words, and I can't remember if I responded back to everyone, but know that if you left a comment, wrote me a message, or said anything about the post, it made a huge difference to me and has given me the confidence to be so much more open.
You might be wondering "why now?" Why decide to write another blog post about trichotillomania now when you haven't said a word about it in so long?
Well, I stumbled across a video on youtube of a girl who also has trichotillomania.
But the difference between her and me is she isn't trying to hide it.
I am blown away by her bravery!
(You can watch her video about her journey here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiBIXMBEqgE )
Since seeing that video I have come across so many brave women and girls who are also not hiding, but are tackling their trich head on and raising awareness by talking about their struggles.
I found it so inspiring!
Did you know that about 4% or 1 in 50 people in America struggle with trichotillomania?
I sure didn't!
In my last post, I mentioned that it was considered an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Now it is apparently classified as an Impulse Control Disorder. Honestly, I don't know how comfortable I am with that change. It feels a bit obsessive and compulsive to me, it doesn't feel like an impulse.
Ok, quick overview for those who didn't read the first post about it.
What is trichotillomania? It is where I have the (I guess impulse, but we'll call it an) urge to pull my hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes out strand by strand.
I've had it since I was a freshman in high school (since I was about 14).
I guess what it really comes down to is, I feel like I'm on this journey to be much more accepting of myself and I feel like talking about this is one way I can accomplish that goal.
So we're going to take a quick trip down memory lane here. I tried to find pictures that you can see the evidence of my trich in, but it was very hard to do. There was no such thing as Facebook when I was in high school and camera phones were still relatively new, so there's a lack of pictures of me from when I wasn't so good at hiding it. Which I'm glad and sad about all at the same time.
Lets start before I began to pull.
I'm eight in this picture.
I always had long hair, my mom would put it in a long, thick braid down my back every day.
I would sit for hours most Saturday nights that I remember while my mom painstakingly put it all into foam rollers so it would be curly on Sunday morning for church.
Like this.
My hair has always been my favorite feature, the part of me I was most proud of. Yet at the same time, in the last 12 years, it has also been the thing I hate the most about myself.
This is about a year-ish before I started to pull my hair out. I can't tell you how much I wish I had never started.
I remember the day I began pulling clearly, as if it was even just earlier today.
Probably because every day that I pull feels like I've begun all over again. The emotions never really change.
I was sitting in English class with Mrs. Bartollo... oh gosh does anyone else remember her? That class was crazy!
Anyway, and I just sort of started to pull my hair out.
It didn't hurt.
In fact, there was something satisfying about it.
So I kept doing it.
By the end of the class, I had a pile of hair on my lap that I threw on the ground, hoping no one would notice and say anything about.
When I got home, I opened up my Math book, but instead of working on my homework, I piled hair on top of it as I pulled it out.
It's strange to look back at some pictures from high school and see how thick my hair still was. Even though I had bald patches underneath and around the crown of it.
I can't find any pictures of me when I was pulling out my eyelashes and eyebrows from this time, but I remember trying to hide it with makeup and false eyelashes and being mortified when anyone would ask me if I was wearing false eyelashes.
I even remember lying once and saying that I wasn't (it was pretty dang obvious that I was...they were thick, stage eyelashes).
There's my big confession for the day I guess! Haha!
I remember after a performance (I was big into theater in high school) my dad was standing with me and my friends and he leaned in close to me and looked at my eyelashes and commented that I had been pulling them out.
I don't know if you even remember that dad! I know you didn't mean anything by it, it was just an observation, but when people did things like that and said something, I felt like I was dying from the embarrassment!
Thankfully, that's all I ever really heard about it. No one teased me about it, no one pointed it out, no one bullied me, no one shunned me, or avoided me (that I know of) in high school and for that, I am so grateful.
Because so many girls with this are!
For me, the problem ebbs and flows.
Sometimes it's worse than others.
Mostly it gets worse with stress and bouts of depression.
I have it all the time though.
Today I probably pulled out about 5-10 strands.
It was a good day for me.
As I was reading about other people's experiences with it, I kept coming across people keeping track of how many days they have been "pull free"
Pull free is a foreign concept to me right now.
Meaning, there hasn't been a day in the past 12 years that I haven't pulled my hair.
That was pretty crazy to realize!
This is me at 20.
Six years of pulling had left my hair thinner than it would naturally be, and much more brittle.
As you twist and pull your hair, it begins to break off. That makes sense now, but I had no clue then. I was just constantly frustrated with the insane amount of split ends I seemed to always always have.
Please excuse the face I was making in this one! (Be advised: this is NOT a "duck face". This is my "I look like a muppet" face.)
This is right before I went on my mission.
I had done a fairly good job of keeping out of my hair that year, you can tell because it looks semi even and full. My eyelashes were even doing pretty well and so were my eyebrows.
This was certainly a high point in my struggle with trich.
I chopped my hair off in my first area on my mission. I was in a biking area, in Florida, in July and August and I thought I was going to be there for much longer than I was, so I cut it all off. Biking with crazy long, thick hair, and a helmet is not an excellent combination. It's actually kinda gross.
I so wish I hadn't cut it.
I moved areas in September to one with a car and I began to hate the short hair. I didn't feel pretty with it. My self esteem really took a hit and I began to pull a lot again.
This is me the summer of 2011.
My mission president had told me about a year and a half earlier that it was time to go home because my depression wasn't going to get any better there.
You can see the effects of that and school (I had done a semester at BYU and BYU-Idaho -where I had pulled a 4.0 semester for the first time in my life) in the thickness (or lack thereof) of my braid and the wispy hairs at the top of my head.
This is by far the worst I have seen it.
I didn't know it was so bad at the time.
I remember braiding my hair and wondering why my braid started so thick at the top, but ended up being so short and thin at the bottom.
Even I didn't know how bad it was.
When I met Larry in April of 2012, I honestly can't remember how I was doing with the pulling, but I can see the damage that I was doing/had done to my hair in these pictures.
My hair isn't frizzy normally, so all of that frizz that you see is regrowth from places where I had previously pulled out my hair.
After we were married, I picked up crocheting again. It was a small side hobby of mine before, but I really started going at it then. I started really getting into it partially because I had a lot of stomach issues probably due to stress and so it killed two birds with one stone, so to speak. It kept my mind off of stress which made my stomach hurt so bad I couldn't get out of bed, and it kept my hands out of my hair.
But simply having a hobby hasn't cured it.
This is last August. I was pregnant and I had been really pulling at my hair and my eyebrows. You can see the damage I did to my right eyebrow, I tried to hide it with makeup and my bangs, but I think this particular day we were running late and I had forgotten to shadow the area like I usually did.
One thing about pregnancy, it made my hair crazy crazy thick!
I forgot just how thick till I looked at that picture again!
But, when you nurse, if you aren't careful about your nutrition (and sometimes even if you are careful about it) your hair can start to fall out. Since I don't think I've been careful about nutrition a day in my life, mine started to fall out like crazy. So that, combined with the trich has stolen all of that thick gorgeous hair from me!
It's so weird to look at that picture and then to look at this one:
I don't know if anyone else can see the difference, but I certainly can.
And it makes me so sad.
You might be thinking "Well, why don't you just stop? If you hate it so much, why are you doing it? Don't say you can't, that's just giving up. You are doing this to yourself, don't play a victim."
I don't know how exactly to explain this.
It isn't something that I can just stop. And when I hear that, all I can think is "there's something wrong with me" which begins the vicious cycle- There's something wrong with me, why can't I just be like everyone else, I don't like myself, then the depression sets in, and the self loathing turns into pulling, which breads more self loathing, why can't I stop, look at what I've done to myself- rinse and repeat.
I hope I don't come across as a victim, because I absolutely don't think of myself that way.
There are SO many who struggle with this who have had to shave their heads because the bald patches are so bad, who are mistaken for chemo patients because they have no hair, eyelashes, or eyebrows.
Now, I'm not saying those women are weak, are you kidding? These are the women who are speaking up about it, who are posting pictures of themselves without hair, and makeup. These are some of the bravest women I have ever heard of.
The fact that I haven't ever reached the point of needing to shave my head is a small personal victory.
That is a fight I have won so far and that I keep on fighting every day.
This isn't just about self control.
I don't fully understand why I do it. But I know that when I do, a small part of me feels soothed but agitated all at the same time. Sometimes, I feel better when I do it. I feel comforted. So I keep going.
One of the biggest things people think is helpful to someone who has trich is to tell them to stop pulling when they are around them.
While I understand the thought, if you draw attention to it maybe that can help stop the behavior, it actually hurts more than helps.
For a few reasons, one: I'm frightfully stubborn and independent and when someone tells me to stop doing something...I want to do it all the more, two: I just feel embarrassed and I start thinking about pulling, and it takes that much more effort not to do it.
As I was researching about trichotillomania, I came across a few sites and people with suggestions on how to stop, or how they want to find a cure.
That was a really interesting thought for me and it forced me to consider a very important question that, surprisingly, had never crossed my mind before.
Getting better. Not having a problem any more. "Pull free" days.
But do I want to get better? Do I want this to change.
I'm honestly disturbed by the first thing that came to mind.
No!
I realized that it's comforting to me, it's like my security blanket, it's soothing to me. That's a thought that's festering!
I'd like to change that. I don't want to rely on this condition to make me feel good.
I'm a little disgusted with myself for thinking that I do.
So that's something I want to change.
And while I work on that, I hope you won't mind if I do a few more updates from here on out, if I talk more about it.
I think it's something worth talking about, and learning about.
I hope you'll ask me questions, if you have them. That might even force me to learn more about my condition!
I was so nervous to publish my first post. I was worried people would think I was strange, or creepy, or damaged.
I was so scared, I was physically shaking when I pushed the "Publish" button!
But I was met with so much love and understanding, no one was mean or hurtful, that this time I'm going to push that "Publish" button with so much confidence.
Thank you for that!
I hope you have found this interesting and have maybe even learned something.
Bottom line, everyone is struggling with something. We all hide things we are uncomfortable with in our lives, and they effect us all in different ways. So please, always speak with kindness, always be sensitive to those around you.
I read something that said, with the statistic being 1 in every 50 people have trichotillomania, that means the likelihood of there being more than one person on your friends list with this is pretty great! But not everyone is ready to talk about it.
So please, be loving and kind to everyone around you!
Thank you!
Less Than Three,
Sarah
P.S. This doesn't just effect women, about 80-90% with trich are women, that still leaves 20-10% who are men. Just thought I'd make sure to note that this is not a disorder that only women deal with on a daily basis.
P.P.S. I found this article that is titled "5 Things to Know When Dating Someone with Trichotillomania" but, honestly, I think it is good advice for when you're friends with someone with trichotillomania. So check it out: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sandy-rosenblatt/5-things-to-know-when-dating-someone-with-trichotillomania_b_3963146.html
