Tricky Trichotillomania

So, almost two years is a bit long to wait for a follow up blog post, but what can ya do?
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

Happy New Year!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! I can't believe a year has flown by!
NOTHING has gone as planned, but that's pretty normal. This time last year I was in Seattle, wondering what the next year would bring me, working at Deseret Book, and not entirely ready to leave for school! Then I had one of the hardest semesters of my life, seriously it was one thing after another! But we won't go into that at the moment! Then I met the love of my life. See, my personal plan had always been that I'd meet the guy I was going to marry in January, we'd date for about three months before he would ask me to marry him and then we'd get married in June. So every year when I wouldn't meet someone in January, I'd always figure, hey, maybe next year! So when I met Larry in April and ended up married in August, it would be an understatement to say I didn't see that one coming! But the Lord always has a better plan for us than we have for ourselves and Larry is better than anything I had EVER imagined or hoped for!
Then we figured we'd be living in Washington, I'd start work again at Deseret Book and Larry would find a job there. But, after we got married and went down to Arizona for the reception there, we realized that the Lord wanted us in Arizona. So we stayed down there. Now, not only was I sad that I couldn't work at Deseret Book (probably one of my favorite places, not gonna lie) but we also felt like I needed to stay home. Which, I wasn't very happy about. I wanted to work! Larry was gone all day and I needed something to do! But, it ended up being a great blessing. I figured out I actually kinda like to cook, I haven't had to worry about maintaining a job while I've been dealing with this stomach thing, I've rediscovered interests, and I've grown in so many ways I didn't know were possible! We have been so greatly blessed, even if I was just a little stubborn along the way...

So what's on the horizon for us next year?

I honestly have NO idea.
We weren't able to find a place to live in Rexburg before we left Arizona. But we packed up our belongings in good faith that the Lord would guide us the way we are supposed to go! We had a wonderful time on our mini honey moon in Disneyland! (Pictures at the end!) And we had a wonderful time visiting my oldest friend Caitlyn and her husband Brian. It's actually almost scary how well Brian and Larry get along! That certainly works out well!! Then we spent a few days with my parents for Christmas and it was wonderful to see them! We had planned on being in Washington for a while and getting to see some friends, but, as goes the story of my life, that wasn't what the Lord had in mind for us. So, we got two days in Washington before we felt strongly that we needed to go back to California. So here we are! We still haven't found a place in Rexburg and we don't know if that will be where we end up at all this semester. We have a few options in the works at the moment and we won't know till this week or maybe even next week what will happen, but the changes could potentially be huge, so stay tuned for those!
But, one of those changes starts here! I couldn't decide if the whole "Love" theme I had going here was cute or just annoying. I think that it might be annoying so I'm going to get rid of the "Loving xyz" blog title thing. Small change, I know, but we'll see how that works. Next, I've been trying to decide if I want to have a specific area that I have my blog focus on. Like a crochet blog, a quilting blog, an all things craft blog, a beauty blog, a blog about dealing with depression, ADD, and Trichotillomania (I may have spelled that wrong...sorry!) ect. I love all those things, they make me who I am, and honestly I'm still searching for a niche. But, hopefully I'll get some feedback from you and you'll let me know what YOU would like to read about. I'll be honest with you, I don't know everything in the world. I'm only starting out with crocheting and I honestly haven't ever even tried to quilt, and I'm still learning what works for me and what doesn't. But, I would love it if you would help me find out! I have a feeling that this year is going to be more difficult, but at the same time even better than the last! And I would love it if you took the ride with me!
SO!
Here's to a brand new year and all of the trials and all of the blessings it will bring! It's going to be great and I can't wait to share it with all of the people I love!
Have a wonderful New Years Eve! I'll see you next year!

Less Than Three,
Sarah

I had to post this because I love grumpy cat and this just made me chuckle.

Ya... he's that awesome.

They've reopened Sleeping Beauty's Castle!! I was sooooo excited!!

That is entirely made of legos! How crazy is that??

You know, it's a little sad when the Beast...is more..."endowed"...than Bell...

So, Caitlyn and I tried to make cookies last night, but my favorite recipe is in Arizona in a box that is waiting for us to have a place that it can be shipped to, so we found a recipe close to it, but something went wrong and they ended up SUPER crumbly and we accidentally dropped one and it exploded on the ground. I'm fairly certain a cookie isn't supposed to do that...

San Francisco!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Loving Lacking Secrets

Hi everyone!
So, here I am, blogging again. Two whole days in a row! Shocking isn't it? Today I wanted to share something that is very personal to me. I wouldn't even have thought of sharing it until I read this blog post by another blogger.

(http://www.littlemissmomma.com/2010/06/i-have-secret.html)

Her secret is my secret. It is laced with embarrassment, self loathing, and lots of denial. And I'm not going to lie, I am nervous as heck to be posting this! I am a shy and private person, but I feel the need to do this. So, here it goes!
My story begins my freshman year of high school. I remember the day I started to pull my hair out so clearly. I was sitting in English on the row closest to the teacher's desk and we were doing something on our own. I was thinking and started to fiddle with my hair when all of a sudden I found a strand that was thicker and wavy with a different texture than the rest of my hair. The feeling of that hair was so different and it intrigued me to run my fingers over it. So I pulled it out. That hour, sitting in that class, was destructive. By the end of the class I had a pile of hair on my lap which, I know, is disgusting, but I actually felt good. I had thick hair and it was always getting in my way. Even having pulled out that much, my hair was still thick, but it didn't feel as thick as it had and, sadly, I felt better. I went home that day and continued to pull. I remember, I didn't think it was gross or strange, I think I was more fascinated by this ability I had to just pull it out and it didn't hurt.
The sad thing about my, personal, situation is that, for me, it doesn't just stop at hair pulling. I also pull at my eyelashes and my eyebrows. I have fought with this for the past ten years and it has been devastating. While for a while it was intriguing and fascinating, it soon became my deepest darkest place. When I first started out, I would pull hair from all one spot, because it felt good. I don't know how that makes any sense, but it just felt relieving. So, I would end up with bald patches that I had to try to cover up. Which wasn't too hard at the beginning, but then I would have tufts of hair growing back and those were harder to hide. I look back at pictures of myself around that time and I can see the bumps in my hair. Eventually I began to pull at my eyelashes. For some reason it was like they would begin to itch and pulling them out was the only thing that would make the itch stop. When I had almost pulled out all of my eyelashes I learned about false eyelashes and I began to experiment with the piece lashes that could fill in where I had pulled holes in my eyelashes. I was deeply embarrassed by all of this. I didn't want anyone to notice. I honestly didn't really think of it as any kind of problem that I might have, I just thought it was something I did. Then came my eyebrows. I started pulling them because I hated plucking them. And it didn't hurt as much if I just used my fingers, so I did. Which also was fine for a little while, until it started to feel good to pull them out and I ended up with bald patches in them which I had to try to cover up with eye shadow.
I became a pro at covering it up. I figured out that if I pulled from somewhere in the middle of my hair that it wasn't as noticeable, that if I pulled a few from all over, I wouldn't end up with the bald patches. So I continued.
I honestly thought I was the only one who did this. I thought I was weird, disgusting, and I kinda gave up on myself and never expected anything better than the humiliation of pulling out my own hair.
When I hopelessly failed my first year of college because I honestly lacked the ability to get out of bed, I learned that I had depression. In high school I had been diagnosed with ADD (which, contrary to popular belief is much different than ADHD) and I had taken medication for it (which I honestly didn't feel helped me more than to make the tiniest of dents in my problems with school)but I had no idea that I might be dealing with depression. When I came home from my mission I started thinking about my depression and I realized that I must have had it most of my life since it is practically impossible for me to remember a time, before then, that I was actually, genuinely happy.
When I was about twenty one, I learned that my hair pulling was actually a disorder. And I wouldn't have had any idea until a dear friend of mine talked to me about it, because she had noticed and had actually seen or read something about a disorder that fit my symptoms.
That night I stayed up so late reading about Trichotillomania, sometimes referred to as Trich. I remember feeling so broken because I had one more thing wrong with me to add to the already long list. And yet, I still didn't do anything about it. Trichotillomania is a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and some people have been able to control theirs with medication. I have yet to have been able to control mine. Granted, I haven't tried any medications other than my anti depressants and ADD meds.
With Trich, there are individual triggers for each person who has it. I'm not entirely sure what mine are, but I know that most, if not all, of them start with stress. I'm still learning how to manage mine and how to not pull out my hair. I've had periods where I'll be really good about not doing it. Or I'll only pull my hair and leave my eyelashes and eyebrows alone. But those come and go. As I write this, I have holes in my eyelashes from where, weeks ago, I started to pull on them because I had mascara on them and I wanted it off. But, I haven't pulled out any hair for a few weeks.
There is light at the end of every tunnel. Just as I thought that I couldn't remember a time when I had ever been actually happy, now I can. Now, I am very happy, and I can remember so many happy times I've had since I've been home from my mission.
I guess that's another admission I should make, in the spirit of revealing secrets that I don't want to keep anymore. On my mission, I was very sick for most of it. Now when I say "sick" I do mean physically, but I also use this word to refer to my depression. To those of you who think that depression isn't an illness, as real as the flu, I'm sorry but you are tragically wrong. I wish that I could just decide how I want to feel. I wish that I could just let it go and not feel sad for no reason whatsoever at the most random of times. I wish that I could make the physical pain and exhaustion, caused by depression, just go away. But, most of the time, I can't because I don't have control of it. I do the best I can, I try to stay positive, I try to make myself do what I don't feel that I physically can. The dangerous part of that is, when I try to make myself do what I can't, it begins the spiral. I begin to feel bad about myself because I can't pull myself up and do the dishes, which brings on the depression even more and I feel more exhausted and deeply depressed. So it is thin line that I walk every single day. So, on my mission, many things happened that just aren't worth hashing out here, but my depression took great hold of me. My mission meant everything to me. I loved it. So I was devastated when, completely out of the blue, my mission president told me he thought it was time I go home because I wasn't going to get any better there. I didn't want to go home. I wanted to do what I had been called to do. The problem was, I couldn't physically do it at that moment. I remember being so frustrated because I KNEW I could finish my mission. I KNEW I could be a good missionary. But, as I knelt that night to ask the Lord what He would have me do, I got the most powerful answer I had received up to that point. And, as most of you know, I went home.
At the time, this was crushing. And, as I knew then but understand better now, the hair pulling was connected to the depression and I began to heal. On my mission, my Trich had been worse than it had been since about my junior year of high school. I barely had eyelashes, I barely had eyebrows, and I could not stop pulling my hair. But it DID get better. I went to school, and have since had some of the greatest times of my life. I'm married now, to the most wonderful man I have ever met and I am terribly happy. But the struggle still continues. I still fight to get myself up some days. I still battle the urge to pull my hair. But I am winning and that is all that matters. At least to me.
Why did I feel the need to share all of this with you? I'm not entirely sure, other than I know I was deeply inspired by that blog post and maybe there is someone out there who struggles with these same issues and just needs to know they are not alone. If there is one thing I've learned, it's that we are not as unique as we think we are. There is always ALWAYS at least one other person, if not more, in this world who has gone through what you are going through. No matter how rare. Now, our combinations of situations might be different but there is always ALWAYS ALWAYS someone who knows what you are going through. No matter if you are Christian or not, you are never alone. Whether you want to take that to mean some other person, or the Lord, you are never alone. Personally, I deeply believe in Christ and know that Heavenly Father is just that, my Heavenly Father and that he knows, loves, and cares about me. And that knowledge has gotten me through so much.
So, if this blog post serves no other reason than to let someone else know that they are not alone in this trial, that is reason enough for me to divulge some of my deepest, most personal, and embarrassing secrets.
I hope I haven't rambled too much, and I hope you don't see me any differently than you had before. I'm not crazy, I am not disgusting, and I am not a slacker. I am just me and I am grateful for that.

Less Than Three,
Sarah

Me my senior year of high school.

My husband and me dressed up for Halloween. Hope you all had a safe one!!