Verified by 
Conventional medicine is very helpful with many problems. But if your frustration is building because you are not getting the help you are hoping for, it may be time to add some new tools.
Much of my practice focuses on psychodermatology, bringing bio-behavioral tools to skin problems, but both the Quiz below and the tools I teach people also apply to many gastro-intestinal, back, gynecological, and other stress related problems.
While heredity, bacteria, viruses, hormones, and chemical irritants play a clear role in many skin conditions, mind and body always do an intricate dance together.
Rather than dividing illness into "emotional" or "psychosomatic" and "physical," I see emotions as one factor in all skin problems. Some skin problems are like the common experience of blushing: a emotional event produces a direct and dramatic change in the skin. Emotional stress may be the sole cause of a few symptoms, but is more typically a trigger of the flare-ups of an on-going medical condition.
Emotional factors can also sometimes cause, and frequently heighten, itching, and pain even when the physical disease itself remains unchanged. All skin problems have emotional impact, sometimes a life-changing one, regardless of cause.
Behavioral problems like compulsive skin picking and trichotillomania (hair pulling) would seem to be more clearly psychological, but they have genetic, hormonal, and other physical sides as well.
Emotional turmoil can keep even the most high tech and usually effective treatments from working.
How important is the emotional stress factor in your illness? The more of these questions you answer yes, the more significant its role.
Ask yourself:
1. Do your symptoms get worse--or better--with emotional turmoil?
2. Is your condition more stubborn, severe, or recurrent than your doctor expects?
3. Are usually effective treatments not working for you?
4. Do most treatments work but not for long?
5. Is each disappearing symptom quickly replaced with another?
6. Do your symptoms get better or worse in a very erratic, seemingly nonsensical way?
7. Do you see striking ups and downs in your symptoms with changes in your social environment: vacations, hospitalizations, business trips, or the comings of family members or bosses?
8. Do people find you strikingly stoic, unruffled, or computer like in the face of stressful life events?
9. Is your level of distress and concern about your problem strikingly high or conspicuously absent?
10. Is your skin worse in the morning, suggesting that you rub or scratch unintentionally at night?
11. Do you have trouble following your health care provider's instructions?
12. Do you do things you know will hurt your skin, such as picking or scratching, squeezing pimples, or overexposing yourself to sunlight?
13. Do you feel excessively dependent on your dermatologist or excessively angry with him or her? (Even if the faults are real, are you overreacting?)
14. Does it seem that others notice improvements in your skin before you do? Is it hard for you to acknowledge when your skin has improved?
The more of these questions you answered positively, the more likely a candidate you are for getting help from psychological techniques. This approach can provide:
1. Exercises to help you focus on the hidden role of your emotions in the disease itself. Are they causing, triggering, or heightening outbreaks? You'll learn to know yourself and use this knowledge to make your skin better.
2. Techniques to reduce itching, scratching, picking, burning, and pain, regardless of their source.
3. A systematic method to reduce the emotional impact of your illness so you can cope better and suffer less while your skin improves.
There is a substantial body of research, including many well-controlled studies, documenting how helpful these techniques can be. Relaxation, imaging, focused psychotherapy, biofeedback, and hypnosis and self-hypnosis, have all proven their value. Mainstream doctors are more and more receptive as the newer research documents not only the techniques effectiveness, but the specific physiological mechanism that allow the techniques to work. Enhanced bloodflow, various immune system mechanisms, and stress hormones are often involved.
Emotional stress can keep the most effective medical treatment from working. Yet the same mind-body link, when it is working FOR you, can produce dramatic improvements. Often the people who are most vulnerable to the down side of mind body interaction, are most adept at using it positively.
Which problems are Skin Deep techniques most effective for?
-acne
- allergies of the skin
- alopecia
- canker sores
- eczema
- herpes (oral and genital)
- hives
- pain and burning
- picking
- psoriasis
- rosacea
- scratching
- shingles
-trichotillomania (hair pulling)
- vitiligo
- warts
For more information see my site and my book Skin Deep: A Mind/Body Program for Healthy Skin.
