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Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors
Feeling Freaky Without a Costume
When people respond negatively to those who pull their hair or pick their skin.
Posted October 30, 2019 Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
We’ve seen all the reactions. Those of us with a body-focused repetitive behavior (BFRB) have encountered the stares, noticed the grimaces, and even heard the “ews” of people who find actions like pulling out hairs or picking at skin unpleasant. That’s a large part of why most of us go to great lengths to hide our behavior. Who wants to admit that the bald spot on her head is something she made? Or that the scabs on his arms are something he created? We cover up, deny, cry in shame.
The heartbreaking stories of these three individuals illustrate how lack of knowledge about BFRBs makes it challenging for the disorders to be recognized and treated as what they are: a diagnosable medical condition.
Lindsay, age 19: "I've always felt like a freak for my hair pulling, though it's a lot better now that I know that lots of others do it as well. It was so much worse when I thought I was alone. You want to hear how crazy it got? In grade school, not long after I started pulling, I developed a pretty bad cough. Because I was swallowing some of my hair, which was pretty long at the time, I thought I must have had a hair stuck in my throat, or maybe a few of them. After a couple of days of serious coughing, my mom announced that she was taking me to the doctors the next day. I totally freaked out and pleaded with her not to take me, I cried about it, and told her I would just refuse to go. She must've thought I was out of my mind, and finally said, ‘You are going whether you like it or not.’
The rest of the day was torture, and I was crying into my pillow that night when the solution came to me in a flash. When the doctor saw the hair in my throat, I would simply tell him ‘I guess I got that from licking my cat.’ Brilliant, huh? Luckily, when examined I just had strep throat, and I never had to use my alibi.”
Naomi, age 29: “I started pulling around the age of ten or 11. My mom and dad were all over me: ‘Get your hands off your hair.’ ‘What are you trying to do to yourself?’ ‘Are you trying to make yourself look like a freak?’ I couldn't stop, they didn't understand that I couldn’t, and soon the whole house became a war zone.
Maybe I would've been the rebellious type anyway, but since I couldn't please them, I was determined to live my own life as I damn well pleased. My pulling became an act of defiance, and my relationship with my parents was a daily battle for control, and pulling became my way of winning the battles.
My grades plummeted, my friends were now ‘the wrong types,’ and in a year or two I was an almost-bald teen who was smoking, drinking, shoplifting and experimenting with sex. My parents were beside themselves and I felt like a mess. I really believe that it was hair pulling that set me down that path. I wanted to stop as much as my parents wanted me to. But by the time I was sixteen I was wearing a bandanna to cover my well-plucked head, living a life that often left both of my parents in tears, and really going nowhere with that ‘rebel without a cause’ thing.”
Sal, age 28: “Like everyone else, I guess, I squeezed my zits when I was a teenager. Don’t most teenagers do that? Maybe I had more pimples than the rest of the kids in school, but I’m not even sure that's true. But I do know I spent hours in front of the mirror trying to squeeze out every imperfection--blackheads, whiteheads, red spots, bumps, and even squeezing at healthy skin.
Being a teenager is hard enough. Try being a teenager nicknamed ‘Pizza Face.’ I stopped going to high school in my junior year. The school counselor told my parents I suffered from something called ‘School Refusal.’ He was wrong, but my parents took me to a school refusal specialist. Funny how the evidence was right in front everybody's eyes, but no one talked about it and I certainly didn't bring it up. They gave me a bunch of different drugs. I got therapy from one therapist after another. I thought they were all a bunch of jerks.
It was so simple: why couldn’t they guess that I didn't want my face seen in public. Actually, one counselor almost hit it right on the head. He was blunt and just came right out with it. He said, ‘I think your acne makes it hard for you to face people in school.’ I just shook my head no. He was close, but what he missed was that most of the damage was self-inflicted. I just couldn't own up to that. That night I cried myself to sleep because I knew I missed a chance that might never come again.”
If you find yourself pulling out your eyelashes, biting your nails to the quick, squeezing your skin until it bleeds, day after day, to the point where it is interfering with your life, you might have a BFRB disorder. I encourage you to read the Getting Started Guide from The TLC Foundation for Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.
It might help you say the following to people who tell you to 'just stop:'
"I’d like to, but I can’t do it alone."
Special thanks to my colleagues, Charles Mansueto, Ph.D., Ruth Golomb, LCPC and Sherrie Vavrichek, LCSW-C of the Behavior Therapy Center of Greater Washington, Silver Spring, MD, for sharing these stories from patients at their clinic.
