Why Do I Pull? (Because You Have Trich)

Why do I pull? Why can't I stop?  Would you ask yourself this over and over if you had type 1 diabetes? No you would not.  You pull because you have trich and if you have trich, you have urges and you can't stop because you haven't accepted that you have trich and continue to cling to the idea that you "should" be able to stop.

As long as you blame yourself for having trich, you'll have an impossible roadblock in your recovery. It is not anyone's fault that they have trichotillomania or dermatillomania, no matter what well-meaning friends, boyfriends and girlfriends, spouses, parents or anyone else tells you. Even if your pulling is so unconscious that you aren't actually aware of what the urge feels like (when it's not being satisfied), the urges are there.  As long as you tell yourself over and over how sick, gross, horrid and disgusting pulling or picking is, you are making it harder and harder to get better.

Yes, I know you want your hair back, or your skin clear. Of course you do. And I know you're frustrated with the situation. But that's not the same as constantly beating yourself up about it. The opposite of that, feeling like a victim, is just the other side of the same useless coin. Poor me, I have trich, that means I'm ugly and awful and no one will love me.

Well that's just not TRUE. There are millions of people with trich and millions of people with trich who have people who love them. What's more true is you devalue yourself because you have trich and push people who maybe could love you because you don't want to tell them your horrible secret. I can tell you right now that I've been party to hundreds of people's stories about telling a partner or a friend the truth about their trich or derm. In 99% of the cases, partners (mostly men) have said things like, I love you, not your hair; and I support you in recovery because it bothers you so much, but it makes no difference in how much I love you or how beautiful I think you are.

One woman said that telling men she dated about trich before she slept with them was her jerk-detector. Any guy who had a negative reaction to her having trich, she broke it off with them before it went any further.

So WHY you pull is simple. You have trich. It has a genetic basis and produces urges like itches that the body responds to. (In the case of picking there is a similar mechanism at work, but there is usually an additional issue of wanting one's skin to be perfect.)

In the same way you would scratch if you had an itch, no matter how determined you are not to, if you have urges to pull, your body will unconsciously react while you're distracted. Nearly all pullers pull their hair out when they are reading, studying, watching TV, on the phone, driving, at the computer and perhaps in the bathroom. Often there isn't anything wrong at these times, it's simply that your guard is down and the urge has the chance to be satisfied.

The reason I'm going on about this is so you won't. One of the steps to recovery is to STOP asking yourself WHY you pull.  If you did have Type I diabetes, it wouldn't be a matter of why but a matter of what. What do I do so I can be healthy? Not, I SHOULD be able to reverse the condition and NOT have it. I shouldn't have diabetes. That won't help you at all. The condition of having trich is a compulsive desire to pull out hair and the inability to stop. Quit asking WHY you have trich and stop telling yourself you SHOULD be able to stop, and start asking What do I do since I have trich and it's causing me pain? Getting away from the why to the what is progress.