Many parents of hair-pulling children feel at a loss as to how they can help their child or teenager with trichotillomania. What is the most important thing you can do to help? Remove your focus on the actual hair-pulling and try to better understand the reason for this behavioral addiction. Learn how today!

Parent Tip: The most powerful way to help your child is to model healthy expression and handling of your own emotions.

Many hair pullers struggle with intense anxiety and many believe that this anxiety is the cause of trichotillomania. However, my advanced students and I disagree. We found that trichotillomania was less the cause of our anxiety, but used by the hair puller as a tool to dampen anxiety.

Chronic anxiety is the result of unfinished emotions. My mom was a chronic worrier and I was trained from an early age to take up the cause, which I did well. When I finally began to own and complete my own feelings, my anxiety plummeted. This is the most effective way to end anxiety! We are proving this within my Women’s Unversity where students are reporting a reduction in anxiety of 50% or more!

As a parent, the more you take ownership and allow your own feelings, the more you will reduce your own anxiety levels and help your child to do the same. This will assist everyone in your family to own their own inner experience.

Here are a few of the characteristics of the compulsive hair pulling child’s perspective on the family:

In childhood, we each felt abandoned and on our own without adequate skills or guidance.  We struggled with, now how to thrive, but truly how even to survive.  Our families were chaotic and volatile.  It was difficult to find any sense of peace.  Other family members became angry or upset if we voiced our own needs.  We learned to keep them to ourselves if we recognized a need at all. Hair pulling was a way for us to deal with the chronic anxiety that came from shoving ourselves aside in this way.

Now, more than ever, you may be asking yourself, how is it possible to have any hope at all of ending my child’s hair pulling?  But frankly, hope is just another four-letter word unless it is backed up with a six-letter word, action.  You can have all the hope in the world, but unless, and until, you take action, you and your child will remain exactly right where you are now.

Therefore, I implore you, do not just hope, take action.  You, and only you, are the key to your child’s freedom.

Have you searched relentlessly to find an answer as to why your child pulls her hair out?  Your child may have already endured the associated side effects of many different drugs, behavior therapy sessions and more.  Still, none of it has worked effectively or permanently.

You’re watching years of bald spots, eyebrows or eyelashes come and go.  You’re watching your child struggle and suffer.  You’ve been waiting for medical science to come up with a cure for your child for too long now.

Well, right here, right now, before you try anything else,

I am handing you back your power!

The circumstances of your life, your style of relating to others, your parenting style and your relationship with your spouse/partner has likely contributed to your child’s hair pulling problem.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel.   If you have contributed to your child’s trichotillomania, there is a greal deal that you can do about it.

Many children with trichotillomania have learned to withhold their brilliance and deny their feelings. But feelings don’t just go away.  Unfinished feelings stay inside waiting for eventual release.  They return at inconvenient times and create a lot of problems later in life, particularly in relationships.  One can only hold so many of them inside without creating more and more problems in your life.

Your hair pulling has helped you to cope with them.

Do you know about the dangers of swallowing hair?

Surprisingly enough, not enoughparents of compulsive hairpullers do. Because hair cannot be digested, it can lead to serious medical issues for your child – and in severe cases it could be fatal. For more information please read >> Dangers of swallowing hair

Are you a parent of a hair pulling child? My guide for parents of trichotillomania sufferers is still available and continues to be a helpful guide to parents:

New Parent Guide for Hair Pulling Children

The guide offers helpful tips and action plans for parents who want to help a hair pulling child.