“For each illness that doctors cure with medicine, they provoke ten in healthy people by injecting them with a virus that is a thousand times more powerful than any microbe: the idea that one is ill.” –Proust

The idea that something is an illness is a terribly contagious message of powerlessness more overwhelming than any germ. It infects one’s mind. Reflect on this as you answer the following questions:

• How does it help to believe that trich is an illness or an incurable compulsive behavior?
• How does this belief empower you (or your hair pulling child)?
• How does it improve your life (or that of your hair pulling child)?
• If you didn’t believe this, how would it change your approach to hair pulling?

How long will you continue to feel your guilt and shame for not being perfect?

How long will you mentally beat yourself over the head for not being able to stop your compulsion or addiction as others think you should?

Most of the time you believed the notion that if you were just normal, you would be able to stop this “ridiculous, self-abusive” behavior.  To continue in your personal process of healing you need to first forgive yourself.

Toxic Belief:

I’m a bad person if I can’t or don’t forgive. So I must force myself to do it, which doesn’t feel right and never works. I must conclude that forgiveness is a big load of b.s.

Pull-Free, At Last! Antidote

I can easily achieve Real Forgiveness: a naturally occurring process that comes about by fully honoring (not necessarily acting on, but accepting) my feelings.

There are many books that I recommend you read on your road to recovery. They all have the same crucial message (and probably many more) in common. And that is, “You must be able to imagine yourself to be in the place where you wish to end up.” In this case, you must be able to see yourself beyond hairpulling in order to heal it. I will emphatically state that one more time. To heal, you must be able to see yourself permanently free of pulling out your hair!

The only place you can find your own troublesome perspectives and beliefs is inside of you.

Connect inside to your feelings.

While you may be connecting with feelings about what others have done to you in the past, never forget that it’s not about what REALLY happened; it’s about YOUR PERCEPTION of what happened, what you began to believe because of it and how you chose to ACT based on that belief.

Dreams can be profound.

Hidden within the seeming chaos are gems of information regarding your “issue of the day.”

Consider that each character or object in the dream represents a part of you.  What is your dream attempting to communicate to you about the issues that are up for you to heal in your life?  Your dreams provide valuable clues to working through many issues if you can learn to decipher them.

When your intuition speaks to you, follow its advice.

Does it want you to go away for a few days?

To try acupuncture?

To poke around the shelves at your local bookstore or get a massage?

The more you can tap into and listen to your intuition, the quicker you will release yourself from your hair pulling.

At times on a healing journey it is critical not only to become silent on the inside but to have silence from outside sources as well.

The most nurturing gift you can give yourself is a day of complete quiet just sitting with and honoring your feelings.

Because you’ve been taught to contain your anger, you’re unaware that what you are holding in so tightly is the cause of much of your emotional and physical distress.

Most hair pullers have no role models for seeing and honoring the appropriate expression of this superbly powerful and productive emotion. Appropriate release of long repressed anger is the key to accessing your personal power and to improving your self-esteem.

Pull out a hair; slide it through your fingers.

Feel the texture.

Crunch the root between your teeth and discard the hair.

Maybe the next hair will be “the one!”

This one isn’t.

And neither is the next.

On to another pull.

This just has to be it-the one that’s going to satisfy so much that you’ll never have to pull again!

But it’s not.

In fact, it’s a disappointment-”a wasted pull”.

Maybe the next one will be it.

When will enough be enough?  The next hair will never be enough because it’s not really what you’re looking for.