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.

I believe that it’s important to explore your family history.  Not for the purpose of blaming anyone, but to heal the perceptions which led you to become and remain a hair puller.

You were raised in a certain environment.  You observed that environment and made decisions about it.  You decided something about your own self-worth based on what you perceived.

Many of your perceptions originated at a very young age.  Some of them were harmful to you in that all that a young child with few resources can do is blame himself in the face of emotional pain.  Then you took those painful perceptions and acted on them, even made decisions based upon them.  Now those decisions, many of which you’ve forgotten, must be rooted out and updated in order to honor who you truly are rather than the distorted image of who you thought you were, for example, at age three.

If your upbringing was like mine, you received messages about how being yourself and just doing what you naturally did might hurt others. You received messages about how your inability to be perfect got you punished.

• Did you put your authentic reactions aside out of fear of doing the wrong thing or not being enough?
• Did you learn to caretake others and forsake yourself?
• Did you begin to tiptoe through life?

Changing your life to pacify those around you is painful for you and doesn’t help others in the end.

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.