I recently read this from a practitioner who treats trichotillomania sufferers,

“It is not necessary for you to find or know the cause of your hair pulling.”

Whoa! While this sounds good on the surface, there’s a big problem with it.

Also, if you don’t learn the cause of your pulling, how can you be sure that the problem is solved and you will never pull again? You’ll always be powerless with your trichotillomania and with those whom you rely on to help you stop pulling.

Feeling powerless nearly always leads to more hair pulling. This is why my goal is to empower you by continually providing you with the real inside scoop about trichotillomania. So let’s get started!

It’s crucial to understand that for many, trichotillomania, becomes a best friend. Over time, like many close relationships, it both comforts and wounds. Too often, hair pullers, parents and professionals simply want to get rid of the problem without listening to what is being revealed by trichotillomania.

On average, for my students, compulsive hair pulling meets 50-75 important needs. Here is a very brief list of how trichotillomania meets just one of a hair puller’s most important needs. Unlike many other relationships in a puller’s life, hair pulling:

• provides 100% unconditional acceptance.

For those who’ve been pulling for months, hair pulling is a primary relationship, even possibly the primary relationship in the hair puller’s life.

• never abandons, always welcomes, never lets the hair puller down and keeps its ‘promises’.

Unlike many of our parents, spouses and even in our self-relationship, when hair pulling promises to help you “zone out”, provide an adrenaline high, or to just shove your uncomfortable feelings into the background, it follows through and delivers.

• is the ONE place where many hair pullers feel they can be totally themselves.

It has no uncomfortable or impossible expectations of the hair puller. It only asks for one more pull which feels good and is easy to do.

• always pays attention to the hair puller.

Some hair pullers were ‘lost’ children in families with illness, neglect, problems or chaos. Stressed out parents don’t always realize that in the midst of on-going family problems, both parents are in emotional turmoil and a child may feel she’s lost both parents.

• makes the intolerable, tolerable.

Many hair pullers are highly-sensitive types who feel trapped in unhappy situations with no way out. We had to find a way survive without going crazy. The important thing to note is that for highly-sensitive hair pullers, pulling makes life tolerable. Please don’t minimize this!

• allows the hair puller to feel included in some area of her life.

For the hair pulling child or teen who feels terribly left out of the loop either in the family or with peers, trich can soothe the inner pain and allow the puller to get through today so she can move on to tomorrow.

More on Trichotillomania: the Inside-Outs

You are not alone.

Most pullers mistakenly believe that this is what keeps the behavior from going completely out of control.  After 25 years of compulsive hairpulling.  I was not even aware of my mind’s constant judgment of my compulsive behavior.  It was so ingrained, so automatic, that I rarely noticed it going on beneath the surface of my conscious mind.  When I became aware and began to question it, I realized that I had always believed it was this judgment that kept me “in line.”

Violence against women and children is the most prevalent human rights violation
globally — and this violence teaches children it’s OK, even moral, to use force to impose
one’s will.

The core common theme that I see within my hair pulling student’s childhood stories is one of an out of balance (and often out of control) power dynamic within the family. We must begin to understand that the way our culture, and consequently the family, views and handles power is at the very core of the rising numbers of trichotillomania sufferers.

Hair pullers are very sensitive to imbalances of power and they use their compulsive behavior to regulate their emotional reactions to issues around power.

The next time you find yourself on a hair pulling jag take a look to see if either of these scenarios fit. Even subtle situations apply:

1. Do you feel that someone else inappropriately bullied or belittled you in some way and you felt unable to stand up for yourself?Some time spent hair pulling helps you to regulate and manage your feelings of worthlessness.
2. Did you verbally or physically bully someone else?Hair pulling helps you to regulate and manage your feelings of guilt and shame over your own inappropriate behavior.

What can we learn about ending compulsive hair pulling from ancient healing rites?

Long ago in cultures lost to us, “anyone who had suffered loss of health in any way was not treated with external remedies.  In most cases they were taken to the temple and put into a king of sleep.”  The distressed or ill would venture to the nearest temple where priestesses placed them into a deep trance-like sleep and brought on powerful healing.  The symbols of geometry and numerology were used in this work.

So, can art utilizing geometric symbols and numbers and other images help to heal trichotillomania?

Art therapists have long known that art can help us to shift things within the psyche.  Any tool that has the possibility to assist the process and doesn’t harm is worth a try.  Art that you create for yourself can help you to heal by bypassing your rational mind and “interacting” directly with the deeper levels of your being.  This deeper place is where healing must take place to be truly effective.  In simpler words, it can help you break through your stuck places.

The true healing journey is a creative process.

1. Achieving healing is your responsibility and yours alone. No one else can do this for you.
2. The goal is to heal the perceptions that keep you in the destructive hair pulling cycle.
3. Any sincere request to see the truth will drop you into self-healing.
4. Healing occurs when you complete and release your trapped emotional energy.
5. After healing, your resolve to remain free may continue to be tested.

Be assured…you have everything inside of you that you need in order to heal.

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. -Bertrand Russell

We all struggle at times to see the magic that is right in front of us. It’s time to slow ourselves down and discern where the magic is. Our wits can never grow sharp if we’re buzzing around trying to make it happen. Rather take today to grow your wits a bit and see if you can spot the magic.

This goes double for those who deal on a daily basis with addiction and compulsive behaviors because rather than slowing down they fill their time with mind or emotion numbing things. For those with compulsive hair pulling, for example, it’s more important to find that “perfect pull” than to slow down, feel your feelings and allow them to exist within you. But it’s only in doing so that we begin to spot those magical things that are waiting for us.

Just because you go down one path earlier in your life, doesn’t mean that you’re stuck in that rut forever.
-Walter Shaw, author and ex-master burglar.

Wow! This is a great quote, don’t you think?

Trichotillomania and other compulsion sufferers are often so stuck in their repetitive ruts that it appears to them that change and a better life are completely impossible. One of the things that I help them to work on is unsticking their minds so that they can vision a better future for themselves. But, while this is a critical step, it often is not enough to get them to move to that better future.

They also need to the tools and support to do the work of healing the underlying issue that continues to fuel the compulsive behavior. For people with compulsive hair pulling and other compulsive disorders, I offer a comprehensive program that moves them through the self-healing framework.

The program is very powerful, but it alone, is not enough. The student must do the work for their own healing is waiting inside of them to be discovered.

What if, beginning tomorrow and from that day on, each and every child popped out of the womb with the words “Worth Protecting” on their foreheads? And what if as that child grew the words grew crisp and clear along with him. Each child would look at the next and remember that another person is worth protecting. Each adult would look at each child and every other adult and know that we are all worth protecting. Until the day when the entire world population would live in the core fundamental conviction that “We are ALL worth protecting!”

Think about it.

“All things are permeated by a power which makes for health. A human being can relate himself to this power, and ally himself with it. He can also separate himself from it in his thoughts.”
-Wallace Wattles

Healing is a natural system (like a internal weather system) that exists inside of us. We are always being invited to heal one thing or another. But most often we (especially those who struggle with addictive and compulsive behaviors like compulsive hair pulling) run from the opportunity. The next time you feel a challenging moment in your life, why not ask yourself if this is your own invitation to heal that has come calling. Then run toward and embrace it for all that you’re worth. Who knows, you might just come out the other side a whole lot lighter and whole.