This coming May, I will have been free of Trichotillomania for 16 years without medication, dietary changes, behavior therapy, hypnosis, supplements of any kind, or any outside intervention. After 27 long and painful years, I found the answers within myself. So can you!
“The first time that you challenge your addiction, and the second, and the third, you may not feel that anything has been accomplished. Do you think that authentic power can be had so easily? As you hold to your intention, and as you choose again and again and again to become whole, you accumulate power, and the addiction that you thought could not be challenged will lose its power over you…” –Gary Zukav
Abuse is incredibly contagious. It is passed from generation to generation. The experience of abuse creates a deep hole and a lack of belief in the self. Whether or not you think so, it affects you and me. Truly, we are all victims and we are all perpetrators because we all respond in our own way to fear and pain, though some of these ways are socially acceptable and others are not.
Abuse is a very personal experience. Sometimes very sensitive people can experience something as abusive when many others may not consider it so. So keep in mind that we must remain focused on each person’s personal experience and not necessarily the exact truth of a situation.
What is Abuse?
There is no universally accepted definition of abuse. I propose that,
Abuse is a perception that someone with greater power than yours has stolen your power.The experience of abuse causes a feeling of having been seriously injured at a deep core level regardless of what did or did not occur physically as in sexual abuse, or physical abuse, or verbally, as in verbal or emotional abuse.
As you allow this definition to sink in, remember that a major premise is that it is absolutely possible to heal from this type of core injury.
Healing happens at the moment she recognizes and takes back her own power in order to be whole again.
Relational trauma is when a situation in your child’s life (remembered, or not) caused your child to perceive that her positive relationship with someone she cherished was severed or ripped away against her will, never to return. Unvalidated relational trauma often goes underground, remains unresolved and turns into a deep wound.
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.
Toxic Belief:
Merciless judgement and endless guilt are the only way I can stop hair pulling.
Pull-Free, At Last! Antidote:
Because I didn’t understand why I pulled, I mercilessly judged myself for doing it. Now I know that I had a legitimate reason for pulling. I am ready to remove my judgment in preparation to release myself for good.
Why should you forgive yourself? What did you ever do to warrant forgiveness? Weren’t you the innocent victim of this crazy affliction?
You have a tremendous amount to forgive yourself for. You have the years of secrecy and hiding you’ve put yourself through. You have the fun you’ve missed out on. You have the endless hours of berating yourself for continuing a behavior which you truly saw as repulsive, and the list goes on.
