Trichotillomania
General Account
Hair is considered to be the crowning glory for any individual. It signifies to be the epitome of perfection that showcases itself right on top of a person’s cascade of imagination and resourcefulness that is on top of the head. It is a volatile yet vibrant deposition of crusaded waves that display a person’s individuality translating into a person’s innate personality making one completely in sync in terms of appearance, confidence, and passion.
The passion gives one to have a juice of life which is shaped through persistence and perseverance. It is this trio combo which is intended to make one excel and sail through. However, what happens if a person cannot take view of oneself through one’s eyes? What if the eyes are blocked with a tunnel vision which make one go through immense fear and lack of any form of joy?
This in turn makes one delve into a downward spiral which makes one go lower and lower to such an extent that one cannot look away from it at all. This makes one harbor a complete loss of self-esteem which evokes the very feeling of dreaded chaos. This chaos leads to an internal embroiled turmoil which does not end for a long time. It becomes a practice on a daily basis which makes one averse of any adulation. It only creates stress which translates into chronic stress that propels one to manage pain and distress.
Eventually the pain and distress does make room for perpetual unrest. It becomes a pattern which does need a desperate outlet. The hopelessness builds up to such an extent that it makes one completely averse of the inner self. It makes one so anxious and uneasy that the encumbrance of self- implicated harm is done via physical harm to oneself.
Once such form of specific physical harm stemming from the subconscious mind is Trichotillomania. It is an invalid circumstance in which a person becomes so restrained by distress that the hands move towards self-harm.
This self-harm is not previewed as a negative, it has been seen as an outlet to remove all the distress. So, what exactly happens is when a person is experiencing pain the person does get temporary relief by removing that very pain by way of pulling out one’s hair. This explains the factor determining the sensation of pain which makes one experience a form of relief which is by way of judgement that it is not right. However, over a period the same judgement becomes a way of life and the exercise of pulling hair out right from the roots becomes a regular phenomenon.
This very phenomenon moves to become far more escalated version as the stress keeps building up, the trauma keeps resurfacing, the matter of fact to deal with the pain keeps repulsing. Then one finds that the temporary relief becomes a full-fledged damage zone. The damage moves multi-folds only to make one so very dependent towards the ritual of hair pulling that it takes a form of a psychological collateral damage.
The collateral damage works in a way that you tend to lose irrespective of how you treat yourself. If you do not stress you lose because you find yourself succumbing to perpetual worry. Also, when you worry constantly you move towards pulling your hair day in and day out to such an extent that you cannot make sense of it anymore. You cannot differentiate between whether pulling your hair is bad or are you removing your stress through hair pulling so it is good.
You begin to find pulling hair far more fulfilling than not touching your hair at all. It becomes your uninvited calling. It makes you attuned and acclimatized towards your peculiar behavior that you cannot stop yourself irrespective of where you are and with whom you are. It becomes your innate personality translating into your second nature.
This becomes a harmful defense mechanism you have built for yourself. It is a defense mechanism that you cannot stop yourself from displaying as every time a thought does enter your mind you do move forward to stop it or deviate from it by pulling out your hair.
The pulling out of hair becomes your regular habit so by the time you even come to the realization that what you are doing is absolutely wrong it is usually quite late. Your hair luster is completely lost. You also have developed bold patches due to the perpetual hair pulling and these very patches make you agitated at your own behavior.
This urges you want to stop the exercise of hair pulling but then you are unable to do so! You have entered a vicious cycle of torment which makes you completely averse of yourself and your situation. So, the only way you do find solace is by pulling your hair to calm the very senses. The calming of the senses makes you more hyper as it makes you determined to find your place in your belonging. The only way you find your place is by accumulating all your frustration, anger, dismay, ridicule and torture by keeping it all locked up within you forever.
You finally remove all the toxicity by way of hair pulling by way of telling yourself that you are removing all your nervousness, your frustration, your anger, your pain and making yourself stronger in the process. The only thing you are actually doing is making yourself vulnerable to your belonging. You have transformed yourself to become a lost person who cannot possibly move forward to do something worthwhile. So, you keep putting the blame on others and moving into your dark inner world which makes up your auto-suggestive action that is to pull your hair.
Now the thing to understand here is that you are not pulling your hair for fun, you are doing it as an auto-suggestive action to prevent rather succumb the pain. The thing is that from a pattern it evolves into a trigger. The trigger reveals that you do get uncomfortable with yourself. Once anything makes you uncomfortable you move towards pulling your hair out. This cycle continues to make you feel ambushed towards your feelings. The reason been such feelings have been bottled up for a longtime and the only thing helping you propel through such feelings is your innate behavior of finding an outlet through hair pulling.
Personal Story
I am a Trichotillomania survivor. The reason I found solace is because I saw that the feeling of bottled emotions is not because of worry or tension or stress, it was because of not diverting them in the right direction. I was administering all my emotions in one direction which in turn was making me very restless. This restlessness in turn was making me very averse of my inner self. I was suffering from a psychological dismay of internal horrors by twisting and turning through my past. The stimulant of the past had presumably taken up my entire bandwidth.
The entire emotional turmoil had ensnared into a gamut of feeling leading towards categorical damage. The problem was that the categories kept expanding and dissuading me from my reality to find peace. The only thing I did understand is that if I must survive with a particular way of conducting myself then I do need to work on the same by changing myself to the very core. The reflection of the very core will be through the way of learning to look at situations as a perspective instead of viewing them as full-fledged terrors.
The point to understand was that the terror had already being lived and it is high time to move on. The natural dominance of such a factor was not coming through. Because of which I was beginning to get completely hassled in my dealing of terrors. My terrors being the ones of the past comprised of childhood abuse. This was one of the prime reasons of battling Trichotillomania. It was the feeling of living and reliving the abuse again and again. It was also an involuntary trigger leading to a dispelling cycle.
The cycle had only one outlet to determine the propelled calling which inclined towards that if this thing happened then I need justice. For their it seeped lower into why do I need justice when there is nothing to looked at. This was a call out of low self-esteem.
The lack of luster in life become attuned to perpetual utterance of patterns determined by way of pulling my hair at every occasion I could possibly lay my hands on. This in turn was making me completely volatile. That was making me very delusional in my approach as the roots of my problems were in the roots of my belonging and not in the roots of my hair.
Pulling out the roots of my hair was making me completely conducive to the make belief that I am pulling out my problems from my life which were quite internal. The problem here was that it was only adding to my existing problems. It was naturally making me very repulsive and abhorrent towards all round me including myself.
The repulsion that I harbored, is what I was attempting to remove on the outside by way of pulling my hair repeatedly. It reached a point that the hair loss on the top section of my scalp was quite evident and everyone around me could get a glimpse of it. The glimpse of the same was far more shocking and appalling for them than it was for me. I was anyway submerged in the day to day dealings of my inner turmoil that losing hair felt very normal. It felt like all was been stripped off just like how my innocence had been stripped off completely due to child abuse.
It was only when I began to take steady and gritty notice about what I had started losing that I realized something was completely amiss. It was during this much needed transition that I finally came to terms with that what I lost out on was totally uncalled for. This in turn was making me more repulsed towards an act of concern been shown by my friends or my peers.
Finally, it reached a point that my hair could not grow beyond a certain point in the most pulled out section as they had always been stripped off from there. The strip off made me fully averse of my belonging which in turn made me completely aware of my despair. The point was to settle in and understand my despair and in turn understand that pulling my hair through the act of categoric unrest will never bring in anything good ever.
The energies had to deviate in a certain direction. The direction needed to be far more internal. The direction needed to be quite focused on finding my calling in the way of moving towards a directive which indicated that I do find a way of positive way of living through the times which were to come. I was living in the past. The point to understand was that even nervousness had got the better of me. It had made me far more conscious than I chose to be. It had made me thoroughly whimsical as it had made me very confident that fighting the past was by way of finding calm in pulling hair!
The unhealthy ritual went on for over a period of four years plus like from 7th grade to 10th grade. With majority of the peak been bestowed in the 10th grade. The turmoil was too much to handle that after a point it became very difficult to even understand how to move forward and how to come together with repulsed, repressed and suppressed feelings. The exercise to work around repressed and suppressed feelings had found the exercise of aggressive hair pulling for a long time and finally that directed the course.
It then reached its maximum and went on to a tipping point where my inbuilt frustration, despair and anger found another outlet which was by way of aggressively and vehemently expressing through words. I began to express my feelings through words which made me quite focused on understanding the constant flow of internal energy. This constant flow of internal energy made me understand that no matter what happens all the accumulation of pain had to find an outlet from the inside and then be focused on the outside rather than it finding an outlet on the outside by way of regular stimulation of pulling hair.
The regular stimulation was to make one understand that everything reaches a breaking point. The breaking point then goes on to make one understand that no matter what one does to reach the lowest low even that cannot stop you from becoming a better version of yourself.
The thing with hair pulling in my life was that since it was such a rare disease that I did not know what it is called. I felt this is something I am just doing to make me feel good about myself as in a way of supposed calm and relaxation. Just like how people work their way through nail biting, hand washing, skin pricking etc. Most of us do spend much of the adolescent years engaging in such behaviors even without realizing that we are doing something that we are not supposed to do.
The feeling of not wanting to do something is what makes us so averse about everything that we sign up for! I could never figure out what I want for a longtime. Once I did figure out what I wanted my way of working through my inner demons that I started moving from one point of understanding a situation to another point of evaluating the situation. As life is by way of experience and not burden. You learn and evolve along the way through life’s journey.
That is what I started doing I started treating my life like an experience. When I learnt to move from one situation to the next in a timely fashion is when I understood that the key is to express yourself no matter how painful that seems is what makes one progress further. Instead of being stuck up in one situation for a long time.
The stuck-up energy when removed made me far more confident though that did not happen overnight and it did take some time to overcome the validity of occurrence which was measured effortlessly. The effortless energy was to make one propel in the direction of betterment on all grounds. Once such energy channeled all other energies which moved in the direction of perpetual gain.
Once you know how to work around the same then you will also understand how to work around everything that does come along the way. So, I do not see my battle with Trichotillomania to be with anyone else but myself. I viewed it as a battle that made me strong, confident, and determined. As it made me quite aware that all the problems are manifested in the mind and not anywhere else. Once I knew how to module an outlet which is more acceptable and healthier; I could describe my dimension to be most appreciated that is to be in peace with myself.
The same appreciation made me contingent to understand that rare diseases like Trichotillomania do form a vital part of your life for a relatively long period of time and then they do fall flat if you do not let them get into you for good. It is your internal battle for sure and the biggest support system you may find to fight your internal battle is my way of finding yourself in every sphere of beginning. The same leading to a sense of belonging which in turn makes you appoint yourself for the better in the present leading towards a brighter future.
