please listen to my story, I have never told anyone before in my life

First off, you have to know how sincerely sad I feel for you. My daughter (13) and myself both suffer the horrors of this awful mental skin picking disorder. Like you, my daughter has picked so badly on herself that she too got impetego. Luckily for her, she found inner strength to stop messing with the sores and along with the antibiotic and cream she got, she was able to have it heal. I on the other hand, got infected by her and had a hard time stopping the insane obsession of trying to extracait whatever I believed to be inside there. My daughter has started tanning and I can't begin to tell you how much that has helped her skin to heal and ward off acne. She still occasionally picks the back of her arms and shoulders, but it is NOTHING like it use to be. I'm not sure of the other things that you have been tormented with, but this I do know...you were put on this earth and you are so important to this thing called life! You may or may not have a great home life, you may or may not have an abundance of friends, whether you do or don't, it doesn't matter. YOU are what YOU have. I'm learning through theropy that self love is so so so important to have because when that is lacking, we do whatever it takes to just "feel" something towards ourselves- harmful or good. I believe that what we focus on is what usually tends to attract to us. If we could stop all the negative thoughts and actions to ourselves and put more attention on the positives we do have, I really think more positive will come into our lives and get us all out of this picking mess. What my daughter and I are realizing now through counciling, is that each and every person spends the most time with our own self. What I'm finding personally is that this is actually a blessing in disguise because I'm searching my inner self to see what is REALLY causing all this pain and picking. It isn't fun, but I honestly can say that dealing with past experiences and accepting them and forgiving myself and others for past mistakes is actually really helping me. I hope you can reflect and see if there is past circumstances that could be adding to all of your situations and hang ups. Please just know that you're not alone and you are worth far more than you can ever image and you have a purpose in this world. Many prayers for you...you can do it, you got this! P.S. drugs only mask the problems, dig deep inside yourself and deal with your pain. Hit it head on and sit with the hurt, accept it and release it to your higher source (God etc...) that feels way better than any drug, once it's released from you:)

i obviously havent had it quite as bad as you, but i have picked at my skin since i was 10, now 18. most of my picking was at my face, but i have picked at everything on my body at one point or another. i struggled with eating disorders until about halfway through highschool. i am a tall girl 5'8', and didnt break 100 lbs until my sophomore year in high school, and also some pretty severe drug abuse which started at the age of about 12. i have bad relationships with my family, and there arent many people in this world i keep close to me. infact, there is only one person in my life that i really trust, my boyfriend. we met when i was 16, and as soon as i graduated from highschool we moved out of our parents house and got an apartment together. since meeting him and especially living with him i have made huge strides in a positive direction. i am completely sober, have been for over a year. im at a very healthy and beautiful weight of about 140 lbs, and the picking is better than ever. ive learned that its so important to care for yourself, be gentle to yourself, stay positive as much as you possibly can, and also keep someone around to pick you up in case you fall down. you can over come your problems, i know you can. goodluck <3 (:

I was looing for a first step thread and this seems as good as any. I just needed to share. I just spent 40 minutes picking a blackhead in my nose. I thought, just a little more and I'll get it. I actually took a thumbnail sized (short thumbnail, i bite mine) piece of skin off the tip of my nose. When i was still picking I thought, good, I'll remove that layer of skin so I can get at the black head. Then I thought this is ridiculous then I stopped and noticed th tip of my nose f*cking hurt. I know that my body hurting is not a deterrent enough to stop picking and that i need to go through the steps in this program. Thank you for listening thank you for sharing.