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I can't take this any longer. Please help!
I'm desperate for help! I have been picking my face since I was 12 years old and I am now 20. I want so deeply to stop but I just can't. I have tried everything I can possibly think of and nothing has held me off longer than a month. It makes me sick to think that I do this to myself. There are milions of people around the word with worries much worse than mine, terrible tragedies they have no control over, and here I am, day in and day out causing my own misery. I have always believed (or rather convinced other people) that I was a strong and confident individual, but I can no longer say that this is true (I cant even fake it anymore). In fact, I have a hard time even leaving the house. In short, I have, gradually over the course of the past 8 years destroyed myself and my life. I have never communicated my problems with picking to anyone, not even my closest family members, whom know of my disgusting habit only by the results shown on my face. This is by far the most critical point I have yet to reach, and I am scared to death of what my life is sure to become if I fail to control this once and for all. I have considered many many times of seeking out help, through books or therapists, but I am so ashamed of myself, that I decided not to go through with seeing a specialist. I therapise myself enough, I figure theres isnt much left to say that I havn't told myself. I long ago believed that this was an adolescent stage I would obviously grow out of, but to my horror it has grown with me and become a more horrible concept than I ever could have imagined. As I matured, so did my picking habit. I have forced it from my mind for so long that, now, standing here for the first time truly facing it, I've realized the magnitude of my situation. I have slowly but surely created an addiction for myself. Coming from a family riddled with drug and alcohol addicts, I am no stranger to the danger of substance abuse and have always strayed from those things. And now, despite my efforts to avoid these more obvious dangers, I'm faced now with an addiction I could have never seen coming. I am a prisoner within my own mind. Every piece of my existance now revolves around this addiction of picking my face without mercy. I have slowly cut off contact with friends, as I pick more and more frequently I am never in a state I wish to socialize in. Once a national soccer player, I've quit. A student in high school not long ago, I barely graduated, as I missed such a large amount of school, and now I am a student in university, starting my education for a brand new career and what I hoped and prayed would be a new life for me, I'm on the brink of expulsion due to too many missed classes, guess why?!? Looking back on my teens, a time that should have been joyous and full of memories I'll always cherish, I am deeply saddened as I realize how much I have missed. Nights out, trips with friends, even graduation. I attended but when I think back on it, I think only of how miserable I remember being as I was forced to cake my face with makeup to cover what I truly looked like. I felt like a disgusting disfigured human being, amongst a hundred beautiful princesses, I find myself looking back with hatred. Hatred toward all of those girls with beautifully smooth, radiant, flawless skin. Skin is a concept that has never and will never enter the minds of those girls, and yet to me it is the most constant idea. I even dream about it now. Like many of you, it does give me a small amount of hope and peace, in knowing that there are other people who are experiencing the same thing I am. The exact same thing in fact. In reading all of your comments I was in tears. I have truly given up. I have a very serious problem, and it has becomed deeper and more complex than you can imagine. Most of the time I can't even keep up with myself, and yet your all here, and word for word, as if it's coming from my own thoughts, you have expressed everything I'm facing. Thank you all for that. Well. I don't have much else I can really say. Thank god I know, nothing short of a novel is what I've written here. The only thing left to say, or rather ask, is that if you read this and you can understand the pain I'm feeling (causing), please respond. I need all the help I can get.
In reply to I know exactly how you feel. by Adleray
In reply to Thank you. Every bit of by KASP