I don't want to stop...

my guess is that if you're on this forum and you've done enough research to feel comfortable posting, that you do really want to stop. does it really make you happy? i know for me, i think picking my skin is therapeutic, necessary, and enjoyable. truly. i LOVE seeing stuff come out of my skin. i have since i was a little kid. it's really one of my favorite sensations - getting a big blackhead or piece of dirt out from under my skin. but, after i'm done, i'm definitely not happy. at least for me, i've had to think about it kind of like an addiction (like smoking or drugs which thankfully i'm not dealing with in addition). but you like it while you're doing it and hate it after.

I've thought about this before. The answer I've come to is a not confusing but I'll share it all the same. My reasoning is that there is more to life than 'what makes us happy'. I value more than just happiness in my life. Most of us, for example, would be willing to put ourselves through a certain degree of unhappiness for the benefit of someone we love - in a situation like that we're not thinking only about how happy we can make ourselves. Another thing I value in my life is truth. Think of it like the matrix if you've seen the film - they have to choose between remaining blissfully ignorant in their virtual world or facing up to reality which is much more painful and difficult. On the whole, we'd rather have genuine experiences over false ones even if the genuine experience makes us unhappy. (for example I'd rather know if my boy/girlfriend was cheating on me than remain in a relationship with them for 20 years thinking they really loved me). What I'm trying to say is that although we feel good when picking, picking isn't really good. It's a lie. It's false happiness. Enjoyment should come from good things and picking is not good! Whatever makes us do it is not healthy or good. And there are so many other ways we could spend all those hours which would bring true, genuine happiness! Sometimes I think about the thousands of hours I have wasted picking at a tiny little patch of skin which is just a small part of me, one person, who is just one small part of the whole of humankind which lives on this one tiny planet! I wish I could look out at the stars or at the world and see what's out there instead of focusing in on this microscopic piece of skin which isn't really important at all!! That is why we have to stop - I really believe that every person is important and we have wonderful and beautiful things to enjoy and create - we mustn't waste all our potential in destruction! Our picking feels so normal to us because we have done it for years - sometimes I really can't remember why I would ever want to stop doing something I enjoy so much. But then I think about all the things I could have learnt or seen when I was learning about picking skin. I am an expert on skin picking. We all are. We know how to do it so well we can do it with our eyes shut. Some of us even do it in our sleep. We could have learnt a language or learnt how to play an instrument in the time we have spent picking over the years. I look at the night sky and it looks a bit like my skin does - covered in spots! The difference is that the spots where we've picked at our skin seem so big to us when really they are very very small, but the spots in the sky seem so so small when they are really bigger than anything we could even imagine. As skin pickers we spend our time focusing on the small - we've got our priorities all wrong! I want to spend the next 8 years really looking at the world to make up for the 8 years I've spent looking at my skin. I hope this all makes sense - I know it's a bit odd but it really helps me to remember why I must not pick! This is not meant to get you down but inspire you. I don't know how much of a hold skin picking has on your life but I am so not up for spending two hours a day at the mirror hurting my skin for the rest of my life.