DAY 0

Hello everyone I'm new here. I just discovered this site, and hope it can help me with getting over my skin-picking problem. I think the focus on my skin has a lot to do with the fact that I started getting acne when I was only eleven, which was difficult because the other children didn't understand what acne was. I was so ashamed. My mom took me to a dermatologist, who told me to stop picking, and prescribed Roacutane, a very aggressive medicine. It worked. My skin got clear again, and I was able to leave it alone. Since a few years (I'm now 22) that changed. I don't have so much acne anymore, but I'm not able to stop the picking. Especially the last three years have been bad. It's such a shame; I'm young, I go to college, ... This time of my life could (have been) unforgettable, but I ruined it myself by demolishing my skin and therefore hiding all the time for people. Like most of you guys I was very surprised (and also relieved) when I discovered that a lot of people do the same destructive thing to their skin as me. For years I thought I was crazy! I didn't understand what was wrong with me, and couldn't look it up anywhere, because I didn't know it had a name. My language (Dutch) doesn't even have a word for this problem! But last summer I found the term by accident in an article about BDD: compulsive skin picking. Finally I knew what it was, and most importantly, what it was called. Now I could talk to (a few) people about it, and ask for help. So I went to a psychologist. He recognized my problem and thought that 5 sessions would be enough to stop it. It did help a little. I learned what the cause of the problem is, and why I do it (being insecure, avoiding-behaviour). He gave me some assignments, like don't look into any mirrors, stop hiding,... I tried all that, but the picking didn't go. The last session he said to me that there has to come a moment where I make an agreement with myself: 'from now on I just stop, STOP'. Since then I said that to myself every day, but up until now I was never strong enough, to really mean it I guess. But today I made the decision: I will quit doing it! The most important thing my psychologist taught me was to concentrate on the real values in life. For me that is drawing, my boyfriend, family, my dream of working in a film studio one day... Obsessing about the way I look all the time is of course not valuable. So... tomorrow I'll start with the '30 days challenge'! I'll try to take care of my skin in a gentle way (cleansing, moisturise), avoid mirrors, and to keep myself busy with schoolwork. I really think that writing all of this down here, can help me keep up. I only hope it's not too boring :) Good luck to all of you! Mary