Online Test
Find out the severity of your symptoms with this free online test
New to this forum, about my picking
I am so glad to have found this forum.
Anyway, I pick my face, scalp, and cuticles mostly, but also anywhere I get a scab from anything is a target too. Right now I have a nice slice out of my thumb thats scabbing over (Potato peeler bit me) and I want nothing more than to peel it off, and eat it. Yeah, I eat scabs. Its disgusting, in fact it makes me sick to my stomach sometimes, and I can't stop it.
I am currently riding waves of improvement. I get somewhat better, regress, improve, regress, etc. At this very moment, I'm regressing. I went two days with very little picking and then today I just lost it and went after all the healing scabs on my head.
I'm 24 and I've picked since late elementary school. I started with nail clippers on callouses on my feet and gradually worked my way to where I am today. I need a hair cut and won't go because of the wounds on my head. My fingers always hurt. It doesn't seem to matter what i do, I can never shake the picking. I am the worst any time I'm still. I constantly want to be moving. I've found that exercise helps, especially yoga, but I think that I really need to learn to allow stillness.
Anyway, I just wanted to introduce myself and if anyone wants to be quitting buddies I would really appreciate the companionship! I really only use skype as a messenger service nowadays, but I check my email constantly as well.
January 13, 2011
I can totally relate to avoiding getting my hair cut! I have had issues with skin picking for most of my life (I can remember picking at the scabs on my knees at the age of 5) and the parts of my body that I choose to pick have changed over time. I'm 20 now, but when I was 12-13 I had a phase of pretty intense scalp picking that resulted from some minor dryness on my scalp, and by the way, the scalp can bleed a LOT. At that age my mom would still do my hair sometimes, and when she finally saw a spot that I had been picking for maybe 10 months, she exclaimed "You're BLEEDING!!!" She had just seen some of the dry blood left over, but her yelling like that literally jolted the scalp-picking out of me. I managed to stop picking for several months, I can't quite remember how long it was, but eventually the picking moved to different parts of my body, but to a lesser extent. It was only years later that it came back more intensely, mostly now on my face and chest.