photo experiment

Hi, someone mentioned taking photos as a way to be accountable. I did that as an experiment once, and it didn't work for me. I decided I would take a digital photo every morning --hopefully it would make me stop and be an objective way to keep track of my "progress" or lack thereof. It ended up making everything worse, I felt more guilty, more depressed, and it didn't stop me from picking at all, it just intensified the cycle of being guilty, stressed and ashamed. Anything that feels like punishment, that makes you feel worse, you should just stop. Punishing yourself or feeling more guilty is not the way to stop picking. It just makes us feel worse (which propels more picking) and doesn't do any good. But there was one thing productive that came out of it... They were really awful photos--the kind where you hold the camera yourself, terrible lighting, bad perspective, you know the kind of really crappy photo. Plus, it was just "documentary" so I didn't bother smiling. So I just looked really awful and kind of sullen in all these photos. And then one day, for some reason, I wasn't even thinking about it, I was smiling when I took the photo---and I looked so much better! It was so weird, it suddenly occured to me that just being happy, and having a happy expression could make me look so much better, and feel so much better. It made me realize that all the obsession with the picking and stopping the picking, aside from the picking itself, was making everything so much worse and making me feel worse about myself. Its like I punish myself by believing I can't feel good or be happy (let alone look good) because I'm picking. I don't HAVE to let picking make me depressed. It is really a problem that interferes with my life, but at the same time, it is a cycle that snowballs. If I don't let how I feel about my picking take over, I can actually feel better, let myself be happy, and then picking has a little bit less control over me. During the time that I started the photo experiemnt, I was really depressed--the depression and picking fed off eachother. I pulled out of the depression (mostly through yoga, and some life changes), was still picking. But I entered a phase for a couple of years where though I was still compulsive about picking, I was able to disassociate from my general outlook better--I was still pretty happy, even though I was still pretty ashamed by the habit. I guess what I am trying to think about is what real changes have happened that have enabled me to stop picking. The pure will power to stop has neve gotten me very far, nor has obsessively telling myself to stop.