personality traits of skin pickers?

I have Chronic PTSD from being severly emotionally and physically abused as well as sexually tortured fom the ages 6 - 13. My mother still doesn't know. I have abandonment issues because my mother worked 2nd shift and I was the 'wife' everynight. I am uncomfortable with eye contact. I have constant fear that I am going to die a horrible and tragic death. I have flashbacks and traumatic night terrors - I've been put on a wonder drug that helps with this. I have obsessive thoughts about something bad happening to my children. Very severe startle reflexes. Always on high alert. I also have cut , burned and branded myself. I'm obsessive about vacuuming - all of the lines from the vacuum cleaner have to be perfectly straight and aligned. I also vacuum numerous times because foot prints in the carpet bother me. I also struggle with body dysmorphia/anorexia. I do not have friends becasue I don't like to 'keep in touch', I end up not returning calls and stuff which ultimately stops all communications. My mom has been calling me and leaving messages for 3 weeks now and I don't have it in me to call her back. I'm not sure why. I do not trust people and keep all of my emotional and psychological problems to myself and sometimes, I will share with my husband. I'm sure there's more but that's my main "stuff" and now I'm feeling like I'm a REALLY messed up person! LoL.

ok, wow. i just read through most of the replies on this post and everybody here is essentially the same. i was so happy to read this and find out how similar everyone is to me. i have been really upset about my lack of friends lately and i was wondering if other skin pickers had the same experience. seems like most of us are pretty antisocial. i wont go into specific details since everyone told the same kind of story already but i am also intelligent, ocd, depressed, anxious, have a history of eating disorders, overanalyzing. i also noticed that many people have had sexual abuse. my story is a bit differnt here, and i wonder if anyone else has had a similar experience. im 19, i started picking when i was probly 6 or 8.. and as i got older i always had justa couple friends. by middle school i started seeking reassurance from having a crush or a boyfriend. it was almost compulsive, i felt like i needed someone to want or "love" me. In 8th grade, i remember the first time i let a boy take advantage of me. after that year i met my first real love and we were together for 15 months before he went to college. when he left i jumped right into a relationship i was never comfortable with just to fill the void. that guy was older than me too and kindof forced me to have sex with him, but wouldnt believe that i had been a virgin. throughout our relationship i constantly submitted to sex that i didnt want and wasnt gratified from. i eventually broke up with him over it but it left me with a really warped sense of self worth. in the years since i have only continued down this humiliating, boy to boy path and it is only making everything worse. i have never admitted all that before, and i know that it is different from being molested as a child, but it still breaks me. even writing this i fear that you all will just dismiss me as a slut or say its my fault or something like everyone else seems to. i accept fault but at the same time i dont look for sex because it makes me feel good and i dont want to sleep with a million guys. i have really low self esteem and trouble connecting with people and i feel like relationships-no matter how fleeting, are the only way i get a sense of being wanted... thank you for reading that if anyone did, i hope someone can identify with the need for being wanted?

Whew. I thought I was the only one with his disorder. I remember my mom telling me years ago that when I was a baby, I picked my skin so much she had to put mittens on my hands. So now with this support group, I can learn how to deal with this genetic condition. Right now my scalp is a mess because I have been suffering some anxiety. I hope to relieve the situation soon with the help from others.

I'm absolutely blown away! I have just stumbled across this site, I had no idea that what I have been suffering for so long I cant remember is actually a condition! I always thought there was something wrong with me but I actually thought it was just me! I'm 38, a mother of five and have been happily married for 18 years, BUT, I have been suffering depression and anxiety for years,I have some serious issues with my mother and dont have any other family support, I isolate myself and sometimes find it difficult to pick the kids up from school in fear that I may have to talk to someone. I can relate to nearly every persons comments on here, I cant really believe that we are all so similar, I am seeing a psychologist at the moment to try and nut out my head. OMG I just picked! Shit, now I know it is 'something' I think I will be able to try and do something about it! I sooo related to the guy that said he was sick of friends and family slapping his hand and saying stop picking! That drives me crazy, I always let them do it to me but now I feel like slapping them back and saying hey its a condition that I am trying to deal with! Goodluck to all.

i dont want to pick, i hate it! i know it ends with horrible consequenses and feelings of shame about myself. yet i still somehow forget about that at that moment and start picking. in highschool i never really picked just the one zit i would get i would make it worse , but nothing more than that. for some reason since ive gotten married and had kids it when it got bad! i have had 2 episodes of this . this is my 2 one. and im trying to get it takin care of by going to the dermatologist .

WOW..honey dont take any of this lightly , it your life and you shouldnt have to deal with that ,i really dont want u to have ta go on feeling so uncomfortable.Girl you can do it ! take control every step you take to put your self in those Situations is just one more step toward overcoming it and take the control away for it and giving it to you...here is a assignment for you now whenever you see a or hear something coming in your way . Then Stop right there and do the exactly the opposite of what your normal reaction would be , which would be something like avoiding it or ignoring it .Face all your fears in life head on and you will be strong and respect yourself for having the courage to do that.. Please just don’t be one of those people who just walk away in regret... YOU only have one life to live , live it comfortably , proudly and put yourself and what u want first, don’t let messed up things that happened stay locked away so it can eat at you. Life is truly a pursuit of happiness, dont let anyone or any memoire interfere with that!!! Be strong .now is the time for action and addressing, expecting, closer. Healing and moving on free!!!!

http://www.acne.org/habit-reversal.html go to this website for ways to help cure your disorder

Mine stems from horrible long term childhood sexual abuse/neglect/torture and life's crap basically. I am a very loving, intellligent, college schooling, caring person and you would never tell by looking at me. I am an attractive (give myself SOME credit lol) 40 year old mother of two girls and one granddaughter and married. I do my picking in places no one can see unless I am unclothed.

The comment about feeling watched/observed struck home with me. I'm new to the site and interested in other posters personality traits.

I have just spent the past hour in tears reading through this forum. I am so relieved to discover this compulsion I have actually has a name and that I am not alone. I have picked my skin - face, shoulders, chest and back since I was around 14. My mother is also a picker and I watched her, from a young age, poised in front of a mirror with her tweezers cutting into herself. When I was 16, after years of mental and physical abuse, my mum left my dad and I for another man. My dad found it very difficult to cope as he is a big softy and we both did our best to make sense of what had happened. She had made us believe we were both completely incompetent and useless to anyone. Needless to say, the picking became extremely bad at this point as my confidence reached it's lowest ebb. A lot has happened since then (I am now 28) and I do have some sort of relationship with my mother, although I have never been able to forgive her properly. When I pick I think exteme thoughts - about how she wronged me in the past, about how I had to sit up through the night watching my dad in case he carried out his threats to hang himself, how I have been a good person all my life and did not deserve any of the things that happened to me. These thoughts fuel my picking. As someone else said, it's like going into a daydream and immerging bloody but satisfied. A few years ago I did reach out to my partner, I was extemely depressed and he took me to my doctor. I was sent to a councellor who basically told me there was nothing wrong with me and that I was just a worrier. Confessing to picking was a huge deal for me, but she didn't even raise an eyebrow. I think she saw me as a bit self-obssessed and even suggested leaving my partner! This put me off councelling altogether as I don't think I would still be here if it wasn't for my partner. My picking has not been mentioned between us since but sometimes I catch him looking at my horrible sores and I see how sad it makes him. I know he just wants to be able to help me but this makes me shy away and feel disgusting. I think now though I am ready to start facing my problem and hope that I can learn from and help the people here. It's so good to finally open up and accept that I really do have a problem.

I'm almost in tears reading this... I thought I was the only one. After I stopped cutting I started picking. It's severe now. It was always bad, but now my entire arms, upper and lower, are covered in scabs and scars from just ripping off chunks of my skin... sometimes until they bleed. But my personality traits- I'm very, VERY paranoid. Skin picking sometimes distracts me. I'm anxious too. But being paranoid is the main thing...

I am finding a lot of personality traits to be similar to mine but no one is saying what I am thinking or have experienced so here goes. I saw my father picking his fingers all my life and my mother smacking his hands to get him to stop or telling him too. I picked my fingers also but sometime after I became a teenager and I do not remember when, I began picking off the skin from the bottom of my feet and will do so until they bleed. I do not realize they are that bad and when I do notice I quit on that area at least. Egads, to the point! I meander as you can tell. My youngest son who was taken away from me by his father when he was a toddler also picks at his fingers until they bleed. This is unusual to me as he was not raised around me so I am wondering if any of this could be hereditary? My son's father who raised him was mentally abusive to him but not physically. My other 2 sons who were raised by me do not do this. My childhood had a lot of mental and physical abuse and one incident of sexual abuse when I was in Kindergarten. I have only one brother and he does not pick at his skin but he was raised by the same abusive parents so what is up with that? You know I really don't care that my feet hurt so bad that every step I take is pain but what I do care about is fixing what is making me this way because it is an outward sign of all the personality traits in my life that are holding me back from living my life as it was meant to be and making me so depressed and miserable. My mother threatened to kill herself at least once a week while we were growing up and I swore never to be that way or do that but these anxiety attacks or panic things are getting so out of control that I can see where they could not be staved off any longer and could totally overtake you to where you do something stupid just to get away from these horrid feelings. I really think I need to check myself into a mental hospital for some help. Like I said though, I believe the skin picking is only a symptom of a greater issue? malady? insaneness? I wonder if it would do all of us some good and enlighten us if we were to try and keep a journal of when we picked at ourselves? I seem to mostly pick at my feet when I am on the phone and I hate to talk on the phone mostly and sometimes even turn it off for days at a time. I love movies but I bet I pick at my fingers when I watch movies more than any other time, although it is only ever 1 thumb. Someone mentioned nail biting but not once have I ever done that. My feet though, oy vay! The Little Mermaid has nothing on me! Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated as I am so sick of feeling alone in this, enormously guilty for any and everything I have ever done or might do, (including I am sure stuff other people have done and I was just in the area lol), and ashamed of myself above all. P.S. Lightbulb just went on!!! What if we are punishing ourselves because we feel all this guilt because we feel like failures?

Hello all. I've been picking at my skin since I was 9 or 10. It began when my stepfather started molesting me. Inside I wonder if I thought I could make myself damaged so that he wouldn't hurt me anymore. It's a relief to find a website that has OTHER PEOPLE like me. I was wowed. Thought it was just me. I've cut before too but it was never as satisfying and harder to hide. My personality- I'm bubbly, and outgoing with people who don't know me personally. I usually lie when they spot my scars and tell them that I have a condition where I'm allergic to the sun. At home, I am kind of manic. Happy, loving then sometimes out of control and emotional. I do tend to be physically violent and while it has gotten better for me since leaving home and moving in with my now husband, I still physically react before verbally. I am paranoid, I often feel like people hate me, talk bad about me, are out to get or use me in some way. I'm suspicious of most men and think automatically they are perverse somehow. I am attractive facially, and aware of it but physically I hate my body type/shape. I'm a nurturer and prefer to care for someone else. I've always felt different and alone. Glad to know that there may be others like me.