New here

Hi everyone, I'm Eric; a college senior preparing for graduate school in political science in the fall. I just joined this forum because the past two years have been positively terrifying for me in terms of body dysmorphic disorder and acne excoriee (i.e. skin picking). Yesterday I had one of the worst skin-picking experiences of my life. Before that, the worst probably came at a conference in Atlanta, where I was presenting a conference paper and ended up mauling my face so badly I needed bandaging and antibiotics to prevent infection. So yesterday I was watching the Duke v. Butler basketball game on television. (In an unrelated irony, I had picked Duke v. Butler for the final game, but neglected to enter an online pool that would have netted me $5,000 for the choice. Terrific.) Anyways. I had been fixating on a pimple to the right of my nose the entire day, wondering when the proper time to pop it would be. I had told myself about 99 times just to leave it alone -- that I have never been able to improve my complexion by picking or gouging at acne. Unfortunately, you can successfully tell yourself 99 times not to do something, but that says nothing about the 100th time. At halftime, I went into the bathroom and proceeded to spend the next 30 minutes pinching, prying, irritating, gouging, 'smoothing,' or otherwise mauling that pimple off my face. There is indeed no pimple there anymore. (How could there be?) Instead, there's the usual hyper-inflamed, crusty, very conspicuous red patch (about the size of two quarters), that I'm sure will take weeks to heal over. I have bipolar disorder and take Lamictal, Seroquel and Klonopin to calm me down to that effect. But the problem with bipolar disorder is that OCD and BDD drugs make it worse. So you really have to choose which one to treat medicinally, and since bipolar disorder can only be treated medicinally, I'm on my own as far as skin-picking goes. This is just flat not a good week for something like this to happen. Somehow my skin-picking always occurs right before a flurry of very stressful meetings, all of which I still need to somehow make it through tomorrow. (Bandaging? Moisturizer with green concealing tint? I'm not above wearing make-up.) My therapist has suggested that I subconsciously pick to strategically avoid the areas of my life that make me the most stressed. But that seems counter-intuitive, since the area of my life that stresses me the most is my skin-picking itself; I'd sit through 1,000 stressful meetings if it meant I gained the will power not to maul my face whenever I get a sizeable blemish. Anyways. Wanted to vent and introduce myself by way of venting, I guess. Any advice would be much appreciated. Eric