In this surprisingly enlightening Pit thread about depression, people talk about their battles with depression / bi-polarism. Others on the board have talked about OCD and other disorders.
Has anyone suffer from Trichotillomania? How did you distinguish this from a “bad habit”? Have you undergone drug therapy for this, or do you do counseling, or both? I done some research, and I guess I’m looking for more personal accounts (hence IMHO and not GQ). Thanks.
From the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed.:
Hope this helps.
magog, I have mentioned before on the boards that I have trich. That was actually how I “discovered” that I have OCD and what caused me to first seek out a psychiatrist (trich is highly correlated to OCD).
Thankfully, I have extremely thick hair and you can’t tell that I “pull” (unless you are my hairdresser who has said something about all the “scars” on my scalp :eek: ), but I pull A LOT. I try to find the hairs that are thicker than the other ones or curlier and those are the ones I target. This is embarrassing, but recently I’ve even begun eating the roots off the end of the hair (if they pull out, too). In much more severe cases, people have been known to eat all of the hair and then they have to have the “hairball” surgically removed over time.
I don’t really know what you mean about a “bad habit”. Smoking is a bad habit, but it’s an addiction - one that temporarily relieves stress for some people. That’s how I look at the trich - I do it more when I’m nervous (you should have seen the floor next to my desk after MBA school tests!) or extremely tired. Believe it or not, the small amount of “pain” it causes me is extremely comforting.
I have done lots of behavioral therapy (putting all the hairs I pull during the day into a box and then counting them at the end of the day, wearing a rubber band around my wrist and “snapping” it every time I feel the urge to pull), but to no avail.
I am currently on 450mg. (yes, a high dose) of Effexor for the OCD/trich and take Xanax as needed for anxiety. The OCD has improved pretty dramatically, but the trich has not. I guess overall I’m not too worried about the trich now that I don’t go back five times to see if I’ve turned off the oven or have raging bulimia (also a compulsion) anymore. I see a psychologist every two weeks and a psychiatrist every 4 weeks, or so.
I’ve been under the care of a psychiatrist for almost five years now and have tried Prozac, Wellbutrin and now Effexor to combat it.
I hope I’ve answered some of your questions. I’m extremely open about it and will be happy to answer anything else for you. 
BTW, terms like pull, trich, and trichster (noun) are often used when talking about trichotillomania (literally, “hair madness”).
I’ve had trich since I was 11–I saw a psychiatrist from age 13 (when I finally told my parents that I was pulling out my hair) until age 17 or so; this was during the mid-late 60s. I was never told that I had a disorder that had a name, or that there were others who also had this disorder, but after seeing the psychiatrist for several years, the pulling abated some, plus my family lived in a small town in a rural area, so we had to travel a ways to go to the doctor, and I could only go once a month.
The past 10 years or so have been very bad, pulling-wise for me, unfortunately. About 10 years ago, I saw a piece on trich on my local tv station, and tried to get treatment through my HMO. Unfortunately, the mental health coverage in many insurance plans is not very good for “long term” disorders–it’s more geared to those who have alcohol or drug dependencies. I was able to see a psychiatrist and a psychologist, and tried several meds, but none of them seemed to help. Behavior modification therapy is supposed to be the best approach to dealing with trich; I haven’t tried it yet, although while it may work for some, there are others even that does not help.
So I just try to live my life like a “normal” person–and in nearly every other aspect, I am quite normal; I just happen to pull my hair. There are also support groups (sometimes, just knowing that you’re not the only one with this disorder is a big step! It’s definitely a disorder where you feel much of the time that you’re the only one that has anything this … bizarre!). There’s also the Trichotillomania Learning Center; I’m not sure of the website’s address, but if anyone wants it, you can contact me via email and I can get it to you.
I’m usually not very open about my disorder–this is definitely the first time I’ve revealed it on line. Please be gentle with me, folks
tarragon
Thanks, Miss Xanax and tarragon918 - that was what I was looking for. I guess I also trich sometimes, and I wasn’t sure what to do about it (I’ve also done cutting and have depression as well, and am on Prozac to combat those particular symptoms, which were getting pretty bad).
Interesting viewpoint. My take on it is “bad habit” is to trich as moodiness is to depression - one can be overcome by willpower and is within the normal variations of a normal-working mind, while the other may need outside help. Of course, it’s never that cut-and-dried, is it?
I was diagnosed with it three years ago. I pluck eyelashes, and that’s it. I’ve never been inspired to seek treatment for it, since it doesn’t bother me and people seldom notice it.
I used to pull out my hair when for about 2 years, when I was 11 - 13 years old. I was especially concerned about thick, dark, curly hairs and hairs with split ends (my hair was long and mostly bonde at the time).
My mother eventually noticed that I had developed a bald spot to the back of the top of my head. I used to plait my hair, starting very high up, which used to cover the bald spot. My hair was and is very thick, so it was pretty unnoticable.
I received no treatment.
Yaers later, after a very troubled life, I undertook years of psychoanalytic therapy, which was very helpful (although very expensive). I understand that psychodynamic / psychoananlytic treatment is not the treatment of choice for hair pulling or OCD. However, reflecting back on my childhood, I think that I felt very bad about myself and felt a strong need to purge myself of the ‘badness’, which I unconsciously associated with my hair, or at least with the ‘bad’, dark, curly hairs.
My father, who was sexually innapropriate with me as a child, loved my very long hair.
I do not know if this is of any help to you. Just posted it thinking aloud really.
PS
I am definitely NOT suggesting that anyone who pulls his/her hair was sexually abused. Just stating something that had happened to me.
I do not have the condition you described, but I have something extremely similar (don’t know a name for it, other than OCD.) Since probably the age of two, maybe even earlier, I have twisted stuff between my thumb, index, and middle fingers. I destroyed many blankets as a child doing this – specifically, I shred the polyester fibrefill inside the blanket, by twisting around the outside fabric and pulling on the stuffing inside, which balls it up and eventually ruins whatever I’m “working on.” I’ve also demolished a few pillows in my day. A friend I had that was a therapist was the first to suggest that it was OCD, but since it is not harmful to me, told me not to worry about it. I don’t seem to do it in response to stress, anxiety, or any other specific cause. If I see something capable of being shredded, I will want to shred it. If it is new, then I will usually be able to resist by telling myself that I’ll ruin the item for good and so I shouldn’t start. If I have broken it in, so to speak, I will be unable to resist at all, and will sit there in a kind of spacy trance, just twisting and shredding away, staring at the wall. The best items are ones that I’ve been shredding for at least a couple weeks, with some balled up fluff to pick at. I will literally rub my fingers raw, and have two huge calluses on my middle fingers from doing this.
I’ve managed to quit for months or even years at a time by not allowing myself to have anything I could shred, but it never fails that the second I have something in my possession, I will start again like I never stopped to begin with. I have finally reconciled myself with the fact that this is just part of who I am, and it even seems to have some relation to the other work I do with my hands, because I’ve noticed that since I started again after quitting for awhile (started again about two months ago), I’ve already noticed an improvement in the artwork I’ve done since that point. Of course I can’t say for sure, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility that this constant working and manipulating of the muscles in my hands has had something to do with the artistic talent I’ve developed, my easy of typing, and my neat handwriting.
I never considered taking medication for the problem, since it seemed like a rather silly thing to medicate myself for.
*ease of typing, sorry.