The past few days have been really difficult in terms of pulling (and other obsessive/compulsive crap) and I’ve come close on more than a few occasions. I suppose it’s just the stressful situation at the moment that exacerbates things. Pulling my hair (or cutting it, which I’ve been doing instead this week) is a way of controlling my life when everything around me seems to be going to shit. It makes me feel like I’m somehow helping (God knows I feel better while doing it – what a relief it is!) but of course I’m not. It doesn’t get to the root (pardon the pun) of anything at all, just temporarily allays things a bit.
Perhaps a major problem is that I can’t (or won’t) express how I feel so everything’s bottled up inside. But I’ve done this my whole life, to the point where I’ll just suddenly burst out crying or become very angry or anxious at what seems like nothing at all. And I guess I’m subconsciously trying to control these inner feelings by controlling different aspects of my external self, like hair pulling or skin picking. I suppose the trick is to not only avoid these behaviours but try to resolve my feelings as well. That’s the difficult bit though.
Caron has written 12 entries about this goal
I can’t remember how many days it is. About four months next week? I’ve been having some urges lately which isn’t surprising as I’ve been under a lot of stress. It’s still annoying though, to still feel this way after so long. Oh well, hopefully things will get sorted out soon and make not pulling a little easier.
The thing about this goal is that it’s quite vague – I prefer the ones that have a certain number of days so I can have specific goals to aim for. Initially I thought I’d mark this completed when pulling was just no longer a part of my life, when I didn’t pull or even think about pulling. But now, nearly two pull-free months later, I’m still getting pretty bad urges sometimes. So I think I’ve changed my mind a bit on this one. If 2008 can be a year where I don’t pull from my head at all, I’ll mark this as done (but still keep up the more specific goals as long as I have urges). Although a whole year without pulling doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve conquered this, I feel like it’ll be a massive accomplishment.
I got a bit mixed up with the days cos I was going by my entries on here, but I looked it up and I stopped on the 4th November. :) This is the longest I’ve gone without pulling before, I feel rather proud. Not that it hasn’t been hard; there are times when I’ve really wanted to and felt I had to. My hand still wanders to my head from time to time, almost automatically, but I feel like I have some control over it now. Thankfully.
It’s not as bad now, I think I’ve mostly got out of the habit side of trich. I do find my hands drawn to my head sometimes but I manage to stop myself. It’s nice that finding a hair isn’t so much a ‘point of no return’ as it was before. I just need to swear a bit and let go and I’m fine. :)
The only worry now is that I’ll ruin all this hard work through one moment of weakness. :/
10 days so far. :)
It’s been not too bad. I’ve been spending a bit less time on the computer so I think that’s helped a bit.
I’ve forgotten where I’m counting from now… It’s the 9th today so… 6 days. It’ll be a week in 20 mins.
It’s sort of flown by really. What works for me is when I feel myself searching for a hair I’ll make some sort of noise. Ughh, FUCK OFF!! is the usual one. It helps I think. :P
It’s been three days so far. I got my hair cut last week and as well as making me feel better about my appearance (which has probably indirectly reduced urges) it’s also too short to pull from at the back. I’m not quite happy with it though. I walked past a hairdressers today that has student cuts for £7 so I might take a wander down on my day off and get it a bit shorter. We’ll see.
I’m aiming for 20 days as well. There’s a pair of jeans I was eyeing up today but alas they didn’t have my size. They were £20, so if I can last 20 days and find a pair that fits, I can almost justify it to myself. :P
Everybody seems to be doing really well, congrats! :)
I fell off the wagon a wee bit. Not much though, I think it was only one day out of three.
I got my hair cut today, that’s helped considerably. It’s not dead short or anything, but it feels a lot better which makes not pulling a lot easier. It’s also vastly improved things on the split ends front which is an absolute nightmare sometimes. :/
I have a love/hate relationship with going to the hairdressers and I’m always quite nervous and convince myself they’re going to call me a freak or something. She never said anything though, and she actually said I have a lot of hair! Which was nice.
Hope everybody’s getting on well. :)
