knock on wood.
or rather: some things.
I’ll try to list them in order, from most obviously effective to least obviously effective.
1) talking about it. i’ve roped my (poor) wife into this initiative, and she has been immensely supportive and helpful. she lets me know gently when i’m scratching my head, and often i haven’t even realized i’ve started.
2) vaseline, or neosporin, or chap-stick, or aquaphor, really anything i can put on the places on my scalp that i’m inclined to pick at. not having a dry place, or a brittle scab, helps a lot in resisting temptation.
3)worry beads. i always wear these on my wrist anyway. (they’re really prayer beads, but i usually just use them as a fidget.) when i feel the impulse to scratch, i try to take them off my wrist and fidget with them instead of my scalp.
4) toothpicks! actually stimudents, on account of the mintiness, and somewhat softer wood. these have been great. more on this below.
5) vitamin supplements. who knows about this one. but i’ve been taking a bunch of fish oil, and an amino acid called NAC, which I heard somewhere helps with impulse based problems. even if there’s just a beneficial placebo effect, i’m for it.
so, in short, i’m finding that my present policy is to throw everything i can at this issue. and i’ve been making progress. i have no sores on my head, and places that had been raw on and off for years seem to have healed over completely. it’s still a huge effort not to go hunting around on my scalp for something - anything - to pick at, but even with this preliminary stage, i’ve noticed a lot of improvement. it is amazing how tenacious this sort of thing can be!
one last thought, about the toothpicks i mentioned above.
my (latest) theory is that the impulse or compulsion is really an oral one, like smoking, or nail-biting (all former pastimes of mine!) it seems like a restlessness of the hands, and it is that, as well as a general assault on the scalp, but the origin of the urge, i am increasingly convinced, is in the mouth.
why do i think this? well, first of all, there is the fact, revolting to me (but thanks to everyone who has admitted to this!), that i usually eat whatever i scrape off my head. so there’s that. but more than that, i’m thinking that this compulsion is an attempt at a radically basic and fundamental appeasement of elemental desires. by elemental desire, i mean, one or several of the basic drives, for sustenance, warmth, predictability, and stimulus regulation. these are infantile drives, but only because they represent needs that infants can’t meet for themselves. they need the help of a mother in order to satisfy them, and without that help, they won’t develop as they optimally would have.
unmet, these needs persist and mutate, fixing upon inappropriate objects, in a sincere but misguided attempt to accomplish for themselves what, by definition, they can’t accomplish. and if unmet needs always result in intense frustration, it makes sense that these needs would seek out increasingly extreme or violent forms of expression.
So, the need says, in effect: thank you scalp, for providing me with delicious crusty things for me to hunt down and devour, and thank you also for letting me attack and disfigure you at the same time. you are too generous! i would like to thank you for that, while gashing you and mauling you at the same time! scalp, you disgusting bane of my existence, you are the best!
so in short, i find it helpful to think of the impulse not merely as a failure of willpower or a repulsive species of self-gratification, but as a kind of uncorrected developmental glitch, a kink that like all kinks, wants to be shaken out. it wants that. beneath the compulsion to pick and gouge, there is an even deeper desire, a desire for a greater peace and stability than any violent and tormenting form of self-soothing could provide. i’m trying to learn more about that deeper desire, and to let it have its say. at the moment, though, it feels like a mystery.
so, on the way-off chance that these public ruminations might be helpful to others, i’ll check in later about how this all evolves. so far, though, so good. 19 months ago