Birthdays and Pullfreeathons

Today is a very special day. It commemorates two anniversaries. The first is the day of my birth. I have been on this Earth for 22 years today. The other anniversary (the more relevant one to this blog) is that today is 10 days since the day I began my "pullfreeathon." This is a term used on the UK site, Trichotillomania Online (on my Trich-ed Out Links list, right sidebar) to indicate a pledge that trichsters can take to NOT pull. It's not a competition against anyone else, only against yourself and your compulsion to pull. You post on the forum to tell people that you are beginning a pullfreeathon, and the other members of the forum come out to support you!

I've found it very helpful. It helps me combat the urge to pull because I know other people (who understand what I'm going through) are cheering me on and keeping me honest. I also feel I have more of a duty to myself because I have a specific reason not to pull. Not just because I know it's not good for me, but because I want to increase the number of days that I can say I've been pull-free. I recommend pullfreeathons to all fellow trichsters.

Know Thyself - Trichotillomania and the Bible

I'm not much into Biblical allusions, but I am into pithy aphorisms that give great advice. "Know Thyself" is excellent advice for trichsters. You have to be self-aware and recognize your triggers for pullling.

For me, I know that when I lean my elbows on a desk, table, or any flat surface that I'm using to read or work, my hand is at just the right position to reach my eyelashes. And that's a bad thing. So I try to read with my arms stretched out, leaning back. Just to be safe, I put something small in both hands to try to distract them from the compulsion to pull. Because I know myself. If I prevent myself from starting, it's much easier to continue than if I try to stop in the middle of a pulling spree.

Do you know thyself?

Trichotillomania/Hair Pulling Quotes and Quotations

(Sort of)

A hair on the head is worth two on the brush.
Irish Proverb

But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
Bible, Matthew x. 30.

You do not lament the loss of hair of one who has been beheaded.
Joseph Stalin

I love getting ready to do a scene, and thinking about it, and talking about it. But the rest of the time, I'm so nervous and obsessed. I'm just tearing my hair out in the trailer. The whole time I'm really tense.
Casey Affleck

Prejudice is like a hair across your cheek. You can't see it, you can't find it with your fingers, but you keep brushing at it because the feel of it is irritating.
Marian Anderson

I wish I had more hair on my head. Maybe if I sprinkled fertilizer on it, it would grow.
Kylie Bax

I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.
Beck

In mainstream romantic comedies, I'm usually tearing my hair out. It's just a devastatingly difficult genre for me.
Carter Burwell

It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

I guess if I wrote a book one day, it would be about hair.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus

A hair divides what is false and true.
Omar Khayyam

Let the devil catch you but by a single hair, and you are his forever.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Sources:

http://www.quotationspage.com/
http://www.brainyquote.com/

Trichotillomania Awareness Week

Did you know that this past week (10/1 - 10/8) was Trich Awareness Week? I didn't find out until today. Here is some information about it.

Trichotillomania: Body and Mind Disparity

Whether you have trichotillomania or not, I'm sure that every person has, at one time or another, experienced a time when your body and mind did not cooperate with each other. When your mind was telling (or shouting at, or pleading with) your body to do something, or to stop doing something, and your body refused to listen.

That's what trich is all about. Intellectually, you know that you shouldn't pull your hair out. You can think of many, many reasons why you shouldn't. For me, I'm shouting at myself in my own head WHILE I'm pulling. STOP! Don't pull another eyelash! But my fingers won't stop. I have to physically restrain myself to end the pulling. Because mentally restraining myself so often just isn't enough.

We think that, as humans, we are superior to animals because we have intelligent minds and rational thinking. We pride ourselves on our self-control, our ability to deny what our bodies crave. Maybe our bodies are more powerful than we realize.

Another Trichotillomania JOKE!

What do you call a boy scout with trichotillomania?

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A BALD EAGLE!!!!!

See my other equally-bad JOKE!

If you can't laugh at yourself...

Trich Journaling

Random jumble of thoughts
I was really bad with eyelashes just now. I just pulled out like 10 from the same spot unintentionally. I was trying to pull with the tweezers, enough to get the endorphins but not enough to actually pull them out. Needless to say, I failed miserably. Now I feel even worse. I have a giant bald patch on my left eyelid now. I’m even more anxious because I can’t put them back. I feel like I want to take an extra Cymbalta but I know I shouldn’t mess with that stuff. Should I hide it with eyeliner or punish myself by just looking bald?


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