Why do you pick and when did it start?

[Laleh]

Hello fellow pickers of the world,
My name is Laleh, i live in Beverly Hills, California, and i am 19 years old. Just to give a little intro on who i am: I am a freshman @ Cal State Northridge i work as a waitress as California Pizza kitchen, and i am starting to get into real estate business.
I AM POWERLESS OVER SKIN PICKING! I have been doing it since i was about 13. I would usually do it mildly in the beginning when i was feeling anxious. It started to get out of control when i was prescribed Adderal (a Central Nervous System Stimulant) for ADHD. It made me pick at NOTHING!!! I would sit in front of the mirror with tweezers for hours and feel like i was in a trans, it was my way to release anxiety and stress. I have been picking now for 6 years and i have my good and bad days, but i have built up SOOO MANY SCARS AND RUINED MY SKIN FOREVER! I used to have PERFECT SKIN till i ruined it. I pick on my face, fingers, back, legs,(i can't wear shorts or bikini) thighs, bikini area, I know this sounds really SCARY and Freakish, but my outer vagina (i cant even be seen without panties), around my nipples, underneath my belly button, and anywhere that i could possibly reach. I AM POWERLESS WHEN IT COMES TO SKIN PICKING! I have gone 5-6 days even a week without picking, but i know deep down inside that its not about IF i am going to do it, it's about WHEN i am going to do it! I am so glad i found this place because we all need support, and this could really help all of us! I need help and i need it now. My life has become unmanageable over skin picking and i NEED to stop. I WILL NOT PICK my skin tonight! I WILL RESIST the urge to pick! No matter how badly i try to convince myself otherwise, skin picking is NOT okay! Keep my mirrors covered, my tweezers away, and stay away from situations that make me want to pick. ONE DAY AT A TIME!I will NOT PICK TONIGHT!!! PLEASE HELP ME! E_MAIL ME!

[Dee13]

Hi Laleh throw all your tweezers away and don't buy new ones. Maybe you should find a better DR. You are still young, scars do fade in time and skin resurfacing can do wonders. Try to find better ways to deal with stress. Maybe when you get the urge to pick you should write about what is going on instead.

Hang in there, you are ahead of the game when you can stop for 5-6 day's that is nearly a whole week.

Dee

skinpicking.proboards77.com/index.cgi

[audra]

I started picking at my nails and only my nails for as long as I can remember, i started biting them when i was arround 6 and I saw my sister biting her nails, now I'm 16 and I've practically mutilated my fingers. I can barely type right now because my two index fingers and my thumbs are raw and my left index finger is infected. When I was 14 I started pulling my hair out, the ones that felt different from all the rest, either very curly and thick, or very thin and weak. I don't do it much any more, but I'm still very picky when I leave my hair down and find a hair with a split end, I have to pull it out.

I've tried putting nasty nail polish on my nails but i always stop using it, the urge to bit becomes too much, I once stopped for a month and then while I was watching a movie, I bit them all off one by one. I bite and pick constantly, in school, at church, in the movies, in bed, at a friends house. It's embarrassing, and I don't know what to do.

I'm scared and I want to stop.

[audra]

sorry for the double post, seems like I can't edit the last one.

My name's audra by the way.

I'd also like to say I pick at scabs. Last December my friend Stephanie had a skating party at our local roller rink, my roller skates rubed my ankles raw and i was left with deep scratches on the insides of my ankles and on the back, when they scabed over I'd peel of the scabs, they'd grow back and I'd pick them again.

This also happned in 8th grade when my leg was scratched by the edge of a binder I constantly peeled away the scab, and when I raised rabbits and they would scratch me, I'd peel off those scabs too.

I just get an immense ammount of satisfaction from peeling away the scabs.

[BLSim]

I started at age 19 by plucking the ingrown hairs from my legs after shaving. The plucking would leave red bumps, and then I would pick those. Somehow it became a habit and got to the point that I could no longer wear shorts. Over time I began picking my face, then my chest, then my stomach, and over the past few months, my arms. I am 27 and have been picking for 8yrs. I have recently made my mind up to quit. I thought "all I need to do is stop picking". Unfortunately, I'm finding it's not that easy. But, I'm so determined to quit. I know I can do it. Sooo, I'm joining this website and hopefull I'll see some of you in the chatroom. Luck to everyone.

[Hikari]

I pick because it feels good. It feels great. If the skin is there, and it's dead, then I feel almost as if it's nature's way of telling me it wants to be removed. I am obsessive scab picker, and I now have scars on my arm from a recent battle of poison ivy. I have been picking the dry skin off my lips and heels since I was in 5th grade.

[Melissa89pending]

Mine started about a year ago...a little more than that probably. I live in a household full of anxiety and my parents are together "for the kids" aka me and my sister. They don't like each other at all and have this constant grudge against one another. At school I've always felt ostracized. I've always been anxious and a bit worrisome about my looks, but even with moderate acne I used to be alright with just taking medicine and not worrying too much about it. Then last fall (04) I took a homeopathic medicine for acne (Herpanacine)...BIG BIG MISTAKE. My skin went haywire...severe, accutane-worthy acne. I'd never had anything like it before, and even when I went off the medicine it would not go away. I became reclusive, obsessed with how bad my face and skin looked, and constantly thinking about my clear-skinned, happy future and my idealized past . I eventually got some medicine (though thankfully not accutane) that worked to relieve most of the acne, but at about the same time I went on prozac because I'd been so depressed that year (it was spring 05 by this time.) I think it was a little before I started the prozac....probably when my skin was just starting to get a tad better, that I started to pick at it. I got into this routine where I'd start doing it during class (I was in 10th grade)...I'd come into school with a face full of makeup to cover the acne and by the time I left I'd smeared it all and ruined my face even more from picking. By like 7th period every day it would happen. I began to just seperate my face and myself because I felt so horrifically ugly I couldn't even bare to face that people were looking at what I'd done.

During the summer I got better a little but than as I got stressed in school (and upped the prozac dosage) in Fall 05, even as my skin had gotten better, I started to pick. This time I started to actually go to the mirror and stand there for hours. Before it had been just absentminded. Now it became conscious. And that's when I started to realize I couldn't stop and I got upset cuz my skin had gotten better, but I couldn't even tell how it was because of how bad I picked. Now i'm on my 4th medicine (lexapro) to try and alleve this, while seeing a good psychologist who specializes in this type of stuff for cognitive-behavorial therapy. I still pick pretty bad, but I'm getting better by using a lot of strategies. I'll post all of the strategies up here in a seperate thread when I have more time.

[recoverery]

I started picking my scalp when I was about 10 or 11, and picked it up again as a teenager, and didn't do it for a while, and then started back up in my mid twenties. It goes in phases, I'll do it for years and then stop, then get into it again. I don't know if it's related to stress or what, but it becomes something I look forward to when I get home or am in the bathroom at work or in the store room or changing room or whatever, or when I think people aren't looking... I remember vividly the first time I got a head scab, and picking it, and tasting it, and feeling like it was different from knee scabs. I also remember this kid David in class in 7th grade standing up, looking down at the top of my head, and saying loud enough for at least four kids to hear, "Your head is bleeding." I was so embarassed. I used to turn red when I was embarassed. I thought noone could see it. I purposely avoided looking at the scars and scabs in the mirror.

Later, when I was in my mid-twenties, I started it up again. I was working, going to college, and dating a guy that was messed up. The first inkling that I got that there were other people who did this was when that boyfriend told me his mother used to pick her head. He said, "She would sit, stare, and pick." I freaked out. One night I picked and picked and felt something underneath. I pulled it out with tweezers - it was a lump, like a cyst. My brother had head cysts on his scalp and he'd gotten them removed surgically. They had shaved his head and put stitches in after removing the bumps. I have one - again - in the same place, but because there is scar tissue there I don't mess with it.

I start new ones, let old ones get better. The hair that grows back there grows out funny and curly like pubic hair, and I have to comb it a certain way or it sticks out like Alfalfa. I hate it. I hate that I can't stop. Getting on here and reading this has made me feel better about it and like maybe I can actually find a way to stopping. I cut my own hair, because of two reasons. The reason I give the world is, why have other people mess my hair up? The reason I hold secret is that I can't stand going to get my hair cut. The last time I went the woman who styled it after cutting it left the whole fuzzy part completely exposed, as a lesson or something. I was so angry when I left there.

I can't believe that it's OCD. I always thought that diagnosis was limited to straightening fringe or bathing in Lysol. But as I read more about it, this tendency is similar to cutting - you lose yourself in the obsession of the pain - scoop out chunks of healing tissue - and the world falls away.

I don't want to romanticise it. I've gotten to the point where I don't feel pleasure about it - I don't think I've ever felt actual pleasure from it. I do it and I know that it is wrong and that it makes me upset - combing my hair hurts, washing my hair hurts. And I see other people without this, and I wish that I could be that way.

[Dee13]

Hey Recovery, I know what it's like I am a long time devout scalp picker. You might want to find a good Dr. they are out there. Sounds like cysts might run in your family. Interestingly some insect bites can turn into cyst like things. I have a few. You are not alone work with the different web pages and you can make progress. Dee

[lifetimepicker]

It's funny to read these stories. I just found this site after visiting a dermatologist who thought I needed to up the dosage of my anxiety medication. I never thought it was abnormal to pick scabs, zits, ingrown hairs, dry skin. I've been doing it all my life. My mom did it and still does and she's in her 60s!

I started as early as I can remember. I loved to pick my scabs. At first there was some facination about the healing process of the skin. That you could pick the edges of a scab and see new skin underneath. Then a need grew have my skin be smooth. I couldn't and (still can't ) stand any bump or inperfection on my skin. Which later became a ridiculous oxymoron since my whole body is covered with scars. As a teen I had acne which was made worse by picking, popping, yes and pins. I get excited (my mouth even waters) at the thought of getting that white nut out from under my skin. Satisfaction is only temporary --of course the aftermath is disaster. Picking causes scabs, scabs MUST be picked, bleeding, more scabs and the cycle continues ending in scars.

My entire body is scarred. In the summer when I get tan people ask me if I'm peeling because of the many white spots on my skin. It's almost pointless now to stop. My skin will never be smooth, clear and even. I'm almost 40 now.

I never could attribute my picking like the others here to a particular event or stressor. However I do notice I do it more when I am bored or relaxing at home. It somehow soothes me. Kinda like how monkeys pick each other's fur as an acceptance thing. I don't need to be in front of a mirror with tweezers. I just run my fingers over my skin and...wait, is that a bump?...start picking. My husband notices sometimes and tells me to stop. I don't even realize I am doing it!

The weirdest thing is I have never bitten my nails or cuticles. In fact, everyone always comments on how nice my nails are.

[syd]

I have what you would call mild acne, however I am so self concious that I pick my face to death. I have huge scars on my chest and face. I have two freshly picked scabs at this moment. I know this is a problem and it results in being depressed. It is hard to go out with friends or even look at my family. I was wondering if anyone knew how to help these heal quicker. I use neosporin and a bandaid but it is killing me to look like this. any one that can help pleaase give me ideas. I try so hard not to pick, but being in high school the anxiety and self conciousness ruin it.

[syd]

sorry for the double post. I have been picking my whole life, i got acne at a very young age. I wish i knew how to quit but i tell my mother its like her with smoking, its an addiction. I have yet to find a way to help myself stop. I have weeks where i'll do really well but if my face breaks out it is back to my old ways. I wish i could fix this problem and im happy if ound this website because to hear that other people have this issue is comforting. it seems that all of the people I meet have perfect skin. It is difficult to find the good in myself when all i can see is a scarred scabbed face and body. I wish i could have a way for all of you to stop picking but the truth is, i havent found it yet either.

[starrdust007]

I have always been overweight and addicted to overeating. I know that binge eating gives me a similar high to that of picking. When I was 4 I started biting my nails, then I would compulsively bite my skin on my fingers and I started knotting & twirling my hair, so much that I had to always have it up or I'd just keep twirling it. I started picking my scalp when I hit puberty and i had really bad dandruff. I inherited my father's stupid dry patchy skin. I would pick my scalp and eat whatever I picked off. It wasn't gross to me. It was just like biting my nails and eating them or the skin of my fingers. It wasn't gross to me but everyone else thinks it is. And I'm sure they're right. Then I started getting worse dandruff, it spread to my eyebrows and then my skin all over my face would break out into dry patches. I just pick them off and eat whatever comes off. I know it's gross but I love it. It's like drugs. Especially when I rip off a good piece and it hurts, and it burns, & then I touch my finger to my tongue and rub saliva on the sore newly-picked red area & it burns, like hot fire, and you can feel your whole body pulsating. It's just amazing. I think it's something along the lines of transferring emotional/mental anguish into something physical, because physical pain is always easier to deal with.

[starrdust007]

lifetimepicker said:

Then a need grew have my skin be smooth. I couldn't and (still can't ) stand any bump or inperfection on my skin. Which later became a ridiculous oxymoron since my whole body is covered with scars.

OMG me too! It feels like anything raised, anything that isn't completely smooth is this layer of dried glue, suffocating me. It sounds nuts but it's how i feel.

[MAWG]

Hi,
It feels so good to find this. I'm not sure when I started picking, but it's pretty much a everyday habit now. I always feel like I have to keep my body covered up in those certain places cause it's such a pain to have to make up stupid excuses... During high school it was really bad on my ankles. I just couldn't stop scratching and picking at them. I felt like I would wake up in the middle of the night picking. It got so bad I could hardly walk. My ankles are better now, but I have a few spots all over my body that I have to pick everyday, at least a few times a day. There are certain days that I decide that it must heal so I buy those advanced healing band aids and leave them on for a couple of days. They help but sometimes when I take them off I still pick at the spot again. Sometimes the spot really does heal, but in a couple of weeks I have a new spot. The spots come from anything- a bug bite, a small scratch, anything. To pick a scab off is like a tension reliever for me. I want to stop. I don't feel good about my body or skin because of the picking. Sorry so long but it was about time that I got that off my chest.