You’ve probably heard of the term hair-pulling before but did you know that excessive hair pulling could possibly be a cause of a medical condition? Trichotillomania is a chronic recurrent behavior that leads patients to pull their hair compulsively. Usually, this behavior lasts for a lifetime and starts in the adolescence years of its patients, causing them physical and emotional anguish that can sometimes lead individuals to self-isolate from society fearing judgment. Unfortunately, no cure has been discovered for this behavior, but patients can learn to manage their symptoms and stop the behavior using mindfulness and some competing responses. This article lists a few methods that can be practiced by trichotillomania patients to reduce the symptoms or even stop hair-pulling completely.
Acknowledging Your Behaviors and Triggers
Identifying your hair-pulling trends and gaining awareness of your patterns helps you become more in control of your negative habits. First, you need to acknowledge your behaviors in order to put an end to it. Grab a journal and write down the time of the day when you pull your hair more often. Maybe mention which part you pull more frequently, how much time you spend on hair-pulling, what can make you stop, and how you feel before and after you pull your hair. This will help you track your behaviors and create manageable patterns. You should also track your triggers whether they are internal or external cues. An internal trigger can be an emotion, a sensation, or a thought, while an external trigger can be caused by certain places or certain people or situations. By tracking these triggers, you will most probably end up with a pattern of specific triggers and pulling trends. You don’t have to judge these triggers or change them, but keeping an eye on them will help you gain more mental clarity and self-control.
Connect With Similar Cases
Dealing with others who know what you go through is the key to boosting self-confidence and managing your behavior in a more positive way. Community members at www.nomorehairpulling.com state that helping others and receiving encouragement from other members can significantly increase confidence and aid in the treatment of trichotillomania patients. This is why you need to be going out there and joining support groups or private communities. You can either do this in person or join online groups and communities and find places where support is mutual. Encouragement is really essential for beating habits. Try encouraging yourself, and celebrate small accomplishments such as committing to recovery. Make sure you celebrate your improvement and support others by celebrating theirs too. Nothing feels better than sharing your self-improvement stories with people who actually know where you come from, so don’t hesitate about connecting with trichotillomania groups and meeting people who share the same struggles as you. It could be a great way of identifying your behavior without you even knowing.
Acknowledging Negative Feelings and Thoughts
Part of your behavioral awareness should be dedicated to identifying the thoughts and feelings that precede or follow your pulling behavior. Mindfulness is recognizing these psychological effects without judgment, whether they are negative or positive thoughts and feelings. Spotting these negative thoughts will help you address them and dispute them in a positive way that helps your case. For example, you can write down the things you struggle with and frame them to create a list of goals you need to achieve in order to recover. Tracking and writing down everything you go through within your pulling patterns will always give you a clearer vision of your goals. However, talking to a therapist and working your issues out with a professional who studied your case will lead to better results.
Coming up With Competing Behaviors
One of the best ways of dealing with negative habits is creating behaviors or situations that limit you from repeating them. This technique is actually used in Habit Reversal Training or HRT, which engages patients in behaviors that make it impossible for them to pull their hair. For instance, some people would wear gloves, sit on their hands, or even just clench their fists or hold them tight when they feel the urge to start pulling their hair.
Hair-pulling or trichotillomania is a common disorder that affects people in their teenage years and stays with them until they grow old. It’s classified as behavior and cannot be cured by medical interference. However, people who struggle with hair-pulling behaviors can manage their symptoms and stop this behavior by practicing some mental habits and competing behaviors. These habits include identifying their negative urges and observing their pulling patterns without judging these patterns or trying to change the triggering reasons behind them.