Chapter 15 Trichotillomania (Hair Pulling) and other BFRBs
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- Опубліковано 30 лип 2024
- Chapter 15 recapping my unexpected Autism and ADHD year: this week I'm talking about body focused repetitive behaviours (BFRBs) and in particular trichotillomania. Neurodivergents and Neurotypicals can both be afflicted by BFRBs and they can be caused by various factors, but this is yet another manifestation that seems to be particularly prevalent with ADHD and autism.
I'll talk about my struggle with therapists trying to get a handle on my trichotillomania and coming up with self harm, anxiety, autism stims, until finally - for me - the penny dropped that it was a focus thing. It was an ADHD thing, which is why I picked my face hair both when I was stressed AND when I was relaxed. It was when my focus and attention was drifting and I was trying to pull myself back into the moment.
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Contact:
Email: amineurodivergent@gmail.com
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AQ Autism Self-Test:
I'm going to keep posting the link to the AQ Self Test for autism every Sunday in case this is the first video in the series people come across. Take the self test (remember it's JUST a self-test) and see how you score. You may have been autistic all along and had no idea, like me:
psychology-tools.com/test/aut...
ADHD Self-Test
And introducing (with all the same caveats as above) an ADHD self-test. Go on, give it a go, you know you want to - you impulsively curious ADHD scallywag you!
psychology-tools.com/test/adu...
I've been a hair puller since I was a teenager. It's only in the last few weeks that I've self-diagnosed as ASD so quite amazing to me to realise that the two are connected. Thanks for sharing. I'm also a trainee counsellor and yes, everyone should get some counselling.
Thank you so much for posting this. I've suffered from nail biting/hair pulling/skin biting for all of my life, and tried most of the things you've listed to no success, but this is the first time I've really felt an explanation has completely covered my experience. I'm in the early stages of seeking an AuDHD diagnosis and your videos are the ones I've most related to.
Good luck and thanks for the feedback - getting the diagnosis and the understanding hasn't stopped the BFRBs I have to say - but I did experiment with ADHD meds a couple of months back: some good, some bad, but I did stop picking as much when I felt more focused and 'in the room' I have to say, which was interesting..
Thank you for sharing. This is a new revelation for me! The nail picking as a means to focus really broadens my understanding to try conquering this lifelong repetitive harmful behavior. ASD, no meds.
Really pleased to hear that! The focus factor was a revelation for me too, it took YEARS of frustration with myself before getting there..
I pull at my eye brows, and eye lashes, pick at my skin, my face mostly. I rub my hands over my face and pick at any ruff places and it could just be dry skin since I dont have an acne issue like I did as a teen. I chew the skin on the side of my nails; no nail chewing. I keep them cut extremely short since I dont like the sensation/feedback I get when my nails touch the keys on a keyboard.
Yeah, this all sounds very relatable.
Just discovered your videos. Really grateful and relatable for me. This has been something I've managed as a kid but got worse once I was able to grow a beard. I've settled on keeping it at stubble. Trich along with skin rubbing/pulling, and toe tapping are my most frequent stims.For me the sensations help me focus and are pleasurable when relaxed. Its been manageable with textured fidget toys. Have my second in person assessment in a few weeks.
I'm glad you brought this up; I need to bring this to the attention of the psychologist who will be doing my testing next month. This is one area that I actually sought professional help for in the last year. When I was a child it was fingernail and skin biting. I would bite the skin around my fingers until it bled. More recently however it is head-scratching. I will scratch my scalp, pick off a bit of dandruff and eat it. It is very soothing and relaxing, but it puts me into a hypnotic state that can be very difficult to rouse myself from. In the last six months I have done this for 8 to 10 hours, scratching every part of my scalp until it was "clean" and bleeding. My solutions are to keep my nails extremely short, like trimmed every other day, to try to settle the dandruff with various shampoos, and to use brushes and combs to scratch my head, but as you say, nothing ALWAYS works.
Regarding medication, I don't know if ADHD meds help that at all, but it does help SO much with attention. I waited 10 years after that first diagnosis to start and I wish I hadn't. When you find the right one/dose, it doesn't make you feel different but it does give you much more command over your own mind.
Thanks for sharing, that's really interesting. Can I ask, do you feel better after spending so long doing it and clearly causing your scalp quite a bit of damage, or do you have kind of remorse afterwards, and also do you feel like if you don't 'finish the job' so to speak and go over every part of your scalp then something bad will happen or there will be consequences? Thanks also for sharing your experience with ADHD meds, I'm slowly coming around to the idea of maybe experimenting and seeing how I feel on them in terms of focus.
Oh wow, lightbulb moment! I've struggled to understand why I couldn't stop skin picking, hair pulling and nail biting. I had worked out that it happened frequently when I was reading and struggling to maintain focus and take in the information, and also if I was thinking intently about something and trying to work things out. I have adhd (recently diagnosed). You're right, it absolutely is a way that I've been unconsciously stimulating dopamine to help me focus. I've tried a couple of adhd stimulant medications and had to stop due to side effects, but I have an appointment next week at the adhd clinic and hopefully I'll be starting a non stimulant med. If I can tolerate it and it works for me, it'll be interesting to see if the stims reduce. Fingers crossed !
Thanks for sharing - I'll cross my fingers for you too and I'd be interested myself to hear how it goes for you!
I can strongly relate to this. I had bald spots as a young child, my mom kept my hair short because of my hair pulling. I still struggle not to bite my nails, pick my skin and hair plucking. When I was on adhd meds it seemed to cause me to focus more on the picking and hair pulling than with out. It's a big struggle. I'm still months away from my initial assessment for asd, but have been diagnosed with adhd
I'm really struggling to work out how to stop it. We thought it was a focus thing, I was fine for a while, but then fell back into it again while on ADHD meds. I understand all the talk intellectually of it's you soothing your stressed nervous system, but it's incredibly frustrating.
Wow😊😊😊😊🎉
Here in the US, the word Trich means somethings else in the medical community. Trichomoniasis (an STI).
Oh! Thank you for this. I should probably have been aware of that. And probably stop saying things like "My trich is really bad right now but I'm trying to get back on top of it with willpower and self-forgiveness!" Yikes!
@@amineurodivergent Lol! Im a healthcare assistant, so it is very common place to shorten the word unless its being explained to the patient for the first time and for most who contract it, its not their first time. Luckily for them its an infection and not a chronic disease.
Hello I’m new to your channel I found you on recommended section. I am autistic. I’m from the UK. I pick my nails and couple of years ago started to pull my hair out. Your video has explained why. I have subscribed
Thanks Gemma, I've subscribed to your channel too and had a look. I was really interested to watch your video on wedding experiences in particular. I've had really hard times at weddings in the past, both pre and post diagnosis, and this was a really worthwhile thing for you to flag. Nice to meet you!
@@amineurodivergent it’s nice to meet you to. I was diagnosed at the age of 25, I’m now nearly 35 years old.
Never had adhd meds. Lots of anxiety and depression meds. Pulled all my eyebrows out as a kid. Looked like the alien I felt like. Today as a 42 year old I find myself with tweezers all over the house and car to plug ear hairs. My mom also told me when I started sprouting armpit hairs that I hated the feeling and plucked them all out by my fingers alone while watching tv. Of course I just got a dx of depression and anxiety but never considered any kind of ND. That wasn’t really prevalent back in the 90s. I should have wondered when they asked me to join the GATE club at school in 4th that something was different.
Sorry to hear, none of that sounds fun. I still haven't 100% landed on what causes this or how to stop it, for me I suspect a combination of ND, anxiety, compounded/compounding masking trauma and focus shortfalls, all combining into trying to soothe a battered nervous system in self destructive ways. What a fun ride we're on!
Very interesting, I have trich, I'm a female so some interesting pluses and minuses, I had dreads for year dreadlock mohicans skin head,bla bla been uterly manic at phases in 56 awaiting diagnosis, it's fur generally some film had a furry wall , some fella ended up stroking the wall all night, that would be me, o have a dog touching her calms me and as you say pulls you into the here and now, she is like a life line that stops me from floating off altogether, not to mention the emotional support, wouldn't have survived this long without dogs, and nature at large, nature deficiency syndrom is also a thing I have been dealing for a while since I now live in a town, like being a fish on a beach.... much of my life as been taken up with trying to create ways of being in the world and environments which feel safe , replenishing and fun. Whilst exploring and studying what the feck is going on both inside and outside... Lol... The usual... Thanks for the share very interesting very brave, and very aferming.
Fish on a beach sounds about right sometimes - thanks for sharing!
Jeez, that kinda startled me (but in a good way, ha) to see this title. I'll be having an appointment soon for an autism assessment, and I finally, after all these years, feel like I may be able to finally work through this hair pulling. Hair pulling without many of the other symptoms of, I don't know putting it in your mouth or something, and that it's really only one general area. So distracting, though. Thank you for talking about this.
Good luck - it's so distracting and frustrating!! The vast majority of my neurodivergent manifestations I'd keep, they're what make me me, but this one I've hated myself for doing for years and years, and I would bin it in a heartbeat.
You've given me food for thought there. I know some of my quirks are stims and are self soothing actions such as playing/twiddling with my hair, but I now wonder if it's also tied to ADHD. I know I do it more when I'm anxious, but I also do it when I can't focus. The attacks on my skin are definitely a soothing response to anxiety. If I'm anxious I end up searching out blemishes on my skin and picking them. I've never gone as far as causing damage, but it does leave pit marks on the face. I'd never considered it self harm but I've recognised that the cycle can seem similar to self harm whereby the anxiety drives the action and then a sense of release, but for me, it's quite dopamine inducing too. I'm definitely going to give this subject some thought.
I used to bite my nails/chew my hair as a kid and stopped due to bullying (also didn't want to pass the nail biting habit onto my children) but picking/peeling the nails can still rear it's head. If there's a flaky bit on the edge of a nail it HAS to go! 😂 . . . I think having both autism and ADHD can cause difficulty separating the wheat from the chaff as to what is the driver. I'd say for me I think it can be both depending on what my anxiety/dopamine/focus is like at that given moment.
Definitely difficult to separate out what's what between autism and ADHD - I think in my head, for me, the ADHD lack of focus/ executive function/ dopamine leads to the picking response FIRST as comfort/ trying to bring myself back from drift, and THEN the autistic perfectionism/ lack of transition skills KEEPS me doing it, if that makes sense, and leads to me berating myself for the amount of time I spend doing it.
😀
I have never heard this explanation before or indeed of BFRB s . I need to think about this more before I comment really but just wanted to say thank you for raising awareness. This could explain my lifelong skin problems in a new light🤔
So I have many issues that I have attributed to my various diagnoses over the years (now65) including Anxiety, Depression, Hyper-mobility Spectrum Disorder, possible PoTS, Fibromyalgia, Psoriasis, food intolerances IBS etc etc BUT am now looking at them through a Neurodivergent lens…
What if my restricted diet is actually alongside, or influenced more by ‘safe foods’?
What if my struggles to travel far are more about sensory overload?
My chronic fatigue due to masking as much as anything else?
What if all my crashing and burning is actually autistic/ ADHD burnout ?
What if my psoriasis would heal better if I didn’t constantly remove layer after layer of skin on repeat ??
I could carry on but basically what if all along I haven’t be weak but just neurodivergent ?
Interesting and a bit sad to be misunderstood my whole life 🤷🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
@@janhillier2463 I'm sorry to hear this, misdiagnosis is so common with neurodivergence, especially when you've been through the wringer trying to work out 'WHAT ARE all these things'. A lady I used to work with came to a similar conclusion - it's not LOTS of things she's struggled with, it's multiple manifestations of ONE thing: neurodivergence. I'm not a doctor nor an autism or ADHD expert but it sounds like there might be a good basis for pursuing that thought process here and speaking with professionals specialising in neurodivergence. Sending you strength.
I do skin pick my scalp (and I've been ashamed of it for years) and I used to bite my nails to the point of leaving my fingertips raw, although I managed to quit the last one by "chewing" on them without force or actually biting. I also unconsciously find myself chewing on my tongue as if it was gum, and I've hurt my tongue a few times by accident. Not diagnosed yet, and I'm too unsure of myself to claim it outright, BUT I have a preliminary interview scheduled in two months so...
Thanks for sharing and good luck - all could just be an anxiety response to a disregulated nervous system, could also be neurodivergent anxiety response - the latter more likely the more things you tick off on an autism self test like the AQ Test. Thanks for watching.
I also chew my tongue relentlessly when I am either concentrating or doing a repetitive task. It drives me crazy because it isn't comfortable or soothing, and often painful, but I just can't stop as I don't realise I'm doing it until it gets sore 😕 also have a lot of anxiety and autism traits, but doing the aq50 I fall just under the threshold so haven't sought diagnosis
@@catmccabe1148 could just be an anxiety response. I wonder, two questions to consider (and no requirement to respond on here if you'd rather not): 1) out of interest have you done the ASRSv1.1 (Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale) - BFRBs while calming a disregulated nervous system (which is definitely a side effect of living autistically in a non-autistic world) could possibly have more crossover with ADHD/ concentration/ focusing than autism. 2) If you feel you have a lot of autistic traits but don't meet the AQ50 criteria: have you tried the CAT-Q test (Camouflaging Autistic Traits)? That was a fascinating test for me. ADHD link in the description above, CAT-Q test here: embrace-autism.com/cat-q/
Hi thank you for replying! I don't remember taking the first test you mention but have read up a bit on Adhd, and feel I resonate more with the attention deficit than the hyperactive traits, but again, probably not enough for a formal diagnosis. However, yes I did the Cat q test and scored very highly, 145, so definitely high masking. I am a woman in my late 40s so no surprise I would have been missed when I was young.
Thank you for your channel btw, I'm gradually listening through and enjoying the content 👍
Listening to this whilst grey hair hunting…. after one of the most heartbreaking and stressful times I’ll ever have to go through in my life.
Sorry to hear that 😞
@@amineurodivergent **nod** Thank you for that.
I've been a hair puller since I was a teenager. It's only in the last few weeks that I've self-diagnosed as ASD so quite amazing to me to realise that the two are connected. Thanks for sharing. I'm also a trainee counsellor and yes, everyone should get some counselling.
I've been a hair puller since I was a teenager. It's only in the last few weeks that I've self-diagnosed as ASD so quite amazing to me to realise that the two are connected. Thanks for sharing. I'm also a trainee counsellor and yes, everyone should get some counselling.
I've been a hair puller since I was a teenager. It's only in the last few weeks that I've self-diagnosed as ASD so quite amazing to me to realise that the two are connected. Thanks for sharing. I'm also a trainee counsellor and yes, everyone should get some counselling.
I've been a hair puller since I was a teenager. It's only in the last few weeks that I've self-diagnosed as ASD so quite amazing to me to realise that the two are connected. Thanks for sharing. I'm also a trainee counsellor and yes, everyone should get some counselling.
I've been a hair puller since I was a teenager. It's only in the last few weeks that I've self-diagnosed as ASD so quite amazing to me to realise that the two are connected. Thanks for sharing. I'm also a trainee counsellor and yes, everyone should get some counselling.