Dermatillomania Community Group
for those who suffer with this. Dermatillomania, also known as compulsive skin picking (CSP), is an impulse control disorder. People with CSP use fingernails, teeth, tweezers, and pins to pick at their skin in response to a compulsive urge. They pick at scabs, acne, and other blemishes-most often on the face, scalp, or extremities, but sometimes on the torso or other...
I have taken the following information from the Bipolar group where there was a discussion going about Dermatillomania
Onychophagia is the fancy technical term for the compulsive and repetitive biting, chewing, and picking of your fingernails and cuticles
According to http://facepick.tripod.com/
"The affliction currently goes by several different names:
# Neurotic Excoriations
# Acne Excoriee
# Psychogenic Excoriations
# Dermatillomania
# Compulsive Skin Picking (CSP)
# Psychodermotosis
# Self Injurious Skin Picking (SISP)"
It has been linked with mood disorder, OCD, and anxiety. I've found some good information for myself online by looking up self help info for trichotillomania (compulsive hair pulling) since they have similar triggers and treatments.
My own experience is that
I'm a sober alcoholic, have Bipolar Disorder, Panic and Anxierty Disorders, PTSD and of course, OCD, one form of the OCD being me having have bitten and picked the quicks around my fingers for so many decades that I have ruined the nail base on every finger and my nails are deformed. I know that I do it because it affects the pleasure centres of the brain and is an anxiety management tool. I think it is like what cutters do - it externalises the pain within my head and heart and also though it can be excruciatingly painful, it is less painful than what goes on in my head. But of course it causes more anxiety as people look at my nails in disgust - just as I look at them in disgust. They are often bloody - and when in was in my corporate career - which lost it all due to all my illnesses and mis-medication, I did it too. I remember sitting in business meetings, even ones I was chairing and I couldn't wait to sit down to hide my hands and hack at them. I remember one meeting with a Managing Director (I had the hair, face and suite on) and it was all going well, he respected my work and we were working on something well together and I was picking so bad under the table that my hand were bloodied. Of course he could see it as I had to lift my hands to do the paperwork.
I also pick skin on other parts of my body until they bleed and have had large sores that have gone on for YEARS. It's very hard to change such long-embedded behaviour and frankly, it the least of my problems mental health-wise. So changing this stufff isn't even on the agenda. I did however manage to get a really large wound to heal last byear - but that was without the help of the mental health profession, so kudos to me.
A very difficult aspect to this is other peoples' responses to it. For my whole life, people have felt they have the right to invade my personal space and slap me on the hands - it's similar in a way to people touching pregnant womens' tummies. I feel violated, threatened, humiliated.
I recently saw one of my brothers, whom I love but was one of my primary abusers recently in a very unexpected situation - and I haven't seen him for two years and he was part of my family I had made a permanent seperation from, the first thing he did when we had time to talk was slap my hands - in public as I was doing my usual picking. I mean FUCK OFF (excuse me if that's offensive but I can't express myself any better). I spoke to my psychologist about it and he agreed I needed to knock it on the head straigh away and tell my brother he must never do that again and my psychologist agreed I should use his authourity when telling my brother not to do it, and he has agreed to stop it. But being assertive like that takes SO MUCH out of me.
Then recently I had an intake assessment from a public psych agency in the town I just moved to and I was doing my usual picking during the assessment and the psychologist snapped loudly to me "STOP DOING THAT!!!!". I inferred immediately that it wasn't a therapeutic thing she was saying, ie the sort of therapeutic intervention one would make after a long time working together in a trust relationship. So I said to her, assertively, but not aggressively like she had been, "Is that annoying you?" And she said "YES". AND FUCK HER TOO. I wasn't accepted to that service because they claimed I'd be better served in the private sector (but I'm on the Pension???). But I'm glad now that they didn't accept me because that's outright abuse - not a therapeutic environment at all, and there were many other abuses of lesser forms.
I hate this picking business but I need to just accept it's part of me.
I'm sorry if I've offended anyone or grossed anyone out but it's such a relief to me to talk about this subject - clearly I look down at my hands every day and I am literally now deformed and I feel loneliness and isolation, like I'm a freak. But none of use are freaks, these are normal human behavious in response, largely to abusive and neglectful upbringings - the only problem is this one externalised so we can't cover it up.
(I am hoping to get this group moving as I believe there are many people across DS boards who suffer this type of thing but either they don't get a diagnosis at all or it's swept in with Anxiety Disorders, and a;sp because there is a lot od shame attached to it (certainly with me), it good to have a forum where it can be discussed in a constructive, caring, non-judgemental way.
Onychophagia is the fancy technical term for the compulsive and repetitive biting, chewing, and picking of your fingernails and cuticles
According to http://facepick.tripod.com/
"The affliction currently goes by several different names:
# Neurotic Excoriations
# Acne Excoriee
# Psychogenic Excoriations
# Dermatillomania
# Compulsive Skin Picking (CSP)
# Psychodermotosis
# Self Injurious Skin Picking (SISP)"
It has been linked with mood disorder, OCD, and anxiety. I've found some good information for myself online by looking up self help info for trichotillomania (compulsive hair pulling) since they have similar triggers and treatments.
My own experience is that
I'm a sober alcoholic, have Bipolar Disorder, Panic and Anxierty Disorders, PTSD and of course, OCD, one form of the OCD being me having have bitten and picked the quicks around my fingers for so many decades that I have ruined the nail base on every finger and my nails are deformed. I know that I do it because it affects the pleasure centres of the brain and is an anxiety management tool. I think it is like what cutters do - it externalises the pain within my head and heart and also though it can be excruciatingly painful, it is less painful than what goes on in my head. But of course it causes more anxiety as people look at my nails in disgust - just as I look at them in disgust. They are often bloody - and when in was in my corporate career - which lost it all due to all my illnesses and mis-medication, I did it too. I remember sitting in business meetings, even ones I was chairing and I couldn't wait to sit down to hide my hands and hack at them. I remember one meeting with a Managing Director (I had the hair, face and suite on) and it was all going well, he respected my work and we were working on something well together and I was picking so bad under the table that my hand were bloodied. Of course he could see it as I had to lift my hands to do the paperwork.
I also pick skin on other parts of my body until they bleed and have had large sores that have gone on for YEARS. It's very hard to change such long-embedded behaviour and frankly, it the least of my problems mental health-wise. So changing this stufff isn't even on the agenda. I did however manage to get a really large wound to heal last byear - but that was without the help of the mental health profession, so kudos to me.
A very difficult aspect to this is other peoples' responses to it. For my whole life, people have felt they have the right to invade my personal space and slap me on the hands - it's similar in a way to people touching pregnant womens' tummies. I feel violated, threatened, humiliated.
I recently saw one of my brothers, whom I love but was one of my primary abusers recently in a very unexpected situation - and I haven't seen him for two years and he was part of my family I had made a permanent seperation from, the first thing he did when we had time to talk was slap my hands - in public as I was doing my usual picking. I mean FUCK OFF (excuse me if that's offensive but I can't express myself any better). I spoke to my psychologist about it and he agreed I needed to knock it on the head straigh away and tell my brother he must never do that again and my psychologist agreed I should use his authourity when telling my brother not to do it, and he has agreed to stop it. But being assertive like that takes SO MUCH out of me.
Then recently I had an intake assessment from a public psych agency in the town I just moved to and I was doing my usual picking during the assessment and the psychologist snapped loudly to me "STOP DOING THAT!!!!". I inferred immediately that it wasn't a therapeutic thing she was saying, ie the sort of therapeutic intervention one would make after a long time working together in a trust relationship. So I said to her, assertively, but not aggressively like she had been, "Is that annoying you?" And she said "YES". AND FUCK HER TOO. I wasn't accepted to that service because they claimed I'd be better served in the private sector (but I'm on the Pension???). But I'm glad now that they didn't accept me because that's outright abuse - not a therapeutic environment at all, and there were many other abuses of lesser forms.
I hate this picking business but I need to just accept it's part of me.
I'm sorry if I've offended anyone or grossed anyone out but it's such a relief to me to talk about this subject - clearly I look down at my hands every day and I am literally now deformed and I feel loneliness and isolation, like I'm a freak. But none of use are freaks, these are normal human behavious in response, largely to abusive and neglectful upbringings - the only problem is this one externalised so we can't cover it up.
(I am hoping to get this group moving as I believe there are many people across DS boards who suffer this type of thing but either they don't get a diagnosis at all or it's swept in with Anxiety Disorders, and a;sp because there is a lot od shame attached to it (certainly with me), it good to have a forum where it can be discussed in a constructive, caring, non-judgemental way.
hannah whitehead