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My story
My parents "cared" about my grades. Since 1st grade they never let me study on my own and sent me to a private school i hate (my current grades are in the top 5 percent in every subject but i still make Cs somehow). I have no freedom and my "electronics" are taken away almost all the time, so i spend most of my time studying. When most kids get home, they do about an hour of homework then play xbox or playstation for multiple hours before going to bed. I would get home, do homework, then study with parents for hours at a time. By third grade they took away all of my weekend and devoted it to studying. I became kinda depressed and hated everything, because i really had nothing to look forward to ever and i worked 16 hour days in school. In 3rd grade I started picking at a scab on the very top of my head. It bled now and then, and hair sometimes came with the scabs. I somehow recovered in 4th grade and all hair grew back. In 6th grade I somehow started it back again. It lasted a year and got noticeable. I hated myself more over it and eventually found a cure of putting medicine on it until it healed, but i still had the habit of putting my hand there. Some hair that came out with the scabs started to grow back, and i pulled one out for no reason. I was satisfied by the way it felt when it came out, and i started doing it instead of picking the scab off (I also like poking myself with the hair root lol) . I try to stop but i cannot. Now im stuck with the bald spot and am unable to let it grow back. People have noticed and i hate it. My absolute worst fear is that i get stuck with trich forever, or the combination of the scab picking and hair pulling making a permanent bald spot. I wanna throw in i deal with anxiety alot and i bite my fingernails, and have decided its not a big enough problem to need to try everything to stop it.
As you know, trichotillomania [sounds like a prehistoric monster] is a formidable opponent. Like many "projects" as opposed to "incidents", we need to work on it over time and exercise a lot of discpline to try to get through it. My issues are nearly exactly like yours [picking repetitively at same spots on the head], and things like itch cream (applied to hair) and biotin (also for fingernail strength) helps for some time, but we definitely have underlying anxiety issues as well to get thru long term.
Keep at it. I've been hanging around here to ensure that I continue to work on my issues and keep tabs. A repetitive problem perhaps requires a repetitive solution, i.e. constantly keeping track and "healthy competitions" with people having similar issues to report how long we can go without picking out hair as well as when we relapse, encouragements to get back to it.
Like many things (school and work projects), it is going to take long term work and some healthy respect that we are dealing with a difficult task.
All the best,
cavey