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louise2018 , 27 May 2018

finally feel free to share my story

hey everyone, i’ve been reading a lot posts on this forum for about an hour now and i feel comfortable talking freely here. not sure if anyone will read or respond but it’s worth a shot. i’m a 23 year old female that has had trich since i was 14 (9 years). i really wish i knew what made me start playing with my hair.. but for the life of me i can’t remember. doctors think i’m “blocking it out” anyways, in high school i started to play/spilt my split ends. constantly. like everyday. i was struggling with self harm and depression and with my parents being the lovingly concerned parents they are, put me in therapy and not long after i was prescribed Prozac. maybe a year after i tried killing my self by taking the whole bottle of Prozac. long story short i was a pretty disturbed teenager back then. my therapist would notice in our sessions me playing with my hair, examining the strands, pulling apart the spilt ends and she told me i have Trich. i felt kinda better knowing that this is something real. i remember in Psych class we were on the topic of OCD so i shared with the class that me playing with my spilt ends was actually OCD. one girl blurted out “yeah it irritates the shit outta me when you do it” that kinda hurt but i my hair was still full and thick i just was obsessed with my spilt ends. this behavior carried on until college. during winter break of my second year at college i was raped. i was ashamed, a “friend” said that since i went into the house willingly it wasn’t rape so i never reported it and didn’t even tell my parents until a good 9 months later. after the rape my life took a 180 spin. i was self harming, in and out of psychiatric hospitals, at one time on 9 different psych meds, and literally couldn’t function in daily life. what also transpired was my seemingly innocent spilt end pulling turned into repeatedly pulling stands of hair from the root. it was getting bad. at that time i can understand why no one really focused on that because i had life threatening mental health issues we had to address. but at this point in my life Trich is the number one thing i need to get a handle on. up until 2 months ago i was taking a bunch of anti depressants, mood stabilizers, and benzos. i’ve stopped all. cold turkey and against the advice of my psychiatrist. don’t freak out... i’m ok!! mentally i am stable and thinking so much clearer but my Trich has gotten worse. i don’t want to go back on the meds because even with them i was still pulling. i have bald spots on both sides of my head and i haven’t socialized, seen any friends, or gone anywhere other than work or therapy because i am so embarrassed of what i’ve done and what i look like. when i get home from work i have to put on surgical gloves so i don’t pull. i also put a beanie hat on every night. to be completely honest.. as these methods seem like they might work, the compulsion to pull is overwhelming and i end up takin off both the gloves and hat. some nights i don’t want to pull so bad i have my mom (yes i’m still living at home, judge me) sleep with me so she can stop me from pulling. nothing really works. my therapists (i have 3) don’t know what to do either. i’ve tried DBT and CBT with no success. i tried to do hypnosis but the hypnotherapist said that since i have significant preexisiting mental health issues and history or trauma she wouldn’t preform hypnosis on me. i found another dr that would but it would cost over a thousand dollars. and although i’m willing to try anything i don’t want to spend that kind of money on something that doesn’t have a guarantee. this disorder is ruining my life and i just really needed to share my whole story with someone.. something.. somewhere..
if you read this far i thank you and i ask for you to pray to whatever you believe in that i get through this because it is horrible. i sincerely hope everyone in this forum finds some kind of peace sometime soon. we all deserve it. thank you.

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