Compulsive behaviour

Compulsive behaviour [+ favourites]

Dear Eva,

I suffer from compulsive skin picking, and I am desperate1y seeking a way to stop picking at every imperfection. I've tried not going near mirrors, replacing it with another action, and cutting my nails short, but nothing stops me once I get the urge. Do you have any other suggestions about how to stop this horrible habit, that don't involve professional therapy?

Sincerely,
Nick

Dear Nick,

Professional therapy will provide you a forced environment that will attempt to re-condition you against your habit. This forced environment is self-inflicted by many people who wish to lose weight as well. It is believed that if they pay money for a gym membership, they are then forced to go. But as we already know, to lose weight you need to do exercise. If you can do so without paying money and without going to a gym, then you will achieve it.

I am describing your situation in terms of obesity because obesity is much easier to understand since it is somewhat simpler and also more sensationalized.

Now onto you:

Just as it is difficult to lose weight, it is difficult to re-condition ourselves against any habit we wish to get rid of. I'm going to describe bad habits as "vices" from now on.

First of all, it is important to know that everyone around you has vices. You have recognized one vice in yourself that manifests itself physically. Someone else might have a vice that relates to video games, or alcohol, or pornography. Vices can manifest themselves in many different ways because we, as humans, look for vices.

Vices are habits we adopt in order to cope. They become difficult to get rid of because as we use vices for extended periods of time, we begin to sub-consciously believe that we cannot cope without them. This is why cigarette addiction is difficult not only from a physical perspective, but also an emotional perspective.

In order to overcome a vice, we have to do two things:

1. Believe that we can cope without them.
2. Be vigilant in conditioning ourselves against them.

The first part fuels the second part. Without the first part, the second part cannot exist. Both segments of the process, however, are very difficult.

Let us begin by attempting to accomplish #1. You must believe that you can cope without picking your skin. Therefore, we have to start by getting some details about your condition. Here are some questions:

a) In what environment do you most often pick your skin?
b) Are there specific thoughts that you think about during these times?
c) Are you generally anxious and easily affected by other people? If so, how?
d) *Describe in as much detail as you can, when you remember starting to pick your skin, how long it has been going on, and what environment or event presupposed it? It does not have to make any sort of direct connection, but anything that correlated in a time sensitive fashion to it may be helpful. Just name off anything that comes to mind.

Once we get this information, we can start to figure out what outside condition you are relying on picking your skin to cope with.

Eva

a)In what environment do you most often pick your skin?

I find that I most often pick when I am alone at home, and it always seems to be in the evening or just before I go to bed.

b) Are there specific thoughts that you think about during these times?

During an episode I am in a trance state, and no worries or thoughts cross my mind until I ‘snap out of it’ and realize what I have done.

c) Are you generally anxious and easily affected by other people? If so, how?

I usually get slightly anxious in new environments and casually being around new people. I get very anxious in situations where there is social pressure (i.e. being introduced to someone, performing a speech etc.). I am easily affected by other people; it ist hard to say no to people, and I often alter my behavior in order to make other people comfortable, and sometimes lose my true self in the process without realizing it until afterwards. I am very afraid of offending people and one of my worst fears is not being liked.

d) *Describe in as much detail as you can, when you remember starting to pick your skin, how long it has been going on, and what environment or event presupposed it? It does not have to make any sort of direct connection, but anything that correlated in a time sensitive fashion to it may be helpful. Just name off anything that comes to mind.

I first picked when I was 13 during my first experience with acne in an attempt to make it go away. I remember it very well actually, and it was my mother who introduced me to the idea. She was a picker as well, and I believe I inherited it from her. There were no stressful events going on aside from the onset of acne, which was a major detriment to my already fast dropping self-esteem.


Nick

I forgot to mention that I am 18 now, so it has been 5 years. It gets quite bad some months, and I work myself into a vicious circle that is very difficult to get out of. Sometimes I will be okay for a few days, maybe a week if I can manage. But I always seem to fall off the wagon.

I find that I am overcome with self-hatred after I pick, lasting sometimes days afterwards. I become angry and depressed. I also am very vain in terms of my appearance, even though I realize how pointless it is to waste so much energy over it.

Hi Nick,

Thanks for your detailed responses. They are informative and give us a reasonably clear idea of what is going on.

Vices, as I explained before, are mechanisms of escape that we use to cope with external stimulus that causes us anxiety. Your anxiety is caused by low self worth as compared to others, and your method of escape (or at least one of them) is picking your skin.

Vices, as we become lenient on them, begin to bring with them certain emotional responses. What you have described about feeling low afterwards and feeling "ethereal" during skin picking sessions are parallel to the responses most psychological vices encompass.

The self loathing is in essence your mind venting frustration at your inability to conquer your anxiety without doing something that harms you. Since your anxiety is sourced by outside influences, you, in essence, pick your skin because of them. A part of your mind is aware of this and creates negative responses in order to compel you to stop abusing yourself for the sake of others.

We can look at it like a form of equilibrium. If you are being abused by the outside world, you will either absorb it or reject it. If you reject it, that abuse will then be absorbed by others or by those that have attempted to abuse you. If you absorb it, that abuse is manifested by skin picking, or some other vice that is an indirect form of punishment.

The important thing is that you do not feel you should be punished. No matter how low your self-esteem, a part of you is clearly angry.

Whether this anger is justified or not remains to be seen. There may be influences in your personal life that keep you in bondage, generally through guilt. Perhaps your mother, perhaps friends, siblings, or a partner. If not, it is possible that you simply assume the part of a passive person because you are used to it and therefore entice others to abuse you.

I'm sure if you think about your everyday interactions and the nature of your relationships you will find that they are more one-sided than you may have previously acknowledged.

If we conclude therefore that your skin picking is the indirect result of your submissiveness with other people, then the solution lies in not being submissive.

The primary reason we usually feel submissive is guilt: we find it much easier to feel guilty and absorb blame than expect someone else to do the same.

I have a primary social test you can do to try to gain some understanding of the nature of your relationships. The purpose of almost everything is to convey to your conscious mind what your sub-conscious already knows. The only problem is you have repressed that knowledge. Our job is now to reverse engineer this repression so you can clearly see how you may be being abused.

The first thing you can do is try to silently observe everyone around you, from a stranger walking by you to your closest friends/family. Observe the nature of who seems to initiate the pushing, and who seems to absorb being pushed.

Almost everyone allows themselves to be pushed by someone and push someone else. Some people permit themselves to be pushed much more than they push others and as a result manifest this need to assert confidence through a vice. In your case, this would be your skin picking.

Of course it is ideal not to push anyone unnecessarily and to only allow yourself to be pushed when it benefits everyone involved. It is as bad for you to be pushed around as it is for the person pushing you because you become habitually conditioned to be repressed, and they become habitually conditioned towards repressing others. Therefore, even though you are the one receiving the abuse, you are contributing to the same cycle that seems to have imprisoned you.

In observing others and the nature of who is the "alpha" and who is the submissive, ask yourself whether they would compromise for you in the same manner that you compromise for them. This will seem like a very difficult question at times because it seems "unnatural".

But then we are saying that it is natural for you to be treated worse than anyone else, which most certainly cannot be accepted.

Please absorb this information and then keep your mind and eyes open as you interact with people. Simply absorbing this information will naturally entice your subconscious to devote a certain amount of energy towards discovering the truth behind why you may have low self esteem which will help us conquer it. This will help you in ways that will exceed the problem of skin picking.

When you feel comfortable, please post your comments and/or findings here so that we can go further.

Eva

[  Edited by Eva at   ]

What you have said makes a lot of sense to me.

I have done what you have said and observed my interactions with people, as well as others’ interactions with each other. I’ve found that I am always the one absorbing the force and being influenced (except when I’m around my mother), but others seem to find a relative balance between their exertion & absorption.

I have mulled over your theory of a low sense of self worth as compared to others, and I can think of some possible forms of abuse I encounter that result in this self-loathing.

For starters, my mother pushes me a lot. She causes me stress, and is the one person that I feel the need to snap at sometimes. She is very overactive and gets hysterical over the smallest things. It is almost unbearable (my sister, who is 32 and a grief counselor, can testify this). I find it interesting that I am almost the opposite: I hardly ever let it show when I get wound up. Someone could get their head chopped off right in front of me and I would probably have a stone cold look on my face, and calmly walk to the nearest phone, but my heart would be racing a mile a minute. To get back to the point, she pushes me but I usually push back.

Secondly, my friendships, as you mentioned, have been very one-sided. I find myself doing many small favors for people (which I usually enjoy doing, possibly because it pleases them?), but I never ask for anything from them (unless it's an emergency), thus receive nothing in return. I don’t seem to want anything anyways, and I feel I shouldn’t have them owe me anything just for the sake of balancing it out so I just leave it be. Time and time again, I find myself lending small amounts of money to people, or even just pens. I never get paid back, and it does irritate me but I just let it go without starting a confrontation. I don’t want them to feel uncomfortable. I find this absolutely hilarious, but I never change.

This has reminded me of a few things I would like to say to give you a better understanding of my personality & social tendencies:

- I value being self-sufficient (especially emotionally), and keep most of my feelings to myself. I don’t want to need emotional support from others, because I can’t help but see it as weakness (although deep down I know it’s definately not)

- My friends seem to get sick of me after a while. I certainly don’t do anything to hurt them, I give them their space, and I try to let on that I’m stronger, more outspoken, and make it look like I don’t “try” to get people to like me, so they don’t see me as a pushover and lose interest. But nevertheless my friendships don't last longer than a year. This makes me feel like a completely worthless piece of shit that doesn’t know how to maintain a social life. I end up alone and meditating on everything I may have done wrong and could possibly do to improve myself for the sake of the people around me.

Thank you very much Eva for taking the time out to help me with this, it is VERY greatly appreciated.

Hi Nick,

The most important thing to do is to keep yourself observant. What changes need to be done will be naturally and gradually absorbed by your sub-conscious mind. The more information you absorb clearly, the more you will begin to gravitate towards a state of equilibrium.

For example, if you are used to being pushed around and don't notice it you are repressing that knowledge. That will then be compensated for by skin picking.

If you notice it, your mind will begin to feel angered more immediately. This anger will then, eventually, reflect unto those that suppress you. This will naturally remove your sub-conscious want to pick skin.

The anger that you will create as a result of this is not bad and it is not good. It is a necessary reaction to being suppressed. Anger is only useful if it paves the way for change. Therefore, if you feel anger, you must analyze why and then figure out how to prevent it from happening. And as you now know, prevention does not equate absorption.

I believe that your need to be self-sufficient can be simply described as your fear of being made to feel guilty; if you are weak with someone and someone provides you with emotional support, you then owe them. And when you owe people, you let them walk all over you. In fear of this, you support self-sufficiency. But as you stated, this is not correct. You should be as self-sufficient as you wish to be, and as reliant as you wish to be. The problem is finding people that will aid you without taking advantage of you later.

In regards to you not keeping friends, I would suggest one simple thing: People tend to like you when you like yourself. When you like yourself, people will find reason to find things about you to like. This cannot be faked on the conscious level, and although it may be faked on the sub-conscious level, that inevitably ends up in ruin.

Your quest begins with yourself. You must like yourself Nick. In order to achieve this you must first remove all influences that make you dislike yourself. People who push you around make you dislike yourself. People who abuse you make you dislike yourself.

When you dislike yourself but know that it is unfair to dislike yourself, you feel anger.

Once you remove the bad influences, then you must begin finding reasons to be confident about yourself irrelevant of who else agrees with you.

If I were to disgrace you by telling you that skin picking is a detestable habit and that this forum is for people who are not complete losers, you must have the strength to not only know that I am wrong, but to then try to figure out why I have such a skewed view of reality. In fact, your confidence should be so stable that you immediately jump to trying to help me grasp reality a bit better.

This is definitely achievable.

It all begins by expecting reciprocity in all your sacrifices.

Eva