Coming Clean: My Struggles With Trichotillomania

I have had it for around six years, hidden it from the people around me and let it control me. To be honest, I am tired of hiding it, so this is my chance to finally come clean and say it out loud: I have Trichotillomania.

For those who aren’t familiar with the term, Trichotillomania—often referred to as trich—is a hair pulling disorder. Someone who suffers from this condition would have recurrent, irresistible urge to pull their hair out from their scalp, eyebrows, eyelashes, genital area, or basically any other parts of their body that grows hair. For me, I pull out hairs from my scalp.

I still remember the day I sat in my math class in sixth grade (around 2015), finals were getting closer and I didn’t know it then, but looking back, I was definitely frustrated, stressed, and anxious. Feeling so, my hand started going through my hair and I pulled a strand of my hair from my scalp. I saw that there’s this white bulb on the tip of the hair—which I then found out that it is actually the root’s sheath—and I touched it. It felt cold. My curiosity got to me, I started taking off the root sheath from that strand of hair. And ever since then, I haven’t been able to properly stop.

By seventh grade I started seeing that I’ve lost so much hair on the front of my head—because it was the easiest part for me to pull out my hair from—and it’s clearly visible. For some reason, I decided to trim the hair that was there. I didn’t finish there, I also shaved some parts of it with a razor! How ridiculous! I have no idea what I was thinking. My doing made my hair look very weird and at that point there was no going back.

That particular moment is one of the significant ones—there were others but hey, we’re not gonna talk about that now—that brought me to the most darkest period of my life. I hated the way I look, I hated when people look at me, I wanted to hide and I just wished that I could disappear for the rest of my life.

People definitely noticed that there’s clearly something odd with my hair and they’d ask me questions about it. My heart sank each time and I didn’t know how to answer. How the hell do I tell them that I’ve ‘messed’ them up by pulling them out out of boredom and anxiety? I avoided their questions and each time, I swore I wouldn’t pull my hair again. But it just isn’t that damn easy.

The thinning hair added with puberty made me hate myself and my time in junior high school. To this day, I still avoid looking at pictures of me from that period, I even think I’ve deleted them all. If I come across one, I’ll cringe and my mood instantly goes down. I was and still am ashamed and embarrassed by my doing and how it resulted to my appearance.

The stares, comments and questions I get didn’t help. It deeply affected how I felt and acted. Because I lived—and still do — live with my parents, my mom would regularly see me pulling out my hair and she would tell me to stop, she would even go to the extent of telling me that she’d shave my hair bald. I get that she was concerned and was trying to help me to stop doing it but hearing those words stings and hurts. I would lash out and get defensive each time she said it and I’d reply by saying things like “It’s not that damn easy!”

So filled with insecurity and embarrassment, I took it upon myself to stop going to school. I didn’t go to school for a whole month, avoided talking to anyone, even my family. I can’t say that I felt the same then, but I am extremely thankful that my parents made me go back to school, if they didn’t I wouldn’t know where I’d be now.

Going back to school after a whole month of not going, I was extremely anxious. I do feel the weird stares and awkward moments, but thankfully no one was pushy about where I’ve been and why I was gone. But they did ask, and again, I just avoided them.

One day, I was so fed up with everything that I was doing and how it has affected me, so I went to Google and typed out “I can’t stop pulling out my hair” on the search bar. After hitting enter, one word instantly came up: Trichotillomania.

I’m fully aware that Google isn’t the most trustworthy source and that self diagnosing isn’t a right way to do things, but I was beyond desperate. When I read articles regarding it, the symptoms that were stated on those websites were accurate to what I had been doing. What once was something that I thought only I was doing, turned out to be done by quite an amount of people. I realized that what I was—and still am—facing is a serious condition and most importantly, I was not alone. It’s possible for me to get out of this condition.

Unfortunately, knowing that didn’t cut it for me. I still find myself sitting in my couch at night, alone, procrastinating from the things I should’ve been doing, lost in my thoughts, itching to pull my hair. And so I did. I still find myself looming in sadness and self hatred afterwards, promising myself that I wouldn’t do it again and breaking that promise just minutes after.

What I hated most was how aware I was of all of it and yet it seems possible for me to control it. I have let it take control over me. I’ve had many moments where I stopped and thought that I am fully ‘free’ from it, but it strikes again (my longest streak is 1.5 month). I’m scared that it’ll never go away and I’ll be stuck with it forever. But I need to understand that it takes time for it to go and there’ll be a lot of relapses and that’s okay.

To be honest, I’m writing this right now because I’m tired of hiding and hating myself for so long. I want this to be a step for me to start moving forward and start coming to terms with trich and myself. I hope that one day, I’ll look back at my struggles with trich with pride for I am strong enough to go through it instead of being shameful and embarrassed.

Lastly, I don’t know if anyone’s going to read this, but if someone is reading this and is also struggling with Trichotillomania, please know that you are not alone. You don’t need to feel embarrassed about your struggles because they do not define you. Come to terms with it, come to terms with yourself. You’ll get through this.