Encouraging truths about stopping picking and similar behaviors
You are so much more than your skin picking or hair pulling or other body-focused repetitive behavior (BFRB). However, chances are good that you have been over-focused on your behavior to the point where you may feel it dominates who you are, that you are your picking, pulling or other BFRB. There is hope though. A person can learn to stop picking, pulling or other behaviors. Here are some encouraging truths:
You don’t have to completely stop picking to feel good about yourself and lead a great full happy life. Once people see the progress they are making as a result of their own efforts,even with my direction, they are encouraged to continue. The focus becomes the positive things they are doing to stop, and the fact that they are feeling and looking better and better, rather than the picking itself.
Learning to stop or greatly reduce your behavior will give you tremendous energy and a feeling of freedom, not to mention time, to mold your life into whatever you’d like it to be.Your skin picking is not your fault. It is a natural human tendency to avoid pain, and to pursue pleasure. We all have some (usually dysfunctional) way or ways of falling into that trap. This just happens to be yours. A long time ago, you discovered that picking at your skin either gave you some relief from anxiety, uncomfortable emotions that you didn’t want to feel, or even simply boredom, and it felt good. We humans learn quickly, so before you even knew it could become a problem, you probably did it hundreds of times, and it became a deep groove in your mind, your go-to behavior anytime you felt less-than-optimal. A way to regulate yourself, even when you were happy and excited - maybe those emotional states made you fall into the groove too.
The amazing and encouraging thing is how dramatically we can learn to rewire, to change our brains. Studies have shown, for example, that people with OCD have certain structural abnormalities in the brain that normalize with treatment over a period of time. Doctors and scientists used to think the brain couldn’t be changed, but plenty of research has proven that to be wrong. Like our body, our brain and whole nervous system is incredibly changeable, a quality scientists call neuroplasticity.
Nothing is impossible. People do heal their bodies and brains and recover from skin picking, hair pulling and similar BFRBs. You can too. Learn how: sign up to receive your free Freedom Kit or contact me for personal coaching.
Love and support,
Annette