Story of a lifetime lip picker

Let me tell you a story about one of my clients. Let's call her Alicia, not her real name. Alicia had a terrible problem with picking her lips. It started as a child and it went on for a couple of decades and she tried and tried to stop, you know, same story you've probably experienced yourself and just could not stop it all. So she came to see me. What was really amazing was that it really didn't take very long for her to stop. I’m going to explain what she did and why that made a difference for her.

Awareness is the first key to stop picking

So the first step in stopping picking of any sort is to become aware of when you're doing it.

And for this, I had Alicia write down a number of things each and every time she noticed herself picking, and even when her hands were just going to her lips. You can find in my book the exact format of how to do this, and an explanation in full.

What Alicia realized in keeping a log of her behavior for a week was that she would only do this in a few situations. It was especially whenever she either thought about her family or had to talk about or talk to her family, there was a little bit of added stress and responsibility feeling that she had to take care of them. And that was just when she would notice immediately going to her lips.

When do you find yourself picking your lips? Are there patterns that you've already noticed?

how to prevent yourself from picking your lips

So then after recognizing what your patterns are, what you want to do is keep lip balm everywhere that you need it. So Alicia noticed also that she would tend to do it in the car. So she had some lip balm in the car, in her purse, really anywhere around the house when you need it, because that was going to be her replacement behavior. As soon as she noticed herself about to pick, she would put the lip balm on instead and then she wouldn't want to touch her lips with it and she wouldn't. If you prefer you can use lip gloss or something, it probably will work fine as well. Just make sure it's nice and moisturizing. And then it was simply a practice of being consistent with it and still writing it down, keeping track of every time her hands even went to her lips, because well beyond the amount of time that she stopped picking, she would still notice touching a few times.

She kept keeping track of that because doing so continued to bring her awareness to it.

Meditation helps

Now, Alicia also happened to be a daily and long-term meditator. So I think that really helped her as well, to have such a well-developed ability to be aware, and to be able to stop and think rather than to compulsively, automatically go to picking. So that's another skill that I recommend, and there are a lot of meditation apps to learn if you'd like to. My favorite one is called 10% Happier. But I've had clients have a lot of success using Calm, Headspace, Insight timer, all these things as well as learning meditation outside of an app in person somewhere. (Here is a YouTube video where I guide you in meditation.)

Brush your lips for Exfoliation and Sensory Input

Another thing you can do, because your lips might be peeling - you're definitely picking at something. Instead of picking with your hands, you'll want to use some other way to remove the rough or peeling skin.

So what you can do is use one of these little lip brushes. It has two sides to it, two textures. So you can experiment with which one you like better, which works better, or you might find using both one after the other is better. But these are so cheap on Amazon, and then I saw when I was in a Dollar Tree and they had one there too. Sometimes you're actually craving the sensation while picking, even though afterwards maybe it feels horrible, your lips hurt, they’re bleeding. But the lip brush also can just give you a nice sensation. So that can be helpful too.

A healthy lifestyle

So Alicia was not just a meditator, but she really did have all her lifestyle points in line. She was a good eater, she exercised, she meditated, she was happy with the circumstances of her life, aside from the lip picking. And so there were very few things she needed to work on, but she still felt like it was just a miracle - stopping was something she had not been able to do for so long.

For you, there may be other components to this. You might need to slow down, you might need to reduce stress with exercise, sleep well, have a healthy diet, low sugar, low caffeine. All those things can be helpful too.

I trust this post was helpful, but if you feel overwhelmed, that’s natural too and I want to help! Reach out and request a free consultation to see how I can help you stop picking the skin on your lips or anywhere else too.

Love and support,

Annette