More products to Help you Stop Picking
This video and blog post showcases some products clients have found useful in reducing their skin picking. I did a video in 2017 with the top 3 products and a few other products videos so you can catch up with this playlist.
Product #1: Tally Counter
Sometimes I encourage clients to count the number of times, for example, that they go to the mirror during the day, if that's part of the problem for them. You know, if the problem is picking at the skin, sometimes the root of the problem is actually just going into the bathroom for no good reason. Sometimes the intention is clearly to go pick, and other times it’s to check on the skin, to see how it’s doing now. Sometimes following that impulse is automatic, you’re automatically going to check on your skin. So a mechanical tally counter can be a really good strategy for checking. There are no batteries. You just click the little thing, then it'll count it for you. So you can count up during the day by just clicking, and then write it down somewhere like a calendar at the end of the day to keep track of your progress. “What gets measured gets managed” is the idea here.
Another way you can use it is to count the number of times that you start to pick or you touch your skin during the day. Either way, you’re increasing your awareness using the counter and also there’s the accountability and the motivation factor that keeps you doing your best to reduce how much you look at or touch your skin, actions that always precede picking. Those actions is where our power is, rather than the picking itself. Once you’re already looking at or touching your skin, it’s almost guaranteed that you’re going to pick.
Product #2 Silicone scar sheets / tape
One of my recent clients found this so helpful. He had a raised scar on his face that he had been picking at, and he just found that whenever he was home, if he had a piece of this tape on, it really helped him keep his hands away from it and let it heal more. And of course it prevented him from touching and therefore picking at it as well. People love these; they really lighten the scars as well, and are non-toxic, which is not always the case with scar lightening products.
Product #3 Liquid bandage
Liquid bandage is another product that one of my clients told me about. It was really helping her keep things under wraps, keeping things covered up and not bothering her wounds. So she used it mostly on her cuticles, smoothing over them with this bandage. She just paints it on and it forms a clear hard layer on top. It's waterproof too, actually, which is a great way to protect any wounds and also prevent picking. It's a lot easier than regular bandages when you go to the bathroom and wash your hands bandages on your fingers will get soggy and come right off. So this is great if you wash your hands a lot. You can put it on even for a few days and it'll work. One reviewer mentioned using it for three days.
Another thing about this product, some people like to peel it. Some people are just kind of painting it on their skin and peeling it off as a replacement behavior. Instead of peeling their skin, they're peeling the liquid bandage. Which for some people helps and other people, it's just kind of a trigger to start picking or peeling more. So you need to see if this is something that will work for you, but it is helpful for some people. It’s really inexpensive too.
Product #4: Good Sugar Bad Sugar - book by Allen Carr
This book worked great for one of my clients to help her give up sugar easily, which resulted in her picking plummeting almost to zero. Sugar and all kinds of processed refined carbohydrates too are a cause of contributor to not only just about all of our chronic health problems, but also skin picking. But it's just so hard to stay away. The problem is sugar is highly addictive. The author of this book is very well known for the book The Easy Way to Stop Smoking and he’s duplicated the success with sugar and other substances and behaviors. The nice thing about these books is that they use hypnotic language to convince you that you really don't want the sugar. One of the biggest problems with addiction, including sugar, including skin picking, is that you really think that you want to do the behavior, right? You feel like you love it. And part of success is actually convincing yourself that you really don't like it that much. So this book appears to be really helpful for getting you to that place with the sugar. And since the sugar may contribute to lot of your picking as well, this book can be really helpful tool.