Skin Picking Addiction: Addictive Thinking Traps

Addictive Thinking and Skin Picking

“This is the last time I'm going to pick.” Have you had this thought? The subtext of course is, “so I might as well do it all.” Maybe even, “I'll just do it all now because I'm never going to do it again.” This is an example of an addictive thinking trap, and I bet you have lots of them.

We have all these untrue, unhelpful thoughts in our heads. These thoughts, when unrecognized as traps, and then unanswered, are getting you to do this behavior and are keeping you doing it. When we become aware of them and answer them in helpful ways (self-talk) they lose their hypnotic power over us and recovery becomes possible with practice.

Permission giving thoughts

Permission giving thoughts are the ways that we open the door to picking. I've worked with hundreds of people and everybody has the thought, “just this one” or “just a little” or “just here” where you find something and then with that thought you tell yourself to start picking. The skin picking addiction tricks you into thinking you're only going to do this one, only going to do a little. This is a universal addictive thinking trap.

Somebody addicted to alcohol doesn’t really believe they're going to have another binge session. It's “just this one.” “Okay, just one drink.” It’s the same with cookies, if overeating is your addiction. “Okay, I'll just have one.” But then it ends up being the whole bunch. And the problem is that we believe these thoughts, so we really need to start to recognize them and tell ourselves, remind ourselves, this is the problem, this is the lie, this is the addiction, this is the thought that gets you in trouble. You cannot believe it. So whether it's just one, just a little, just here, or whether “I'm never going to pick again.” That's also denial, another common addictive thinking trap.

“I'm not going to pick.” Do you say that to yourself? Do you go to a habitual spot where you usually quite often end up picking, whether it's your couch, your car, your bathroom or wherever and you tell yourself, “I'm okay. I'm not going to pick.” Well, that is sometimes an addictive thought as well, right? This surety that we're not going to do the thing, we're not going to indulge in whatever it is. And so it's really a lot smarter, instead of feeling like, oh yeah, I don't have this problem because I'm not feeling it right now, it’s smarter to always remind yourself instead that your thoughts about whether you're going to pick or not are actually unreliable. You have to use your strategies each time you're in these dangerous situations.

Other forms of permission giving would be, “I've had a really hard day, so I need to do this,” or I “deserve to do this.” You have to recognize this is only going to make it worse. You have to start to recognize these thoughts and tell yourself, “no, you've had a bad day, but this will only make it worse. So let's not.”

“I've been doing really good lately, so I can just do a little.” If your goal is to stop picking entirely, it makes no sense. You're trying to reward yourself with the very behavior you're trying to stop. So maybe they're tell yourself, “that's not a good reward for yourself.” The reward that you want is clear skin, better skin, whatever it is, but it's not this, right? It's not doing the behavior a little because that leads downhill, right back to where you’ve been trying to escape.

Watch the video above for more of these kind of thoughts!

All or nothing thinking

After we open the door to skin picking with these permission giving thoughts, then we step through and have the kind of thoughts like, “I blew it.” “What’s the use?” “Today’s a total loss.” “Might as well keep going.” They're telling you it's useless to stop yourself once you've already started. It's equating doing any amount with “you might as well do all of it.” This is “all or nothing” thinking, the other super common addictive thinking trap.

Under the influence of this thought trap there’s no difference between slipping up and starting to pick and doing it for hours. That's another trap that you need to recognize and bust up and answer in some way.

Or even just to put the idea of stopping into your head. So the idea with all these automatic thoughts is that they are hypnotizing. If you have no other thoughts in your head when you're listening to a thought like, “I need to get this,” “I need to fix this,” “I have to get rid of the bumps,” anytime you just have one thought, it's like you're hypnotizing yourself, you're not hearing anything else. If you only have one thought that's telling you what to do, you are going to do what it's telling you to do. So we have to be aware in the moment that we're having these thoughts.

Don’t should all over yourself

Another example of thoughts you have while you’re picking is “I shouldn't be doing this.” “I should stop.” But neither of these thoughts get you to stop either. They are just making you feel guilty, and as a result you feel bad so you keep doing it.

how do you stop once you’ve started?

We have to recognize these particular thoughts and then we have to answer them. An excellent way is to make stopping seem really positive.

One answer thought (self-talk) that my clients have found the most helpful is “stopping now is a win.” All of a sudden, if you have that thought, “stopping now is a win,” it becomes appealing to stop. First of all, it just puts the idea in your head of stopping, which you weren't thinking of before. You were just lost in what you were doing. But now when you think of stopping and you frame it in such a positive way, that's a win, which it is compared to anything else, compared to keeping on going, which you would've done. When you tell yourself, “a stop now is a win,” then you stop. Just putting the idea in your head makes it so much more likely to happen.

There's a lot more helpful self-talk you can get in the practice of doing. For many more suggestions I recommend my second book, Skin Picking: The Freedom We Found. There are almost two and a half pages of self-talk suggestions there. Everything from different healing thoughts, like telling yourself, “it's just a bump,” “let it heal” to giving yourself a pep talk. Action thoughts where you tell yourself what to do instead. And then thoughts that put things into perspective like, “will picking make any of this better?” Plus there's a section on compassionate self-talk and self-acceptance, one on perfectionism, on reframing, on shifting your focus.

The Road to Recovery

Hopefully you got some insight here into what's going on in your mind and why you start picking or keep picking. So many times people say to themselves, “why do I keep doing this?” Well, you've had the automatic addictive thoughts so many hundreds of times.

It's not easy to start to recognize them and tell yourself something that will make you stop. You need to practice that and then practice both stopping and not starting in the first place. Those two things are the whole problem: 1) You start picking and then 2) You don’t stop right away when you start.

Recovering from skin picking is a difficult. It’s being addicted to something that's always with you. Getting off drugs or alcohol is not easy either but in at least one way, stopping picking is harder because the addictive substance is always with you - it’s your skin. So please give yourself some grace and compassion. It’s not your fault that you’re here and recovery is not an easy process.

If you’d like some coaching to help stop, please contact me here and let me know.