Hope's Story

Unlike many others, I didn't begin this thing at puberty. I began MUCH earlier. I don't know what triggered, or if anything triggered it. i just know it has always been a part of my life. As a very little girl, I remember my
mother always telling me to keep my hands out of my hair. At the time, I wasn't pulling it out strand by strand, but I would twirl it and knot it. My mother had such a hard time getting a brush through my hair, and becasue of  the knots, so much would come out whenever she tried. I know the knotting was a pre-cursor to my trich, and that's why I say it has ALWAYS been active in some form. I can't remember what age I moved to pulling, but I remember having an ugly bald spot on the top of my head when I was small and that my mother brought me to a men's barber to have my hair done, becasue she figured they had more experience covering these things.
I can remember certain things so vividly.  Like the night I discovered roots. Maybe I was 9 or 10. Maybe younger. We were in the car at night. I was with my mother and brother and we were waiting for my father to come off the subway, so we could go for dinner. I picked out a pice of hair, with a nice, wet, cold root and loved it. I pulled everwhere--at home, at school, outside playing with friends. At school kids were cruel. I
would hear them saying, "Hope is plucking again." And boy did it hurt. Just the other day my best friend and I were talking about it. We have been friends since second grade (we are 26 now) and she told me she didn't want to tell me then what the kids said, because she didn't want to hurt me. I told her she shouldn't have worried, because I knew.

I was about 11 or 12 when I realized I couldn't stop. I remember that night just as vividly as the root night. It was Mother's Day and we were at a restaurant with lots of extended family. My mother was telling me to stop
picking my hair and then telling other people I have this nervous habit. I started scremaing at the table (in a RESTAURANT!) that I couldn't stop. Didn't she understand this? I began crying hysterically and had to be taken to the bathroom. Then I had to be taken home. At home, I remember my mother holding me and wiping my tears as I cried uncontrollably. She asked me if I wanted to stop and I said yes, I did, but I can't. My grandmother was there and she told me how she had been seeing psychiatrists off and on for years for things she
didn't want to talk about. My mom asked me if I would want to see anyone who would help me. I said yes, please, so she made an appointment for me to see an adolescent psychologist who worked a few days a week out of my pediatrician's office. 

Now, this entitre time (or since I was about four), I had been hooked of soap operas. I mean, REALLY hooked. I loved them. They were such a wonderful form of entertainment for me. I am an entertainer at heart. Since I was nine I was taking voice lessons, going to acting lessons, wanting to be on Broadway, loving creativity, and soaps were creative. So, of course, I discussed my love for soaps with Dr. Gore. But, I told him that was not what I was there for. I was there because I couldn't stop pulling my hair. But, this guy wanted to discuss wht I liked soaps. So, I talked soaps with him. I kept trying to bring up the hair thing, but he went back to soaps, saying it could all be related. Even then, I knew it was kind of dopey, but I went along with it. After more than half a year, my mother wanted to know why there was no improvement, (and  frankly, so did I), so he then got back to the hair specifically for a session or two, wanting to do a new kind of hypnosis on me. Needless to say, it didn't work. I am much too much of a hyper person to be hypnotised. (One time in college, we had to volunteer to be hypnosis guinea pigs for a phsych elective.  My friend went right under, and I spent the whole time wide awake, laughing at her.) After about a year and a half, I didn't even know why I was going to
this guy anymore, and I was still pulling my hair just as much.

When I was 15, the trich became my secondary problem when my mother suddenly died of cancer. I went into school-ran grief therapy, but we didn't really discuss the trich. By then it had become a problem we figured could never be solved, and there was so much more going on anyway. As a teen, my hair was thin, but not awful. i kept it below the shoulder, sometimes longer, and often permed it so it would look fuller. During my third year of college, I cut it to a shoulder length bob, and it looked great for a while. Stylists always noticed my "fuzzies." Some I would tell. Other times I would say it was alopecia. My last year of college everything went down hill. I got a bad perm and had to cut it real short to get rid of the frizz. I tried growing it back in, but it fell flat. I was angry because one side of my head was weirder than the other and I couldn't keep these curly pieces down. I was in denial, and it took me almost two years to realize it was the trich, that I had done this to
myself. That my head looked like crap because of all those hair piles on the floor next to my bed, because of all the roots thad dries up on pieces of paper, because of the small calluses on my fingers from running the hair
between my nails and my index finger, wathcing it curl up and straighten out.  So, finally 1998 came and I go help. I started this several-month free program and the prozac. Things have gotten better, but not perfect. Nowhere near it. And last week I found your site and the BB, and do feel better about this than ever.

As for the soaps, they are my life now because I am a writer for an American soap magazine.  When I told my doc, I pick more at work than other places, he asked me what I am doing when I pick. I said I am often watching TV. He laughed because I have such an unusual job and suggested that maybe the tension and stress-filled stories might contribute to my pulling at that time. I laughed and thought of Dr. Gore. Then I said no. Its not like I wonder what is going to happen so I become stressed out. I work in this industry and know
stories way ahead of time. They are still pure enjoyment to me, but they are also a part of my work, so I watch them differently than I used to as a child. Never will I think the soaps have anything to do with my trich.

I wish my mother could see me now, trying to get help, trying to stop. She loved me so much, and so much wanted me to feel better. I am not a religious person, but I do have my beliefs, so I have to believe she knows somehow and that it makes her happy.