Everything you could want to know about trich in one go...

Well, i promised you a blog, today about trich so here it is...

What would you like to know about it?
It's an All consuming monster

there's not really much more to it...
well, i guess there are the facts...

the literal translation from Greek is 'hair pulling madness'
It is an illness not a disease (am just gonna put in here that these are my thoughts - not necessarily medical facts), and the reason i am making a difference is because i personally think of a disease as something more terminal, where-as an illness is something everyone gets, and recover from...

having done some searching, i have just found this amazing poem which helps to show the feelings:

To wake every morning
Guilt ridden from head to toe
You head to the mirror, not entirely sure of what will show.
Head already spinning of how to cover up
What can be the reason when people ask ‘whats up?’

A dare seems the most likely
Followed by drunken prankOr be gutsy and be truthful
About all the hairs you yank?

It’s just not good to look at,
When all the face is bare,
Although not as bad as many,
the pulling is still there
You see a dark root coming,
and you want that bastard hair.
The urge, stronger, stronger, stronger until finally defeat’s conceded.
That urge you tried to ignore but eventually you ceded.

Relief is there straight after
Though only fleeting by.
Then it really hits you,The agonising aftermath;
Not just redness above the eyes
But the mental state your left in
The question of just why?


Where has it gone
That confidence I lack?
All I want is to have it back
Well this is my life, so Welcome.

Welcome to my life
As a trichotillomaniac

I wake every morning
Guilt ridden from head to toe
I head to my mirror, not entirely sure of what will show……


the thing is it's just so true to life! i am not taking the credit for it, it is on the UK Trichotillomania Support forum/website thingy...

Anyway, back to earlier comment - the whole all consuming monster...
It is, it affects me everywhere i go, bearing in mind i am a student atm, so always out, getting to/from college (at the hands of the buses!), which are often full, i know i am going to end up sitting next to someone Just don't make eye contact , its the only way i can face the journey - getting stuck in with doing homework or reading my book...

Back to the more 'official' stuff:
[trich is] defined as "hair loss from a patient's repetitive self-pulling of hair" and is characterized by the repeated urge to pull out scalp hair, eyelashes, facial hair, nose hair, pubic hair, and eyebrows or other body hair, sometimes resulting in noticeable bald patches
(thank you wikipedia)
It is currently classified in the DSM-IV (a thing they got happening which is all about mental disorders of various types) as an Impulse Control Disorder, however i read somewhere (cant remember where) that it is being reviewed and when they bring out the next DSM it might be classed as OCD (dont quote me on it tho!)

So, what causes it?
well...
the following have all been linked to it, to an extent at somepoint (although everyone is different!), not necessarily causes, could be side effects, but there is correlation between them...
-Anxiety
-Depression
-OCD
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Stress
- possibility that it is genetic - SLITRK1 gene mutations? And to do with Serotonin 2a receptor genes...

"Another school of thought emphasizes hair pulling as addictive or positively reinforcing insofar as it is associated with rising tension beforehand and relief afterward."

[Chamberlain SR, Menzies L, Sahakian BJ, Fineberg NA (April 2007). "Lifting the veil on trichotillomania". Am J Psychiatry 164 (4): 568–74. ]

Because of the social stigma attached to Trich it is impossible to say how many people have it, it is often hidden and very rarely will a person go to the doctors about it, imho - parents will take their children if they notice it, but say if a parent notices it within themselves they are a lot less likely to go! (just something i've noticed)

Treatment?

Well, again this illness is different with everyone, so the treatment varies! Anyone can develop trich, and the age also makes a difference... IE a 5year old is likely to grow out of it, and so the parents are encouraged to ignore it, however older kids (pre-teens/teens/young Adults) are thought to benefit from knowing that there are lots of people with trich (which there are) and then go to things such as Behaviour Modification Training, with seeing a psychologist/psychiatrist as a last resort. Then the true and proper adults - they are often reffered to Psychiatrist straight away as trich in older people is generally more associated with other psychiatric disorders (more of a by-product than the source...)

Anything else?

as i said just now, it is possible for anyone to have trich, however it does seam more 'popular' with females (preschool age is equal gender difference, then it gradually goes up to being more female dominated) . Although that is not to say men don't get it too!

I think that is all you could want to know about trich in one go (plus im hungry and want my tea!) However, if you would like to know more, just ask (post a comment at the bottom) and i will endeavor to find the answer for you! (or give my opinion...)

Food time! x

Update!

Ok i really am trying to keep up with this whole blogging business...

Lets see, whats happened since i last posted something?
Well, i received my CRB thingymawotsit today, and turns out im not a criminal! (not that i thought it was going to say anything different! ;) )
i have emailed the QG lady for the county, and she has sent me a form i need to get filled in and sent off.
I have almost finished writing my personal statement for Uni applications (woop!), Best bit is it has only taken 2 bus rides to get the draft done, thats the hardest bit!

So, my life is being oddly organised so far, including handing in homeworks on time! (lets just say my subject statements were along the lines of, the work she has done on time has been to a high standard, however it is often not in on time! - however i am changing that!)

I was talking to my study skills tutor (a while back, admittedly) and he turned round to me (figuratively) and said - 'you've changed.' [fact], i was like how so? 'you have a different mentality to work, where-as before you would always give excuses, now you come up with ways to change it' It made me happy :)
and i have noticed a change... of sorts
although i can't say why or when i changed, i just have!
It's very odd!

Working on recent ish relevations...
one that could be taken either way, last friday my college guidance councilor thingy person... has said (and rightly so) that there is a lot of anger within me... and rightly so, although i don't think i had always recognised it for what it is.
But, tbh try picking between which parent to live with, when you are 14, and have just come back from an amazing day out! Tis not very easy... However living with the what if thought is the hardest part, not the making of the decision, but the consequences!

anyway
i feel like i should have a post which explains about Trich, and what it is to have it... although it is kinda interspersed (is that the right word?) with each post...

I shall do it in the morning! (and if i dont then poke me til i do ;) )
hell, i might even do it straight after this one! (i feel it deserves its own thread...)

Trich + me + today= ...
i have no idea why, but i feel uber pissed off... its really strange, like, nothing has actually happened to make me feel that way, its just... i am, and the worst part? Because i don't get whats caused it, i don't have a clue where to start to stop it! (o the irony of the last part of that sentance!)
It is kinda the story of trich - if you know why it started, u have a better base to work from to stop it, however if u don't have a clue why it started you are left, floating in the ether-net, waiting for an answer to chance across you!

right, i am afraid that is it for tonight, although promise to update tomorrow!
Wow that was one of those uber long ones that u dont plan, they just happen, and your fingers just keep wherring until u think, its 10 to 12 at night, i have college tomorrow, i should be asleep! (oops!)

Night y'all (sorry - read an amazing book - from house of night series- and now have country speak in me!)

Busy couple of days!

Ooo didn't do a post yesterday!
Well

i have been busy :)I have designed a badge that i now need to get made, to use as a swap at the Centenary Camp at the beginning of August (and to sell or swap inbetween now and then!)
Woop :) well proud of it!

Also yesterday got my CRB emailed off for guiding :)
And spoke to my district commissioner (DC) about starting my Queens Guide Award (she said to email the QG county person, and that she would be willing to be my mentor!)
And we talked about what unit i can join to be a young leader at and start my ALQ :)
i feel so organised!
...
until i get home. Mums house is... Neat... too neat for my likeing (so neat that to me, it just doesn't feel like home... or rather, it doesn't feel like my home)
She keeps telling me to tidy my room - i have one pile of notebooks and i think at the time i had my dressing gown on the floor! it doesnt get much more tidy! Its called MY room for a reason - cos its mine not hers!
Grrrr
sorry - had to let that out of my system!
*and breathe*

This might explain for the chunk of eyebrow i obliterated yesterday.
i had been getting better - just through being more conscious of what im doing... most of the time :/
However lots of mixed up teenagery emotions are not helping! Neither are the looks i see mum give me across the tea table (being the only meal i eat with them...) Its horrible - she gets this calculating look come across her face and you can see her eyes darting across my face. The worst bit is i dont think she realises she is doing it, or that i can tell exactly what she is doing!

ARRRGGGHHH!
anyway
i have to be out of the house at 6.25 tomorrow, so need to go and get my sleep!!!

Bit of everything!

well well well
here we are again.
Me, sitting here typing, you, sitting there reading - i want to make some deep philosophical point but its too late now (will come back to it in the morning!)

Today - got up, went for a row/cox...
got annoyed at the man that 'looks after' Mr Asbo (swan - google him!). There's a huge debate happening between everyone that uses the river, and everyone who hasn't got a clue what he's like, have nothing to do with the river, and are willing to believe whatever rubbish the newspapers print!! grrr. anyway. We went out in the wooden boat - its well nice! its turns... :O (the only other 8 we have practiced in has a broken rudder...) We got back, (had some bacon sandwhiches), and i got a lift to dads house, i picked up my stuff, then got bus 1 to town, met a friend and had a hot chocolate (yum - was a HUGE one from costa...), got bus number 2 to town 2, then got 3rd bus back to mums. 3 hours on buses ish... o joy :|

The trich:
woke up and didnt pull at all until i got back from rowing :) Not quite sure what this means, but i shall take it as something good.
To balance this goodness out tho - i did have a mini relapse (most people call a relapse when they pull after a pull free period -my relapses are more, a pulling session which involves less control from me...) I now have 2 cuts under my armpits where ive tried to hard to get to hairs :/ Its not my best, but its definitely not my worst!
However - i also have got rid of my 'eyelash stubble' - so my lids are smooth again - its such a nice feeling running my hand over the smooth bit of skin, yet so much shame accompanies the feeling - it's so not worth it!

ok i am uber uber tired right now (something to do with 4 hours sleep last night?)
so i am going to go and quit while i am ahead (and havent mutilated myself too much through tiredness alone!)

ooo one more thing - we were talking about acronyms earlier on a guiding forum i am part of and i created a pic of one acronyms go wrong:TTFN :)

Fail.

Fail.
i was going to get up at about half 8, shower and get ready, and get the 9.55 bus to Ely, then the 10.35 bus to Newmarket (thats a 5 min turn around time in Ely!).
(btw i feel i should add it doesn't take me over an hour to get ready, but it means i don't have to rush, and can be awake by the time i leave the house!)

So i wake up at 10.40... OOPS! (disaster 1)
realise i had no chance of making the 10.55 bus...
so ended up getting the 11.55 (yes, bus once an hour to where mums house is)
Firstly, i discovered having left the house that i had forgotten to put on my necklace (the first time i haven't worn it since i got it) - a celtic cross, £7.99 from argos (would post a pic but the website down!)- i am going to ask for a nice cross for my birthday/christmas... (disaster 2)
Bus turns up 10 minutes late (disaster 3), now usually i wouldn't mind being a little bit late, however when we got to Ely discovered that i had just missed my next bus, so i waited for 55minutes until the next one turned up - well the bus was already there, was waiting on the driver and it to be scheduled to leave...
Anyway, got the bus to newmarket, then went and met a friend who works at the bank, and we nattered for a bit :), then i went and got my address changed - at said bank, i always envisage it taking ages and being really awkward, and actually it takes seconds! (as long as u can remember ur address...) and i know i have done a change of address before, not that long ago, but shhh!
Then onto bus number 3 (which was the next one i could have caught after getting off the other bus... another 50ish minute wait!)
Got on that bus and got to dads...
so, lets review, leave mums at 11.50 (to get to bus stop) get all the next possible buses, and get to dads at about 3ish...
This is an Unimpressed face :|

However, an upside - when i am within the 'public eye' i do tend to completely refrain from pulling at all! Its not even as if i get the urges which i ignore - no urges to even run fingers over hair ends... :) so that makes me happy.
It's now just the mornings and evenings and when i'm alone that i need to look out for... :/
and again, being the evening... Grrr... why can't i just not do it? I mean, its not that hard to control what your arm/fingers do, is it? Evidently it is.

Right, i really need to go! i have to leave the house by 5.45 tomorrow AM... did i mention before that i'm a rowing cox? i might have.. anyway, yeah, we have an outing planned for 6am tomorrow... don't know if its going to be in the 4 or the 8, im guessing the 4 as 2 people can't row atm mid week, and we haven't heard anything from the 3rd, which leaves up with 7 people...
Unhelpful!!

And on that bombshell... i shall leave u for another in-determined amount of time.

A Trichy moment

Today has been... interesting
spent most of it in pain... only different sorts of pain! i spent the day looking after mini bro - so i got a rubber duck in my eye, a finger in my eye, headbutted right on my cheekbone, and headbutted on my chin/jaw! i got stepped on several times, and my room wrecked - i have jenga and mega blocks Everywhere!
The other pain comes from yesterday and the whole, falling off the swing incident! i'm shocked that there isn't a massive bruise down my side - it hurts enough for there to be one!

You would have thought that spending the day looking after a 1 year old would mean i would have my hands full all day, and so no tricherising (you will get used to me making up words... don't worry ;) ). Alas, no. he would be playing with my phone (grr) leaning against my bed, and i would be looking at him, one hand behind him (he can vaguely walk, but i got wooden floor and don't want him to fall and hit his head on them!), and one hand constantly at my eyebrow, just feeling... feeling for that perfect hair. Then i found it - right in the middle! and i just couldn't take my hand away... it sounds pathetic, but its almost like i just go into a trance when i find one, and can't do anything else until it's out... so i had to wait until he wasn't looking (and was safe!) and go and get my tweezers (always within reach... for taller people than bro!) and get it...
As soon as it was out i was back to normal again... it's just such an odd sensation... knowing what you're doing, but powerless to do anything about it!

AHHHHHHHHHH

so frustrating!

Anyway...
back to normality... for now...
(typing with 2 hands today and everything- woop :) )

Mind vs Body

ok so it was my brothers birthday party today... i made 24 cakes and done some rather funky icing :)

However i also done some rather unfunky falling off of the swing backwards! (ouch!)

Today has been really good on the trich front - until i sat down not very long ago (on a very sore bottom!), and out comes the mirror and the tweezers. The worst part of it is that i know that not having them within reach makes absolutely no difference! (Then i just use my fingers and pull more than the hair i am 'targeting' as they are wider and less... efficient - leaving me with huge bald spots!)

But the truly worst, most frustrating thing is that i can sit here, and type about wanting to stop, and how much i hate it... but the other hand is there - at my eyebrows, just looking for the next target... Talk about the mind and body being 2 separate things ey?

The first one!!

Ok.
well.
hmmm.
I'm not quite sure what possessed me to create a blog... however it seems like the right thing to do and i tend to stick with my instincts quite a lot!

So... Here goes! wish me luck ;)

This is where u get my life story so far :) (however this is the best way i can think of doing it!)
i got trichotillomania (henceforth known as trich!) when i was about 7. A lot of things you can read about it often say that most people that have trich have had some form of traumatic events in their lives (often in childhood). However i have always seemed to be different - i honestly can't think of anything that would be akin to what people often say 'started' their trich! Although i do remember before i started pulling i would cut my eyelashes - they would annoy me as they would always brush against glasses - sun glasses - i am very proud of my perfect vision ;) .

This is where it gets a bit strange... i stopped going to church with my gran around about the age of 7 (that was my families doing - not my choice!) and my trich has got progressively worse since then. Just before Easter i was sorting out my room, to take some more stuff do live at dads house, and i rediscovered the bible that my great gran bought me for my birthday, now i was very bored, so started flicking through it (some may call it procrastination - i say to those sum shhh!) and reading verses every now and then, then i stumbled across Ezra 9:3, "When I heard this, i rent my garments and my mantle, and pulled hair from my head and beard, and sat appalled. " now this verse spoke to me - it put me in the knowledge that i'm not the first to have trich and i'm not going to be the last. The following weekend my friend came over to stay and on the sunday morning she was like, do you mind if we go to church? - i wouldn't say that i jumped at the chance, but i wasn't exactly groaning on the inside either! So off we toddled to the Baptist church in the village, discovered that a lot of the people that i play hockey with also go there, and that it's quite a nice, friendly, welcoming place to go (i don't really know what i was expecting!).
Somehow, going to church that day just felt, right.
Since then i have gone to church every weekend that i have stayed at my dads house (which is the village the church is in...) and have enjoyed every service! So i can safely say, that in this instance i am glad that i followed my instincts in that first bit of procrastination!

Anyway - that was a nice little anecdote :) but more about me! (and btw - i do actually feel really selfish just talking about me- but i guess that's what a blog is for - if u don't like it then don't read it!)

I had a fairly uneventful life... well, i would class it faily uneventful looking at the more recent history!
I started ballet like most little girls do - that lasted a long time... 2 Whole weeks!! suffice to say i did NOT enjoy it...
so then mum, being mum, wanting her daughter to be a little girl, took me to a gymnastics club, which i stayed at until i was year 4. i won't lie - i did really enjoy it, but it just wasn't me!
I started Brownies - again sticking with the girl theme! and that has been one of the best things in the long run that has happened to me!
Anyway, side tracking again!
i discovered that a karate club was starting up in the village and managed to convince mum to let me go to it... on the condition that i had to stop one of my other clubs - unsurprisingly i stopped gymnastics!
i stopped with the karate when i was year 9 (and a black belt - woop!) because i had started being a Young Leader with the local guide unit, which, unfortunately was on the same night! I had a choice to make and i will never know if i made the right choice, but i know that i didn't make the wrong one! (work that one out!)

In the summer of year 9 my parents told me they were splitting up - which, to nobodies surprise, changed my world completely - starting with having the pleasure of deciding which parent to live with! - i've made some difficult at times choices - but that one has to be the hardest i've faced! (and i'm still regretting it now!) Basically it was decided that i would live with mum, and stay at dads the night i had guides, and one day on the weekend.
Cue partner one... who moved in over a weekend that i was away (on a guide weekend!), without telling me. So i got to find out when mum came to pick me up from dads at the end of the weekend... O joy :| - the man that ruined my life is now living with me!
Anyway - he lasted till just after christmas, then he left, and Boyfriend number 2 moved in... not quite sure when that happened? He stayed over one night after they had gone out for lunch (?!) together - got back 3 hours later than mum said she would, and he just hasnt seamed to of left yet... well... apart from a short (4month) stint in prison... but we shall gloss over that bit! (long story - and this post is long enough as it is!)Basically no-one in my family got hurt (physically...) and the case was going on before he and mum met - and she knew about it from the beginning... it would have been nice if i had been told more than a month before he went 'inside' but c'est la vie.

Ok i think you are pretty up to date with my life now!!
(o and btw i am one of 7 kids - ish - 1 proper bro who is 20, then me, then 2 step sisters, 2 step brothers, and 1 half brother... (the half bro is 1...just!) so a 20 year age gap! - 1 step sis and 1 step bro on dads side, then 1 step bro, 1 step sis, and 1 half bro on mums side...)

So yeah
let the proper posting begin!!
(and that was WAY longer than i was expecting it to be - sorry about that!)