How to stop hair pulling? Treatment for Trichotillomania provides cure with a guarantee. Blog post by mental coach & trainer learning people how to cure hair picking and get their life back.
When you are looking for a trichotillomania cure / treatment for trichotillomania, I already informed you about a question that a lot of people seem to deal with that can hold you back before you come to terms with this.
See previous blog post for more details: looking for a Trichotillomania cure, then inform yourself about this first).
Here is the continuation of that story to help you realize you are absolutely totally ok when you currently still suffer from Trichotillomania and want to overcome this.
Becuase the process and phases we go through when we learn to ride a bike is something we all can recognize as obvious.
But just imagine for a moment when you have reached level four (being unconsciously competent), you suddenly receive a very special bike. A bike when you steer to the left will actually steer to the right.
In a certain amusement park they actually have these kind of bicycles for fun, so maybe you have already experienced this or can imagine what is going to happen.
How good would you still be at riding your bike? Would you be able to cycle everywhere you wanted without falling off or hitting something or somebody?
Would you still be able to easily ride without the use of your hands? Or would you suddenly have to unlearn automatic behavioral responses from the past?
Would your spontaneous way of behaving, that first served you so very well, suddenly hinder you? The latter is of course true!
Trichotillomania cure – learning to change automated behavioral processes that don’t totally serve you
The example above has a lot to do with overcoming Trichotillomania and finding the cure for it within yourself.
Because the remarkable thing is that as humans we are all able to learn and install behavioral processes that automatically keep repeating themselves with the right stimuli, without having to think about it consciously.
We actually condition ourselves to become more effective – do more things at the same time – as we go through the four learning phases. Something wonderful that will often improve the quality of our life.
But with the example of suddenly having to ride a new and very special bike the opposite is suddenly true.
What used to have a purpose is suddenly hindering: old conditioned behavioral processes. Actually quite similar with Trichotillomania.
Because when you first pulled out a hair, this probably had a positive intention for you. Something you actually may not have been aware of at the time.
Perhaps you felt a kind of tension at that moment in your life and pulling your hair might have given some relief. Or maybe you wondered how it would be to pull out a hair – just one – without really understanding why that question came to mind in the first place.
And you went along with the thought and just tried it, only one. And maybe pulling out that first hair gave a very special sensation, without having a logical explanation for doing so at the time.
Trichotillomania cure: unlearning what you learned yourself in the first place
And before you knew it you had pulled out your hair a couple of times more and kept receiving something from this behavior we call Trichotillomania. Something you quite likely were not even consciously aware of at the time.
But a certain part in you made you do this, made you act this way. It took care of something you needed and in all likelihood that part only knew one way to accomplish its purpose.
Metaphorically: like something in you was thirsty and every time you needed to quench your thirst it made you do this behavior.
Actually quite similar to someone who smokes. Because a smoker in some way or form gets something out of smoking. For example something simple as relaxation.
And with enough times repeating the smoking behavior and experiencing relaxation as a result, the smoking behavior can suddenly become kind of automatic that can become hard to get rid of.
Especially because fulfilling the need is so easy and direct, at the instant of smoking a cigarette, or with Trichotillomania, at the moment of pulling out hair.
Both the compulsive smoker as the compulsive hair puller have probably told themselves many times that they want to stop with this kind of unwanted behavior.
Only to discover that they have to give in to the desire that triggers this behavior when the urge becomes strong enough. Whether you are consciously aware of this process or not.
Time to accept the people who suffer from Trichotillomania (and cure for it) as normal
So when we accept smoking as quite normal behavior in society, for which we all can create a compulsion when repeated often enough, than in fact Trichotillomania (and cure for it) is nothing different.
And quite similar to someone who tried her first cup of coffee with disgust because her parents drank it and now needs her daily ‘shot’ of caffeine.
So what you need to realize if you still suffer from Trichotillomania is that as a humans we can easily install an automatic – repetitive – pattern in our behavior when we repeat that pattern often and long enough.
And that the urge for having to act upon whatever this behavior provides can be very overwhelming and have a stimulating effect to keep doing it over time.
Similar to someone who has a growing thirst and a bottle of water next to him, who at a certain point in time can no longer resist the urge for having to drink that water.
And when we have reached level 4 of unconsciously competent (see previous blog post: looking for a Trichotillomania cure, then inform yourself about this first) for a certain type of behavior it sometimes can be very difficult to correct this behavior when you come to the conclusion that this is no longer serves you.
Similar to the way it can suddenly be a challenge to ride on a new and very special bike, after you learned to ride another one all your life.
And it is totally irrelevant if you consciously decided to learn a certain type of behavior, like cycling, or if the desire to do so was initiated at another level in you: the level of your subconscious mind. (See also our related article on this topic: ´How quickly can effective treatment for Trichotillomania be provided?’).
Trichotillomania cure: irrelevant why you pull out your hair if you want to overcome it!
The message I want to clearly give you when you are looking for a cure for Trichotillomania is that it is absolutely – totally – irrelevant why you do this kind of behavior when you want to learn to overcome it.
You unquestionably had a good intention to meet a certain kind of need when you started pulling out your hair for the first time, whether you were consciously aware of this at the time or not.
And that the automatism you developed to keep doing it is only a confirmation of healthy functioning mind. Which has nothing to do with content (why you do what you do), but purely with conditioned behavior that has now become an automatic process.
That with the right stimuli is constantly ´triggered´ when the thirst for the invisible bottle of water is screaming for attention long enough.
Similar to the person who has been drinking coffee for years and suddenly feels the desire to drink the familiar liquid. Or the smoker who suddenly feels that it is time to smoke.
So before you learn how to cure yourself of Trichotillomania, realize this …….
So before you learn how to cure yourself of Trichotillomania realize that you are completely normal when you are currently still involved in behavior like compulsive hair pulling.
And yes, some types of behavior seem to make more sense at first than others, but all serve a positive intention for the person involved in some way or another.
Otherwise you would simply not do it! And that makes sense, right!
With love & wishing you well – Rik
