By Angela Hartlin Along with the rest of the world, Canadians have been experiencing the devastations caused by the COVID-19 crisis. With access to effective treatments for trichotillomania (compulsive hair pulling), excoriation disorder (skin picking disorder), and other body-focused...
Those who celebrate Christmas often have a wish list of gifts they would like to receive. Sure, it might seem like something a child will do to prep for Santa, but many teens and adults also have a list...
Many of us want to share our body-focused repetitive behaviour stories on large platforms such as news sites and take the plunge, only to be subject to the stories being exploited as sensationalistic clickbait. We’ve seen the heartbreak of...
Why do we stop sometimes without even trying? This is a question that I ask myself a lot. I have been pulling my hair for 18 years and biting my nails for basically my whole life (30 years). While...
Wednesday, we went to MindFest, a one-day mental health convention. It was held at the Hart House on the University of Toronto campus, which, let me just say, was a gorgeous venue.
In the past, I’ve written about back-to-school tips I would recommend, but this time around, I thought I’d ask the body-focused repetitive behaviour (BFRB) community for their take on how to prepare for back-to-school. BFRBs are hard enough to...
In the body-focused repetitive behaviour community, many people who have a BFRB or multiple BFRBs are searching for a cure. And if not a cure specifically, all of us are looking for answers of some sort—causes, triggers, what helps,...
I was thinking the other day how strange it is that despite the body-focused repetitive behaviour community being part of the larger mental health community, there are still some topics that don’t get discussed. It’s especially strange considering how...
All of us in the BFRB community seem to consider making that monumental Facebook post. It seems to feel like our tell-all novel of our BFRB(s) in post form, where we say I have trichotillomania, dermatillomania, onychophagia, dermatophagia, trichotemnomania...
Dear parents, I’ve seen your online posts and have heard stories from your children. I get it. You’re frustrated because you don’t quite understand and because you want the best for your child. You want your child to be...
When most of us think of recovery, we probably first think of it in terms of abstinence. Shows like Intervention and many different talk shows that feature people who are in recovery talk about an absence of substance use....
We hate the words “just stop” because we know that if it were that easy we would do it. We know that if it were a simple matter of choice or effort that we wouldn’t be in the messes...
One of the most common questions among the community is how do we tell our loved ones about these disorders, and those posts are always met with many responses of advice. But what about when we have told someone...
Keeping our hands busy from picking, pulling, biting or any other BFRB is probably one of the most difficult things to accomplish. Finding something that accomplishes that same behavioural need, or is at least powerful enough to distract us...
As I’ve grown up I have always had a problem with stress. I label it “subconscious stress” because while things may seem fine and manageable on the outside, my hair, nails and skin would tell a different story. In...