Trichotillomania, also known as compulsive hair pulling, is a form of self-harm. There may be different reasons why someone becomes a hair puller, one of which may stem from unresolved emotional distress or trauma. Hair pulling can quickly turn into a virulent habit or addiction. The way each person deals with a compulsive behavior like hair pulling is greatly influenced by the culture in which you live.
What are your beliefs? Do you believe that you can completely free yourself or that you must live each day attempting to control your hair pulling problem? Do you believe that someone else holds the key to ending your suffering? Here are some powerful ideas to help you see your situation in a new way and to move forward to completely free yourself from trichotillomania: 1. Become aware of your fears, personal biases and the compromises you make as you choose a method to help you end hair pulling. Think about whether you want natural healing and personal growth or a conventional solution with a traditional cure. 2. Resolve the hidden issues that lead to mental and physical problems.
"Authentic Healing" uses an invisible natural self-healing system inside each of us. Everyone has this system and can learn to use it. Authentic healing experiences always increase your personal power and help you to grow as a person.
3. Empower yourself through authentic healing to listen to and trust your instincts about what you need. Authentic healing is holistic and encompasses all aspects of human life, the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. It always brings these four aspects of you into natural balance. When you use this method of healing, you become the true expert about what you need to resolve each problem. 4.
Address your addictive nature. Traditional cures come from outside of you, are done to you and are usually "generic" in nature. They don't help you to uncover the root-cause of your hair pulling but simply attempt to rid you of the urge to pull (symptom) and the unhappy consequences of your pulling. Sensitive hair pullers may find this approach disempowering because it doesn't help you to become balanced, evolve, take into account whom you uniquely are or completely resolve why you became a hair puller in the first place.
This approach is likely to cover over your addictive nature rather than address it. 5. Increase your personal power. Trichotillomania sufferers often desperately hope that if they can find the right expert, they will find a cure. But cures don't increase your power because they don't help you to grow or use your intuition and feeling-sense to help you to fully resolve your hair pulling.
This approach may decrease your feelings of personal power. 6. Reduce your anxiety by taking an active role in freeing yourself. Many hair pullers struggle daily with chronic anxiety. Western society tells us that outside experts know more about our emotional and physical health than we do and that others hold the answers to our suffering and the power to fix us.
In our age of managed care and HMO's, this message is so pervasive that it causes chronic anxiety and feelings of powerlessness. A natural way to increase your personal power and decrease your anxiety is to take an active role in your own recovery by using your own authentic healing system. 7. Take responsibility for yourself. "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." (Lao Tzu) Authentic healing is a lot like knowing how to fish and being capable of feeding yourself whenever you need to. It automatically increases your personal power and self-esteem because it uses your intuition, creativity, courage and independent thinking. Once you learn how to self-heal, you can do it again and again for other issues, each time gathering more power to you. 8.
Put a "Gone Fishing" sign on your door. Being cured is like being handed a fish just for tonight's dinner. While a cure provides a solution to this one issue, it may also create dependency. You will always need to return to the outside source for another cure. This dependency is like an "addiction" because it decreases your power and self-esteem. 9.
Look for the real cause. Seeking a cure for hair pulling may provide you with a short-term solution but won't ultimately rescue you from doing the inner work to fix what caused you to pull in the first place. Authentic healing guides you look at the real cause of your hair pulling and to fully resolve that. 10. Learn to use experts as consultants and "tools" to assist you in your own process.
Because authentic healing is a personal journey, you can continue to use experts but in a different way. 11. Stay only with empowering healing partners.
Some experts may hold a negative "my way is the only way" mindset, while others may empower you to take personal responsibility and to find your own power. Stick with the latter. 12.
Find and use great support tools. There are many wonderful healing techniques and tools available and more arrive on the scene daily. While there is inner work to be done, you don't have to go it alone more than is necessary. The key is to find what's right for you by trusting your intuition and feelings to guide you throughout your healing process.
Abby Leora Rohrer is an expert on compulsive hair pulling and author of What's Wrong With Pulling My Hair Out? and Pull-Free, At Last!, an at-home program for ending Trichotillomania. Visit www.123trichotillomaniafree.com or http://www.pullfreeatlast.com or call 303/546-0788 for more information.
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