I used to think of my skin picking, lip chewing, and hair plucking habits as weird disgusting things that I did. I knew that they were nearly impossible for me to stop doing for any length of time, but I didn't really see them as connected to other parts of my personality.
Well, I'm reading The Woman Who Thought Too Much, an OCD memoir by Joanne Limburg. I find it eerie how similar the author and I are in some ways. (Of course, we're totally different in other ways.) One thing that we both do is skin pick. This is apparently common among a lot of OCDers. Skin picking, hair pulling, etc. are considered to be on the OCD "spectrum."
As an aside, I actually have a lot of trouble with the word "spectrum." The idea behind using the word "spectrum" is to group together conditions that have the same underlying cause, but have different manifestations. The problem is we don't actually understand the underlying cause of any mental illness (read Unhinged or The Anatomy of an Epidemic). We have ideas and suppositions, but nothing definitive. Using the word "spectrum" allows us to talk precisely about things we aren't really equipped to talk precisely about at all.
That said, it does seem like OCD and skin picking do have some real relationship to each other, at least in that people who have one often have the other.
It's a little bit strange for me to realize how predictable I am. It's really no surprise given that I have OCD that I also have skin picking issues. I hindsight, my skin picking, which started at a young age (it has taken on various forms over the years), might have been an early indication that I would develop OCD in the future.
For some reason, my predictability makes me feel somewhat powerless. Like if OCD and skin picking are caused by some set of structural defects in my brain, these aren't easily changeable things. They're probably things I'll struggle with for the rest of my life.
However, I'm trying to be optimistic. Just because something has a structural root doesn't means that the symptoms are unchangeable. People with OCD go into remission all the time, and there's no reason that I shouldn't expect the same, particularly given my current level of effort.
Well, I'm reading The Woman Who Thought Too Much, an OCD memoir by Joanne Limburg. I find it eerie how similar the author and I are in some ways. (Of course, we're totally different in other ways.) One thing that we both do is skin pick. This is apparently common among a lot of OCDers. Skin picking, hair pulling, etc. are considered to be on the OCD "spectrum."
As an aside, I actually have a lot of trouble with the word "spectrum." The idea behind using the word "spectrum" is to group together conditions that have the same underlying cause, but have different manifestations. The problem is we don't actually understand the underlying cause of any mental illness (read Unhinged or The Anatomy of an Epidemic). We have ideas and suppositions, but nothing definitive. Using the word "spectrum" allows us to talk precisely about things we aren't really equipped to talk precisely about at all.
That said, it does seem like OCD and skin picking do have some real relationship to each other, at least in that people who have one often have the other.
It's a little bit strange for me to realize how predictable I am. It's really no surprise given that I have OCD that I also have skin picking issues. I hindsight, my skin picking, which started at a young age (it has taken on various forms over the years), might have been an early indication that I would develop OCD in the future.
For some reason, my predictability makes me feel somewhat powerless. Like if OCD and skin picking are caused by some set of structural defects in my brain, these aren't easily changeable things. They're probably things I'll struggle with for the rest of my life.
However, I'm trying to be optimistic. Just because something has a structural root doesn't means that the symptoms are unchangeable. People with OCD go into remission all the time, and there's no reason that I shouldn't expect the same, particularly given my current level of effort.
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