"Body-focused repetitive behavior" (BFRB) is a general term for any disorder that makes someone touch their hair and body in ways that result in physical damage — like bald patches, skin discoloration, bleeding, or scarring.
Trichotillomania (hair-pulling disorder), compulsive nail-biting, and dermatillomania (skin-picking disorder) are three common BFRBs.
We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to share what living with these compulsions is really like.
Here are just some pictures and stories that they shared. By the way, we know photos like these can be triggering for people who deal with BFRBs, so we've opted to blur them so you can choose if you have the bandwidth to look. As a heads up, though, some of the responses also contain detailed descriptions that might be triggering as well.
1. "This is what a divorce from a seven-year marriage looks like when you have trichotillomania."
2. "My hand always strays to my back, shoulders, face; always searching, scratching, picking."
3. "The funny thing is, I started biting my nails in an attempt to stop biting my lips and the inside of my cheeks."
4. "I tend to wear jeans and long sleeves as much as possible, which sometimes feels like it severely impacts my quality of life."
5. "I'm currently 36 weeks pregnant with my first daughter and my stretch marks will sometimes split open and bleed. I've had to take to wearing two to three shirts during the day to keep from picking at them and sometimes even wrapping myself up like a mummy in bandages."
6. "Four years later, I have overcome my eyebrow-picking problem!
7. "I have dermatillomania and pick at any 'imperfection' I find on myself."
8. "My thumbs are bloody, painful, Frankenstein fingers pretty much all the time."
9. "I have crippling anxiety, and one of my coping mechanisms is picking at my gums and chewing on the insides of my lips and cheeks."
10. "My anxiety is awful, and the way I cope is by tearing my ear to shreds."
11. "I started in 8th grade and I’m now 30 years old."
12. "I always think if I can just get my feet smooth, I can stop, but that only leaves me with aching, bleeding feet."
13. "The skin is so tough and scarred now, I try to hide my thumbs so people don’t see."
14. "I have missing lashes. Top, bottom, and brows with heavy scarring."
15. "I have acne on my face, chest and arms, but my scarring wouldn’t be anywhere near as bad as it is it I didn’t default to spot-squeezing when I’m anxious/upset."
16. "Microblading (basically eyebrow tattoos) changed my life! My friends even surprised me by getting the money together to pay for it."
17. "My lips were chapped and in my mind, instead of asking my parents for vaseline or chapstick, I thought, Oh, if I just pull off the dry bits, my lip will be smooth and all will be well. And so it began."
18. "This is the best my arms have been in awhile in terms of not having many open wounds from picking at them."
19. "Both of my middle finger nails are trying to recover from permanent nail bed damage."
20. "I'm too embarrassed to even go get a haircut because I don’t want the stylist noticing and asking about my bald spots and broken hairs."
21. "I will find anything sharp I can and just rip the nails off of my toes when I am feeling anxious."
22. "Over the years I have to just remind myself that I will be mad at myself later on and will hate the scars it leaves behind."
23. "One day, I hope I’ll be able to live a life without pulling, but for now I’m going to keep on living my life and I'm NOT going to let this stop me from being happy or confident!"
Seeing other people dealing with the same thing you are is a great way to feel less alone, but if you found a lot of things in this post a little too relatable, you might want to look into ways to take care of yourself. So, here are some quick resources, just in case:
You might want to read more about BFRBs and check out resources and information on how to get treatment.
You can read about anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder, since BFRBs can be a symptom or coping mechanism of both.
You might also want to check out tips from our readers who know the struggle: