My Hair Over The Past Six Years And Why It Matters

This will be the first time I’ve publicly admitted anywhere that I have trichotillomania. It’s probably not something you’ve ever heard of before, in fact it probably sounds quite strange or bizarre, but the definition is pretty simple:

What’s the big deal, you might be wondering. Hair-pulling doesn’t sound life-threatening, or like it has any connection to someone’s mental health. Just stop pulling! It’s that simple. You just have to stop pulling out your hair, and everything goes back to normal, right?

These are thoughts that have plagued me for the last four years of my life. I used to compulsively write on a piece of paper, over and over: “Don’t pull out your hair”. I thought I was being stupid, I thought that I could cover up the hair loss and no-one would ever know. I thought I could tell my hairdresser I burnt it on hair straighteners and no-one would know the difference.

But I was wrong, because I knew.

Somewhere deep down inside I knew that this was a problem. For me it seemed to be tied to stress, whenever I was stressed or worried, there would be hair all over my laptop, my books, my floor. I sometimes wondered if I would eventually lose all my hair.

If you know me you might be sat there wondering why you’ve never seen me bald, or why I don’t have chunks of my hair missing. Unlike other trichsters (people with the same disorder) mine was solely focused on the right side of my head (until recently, but I’ll discuss that later). You can tell I have had hair loss on the right side of my head, sometimes so bad that the hair was no longer than a few inches, but I was so ashamed I never documented it. I will now attempt to show you in the best way I can from old photos, please don’t read further if you suffer from trich and are easily triggered:

15 years old, pre-trich (remember to focus on the right side of my hair).

At 18 the damage isn’t extremely noticeable…

But then it worsens. (Webcam picture flips the sides.)

And by the time I’m 19…

There are noticeable sections of hair that barely reach past my chin.

So I cut my hair all the same length that summer.

But by winter I was back in the same place with the right side of my hair significantly thinner than the left.

And at 20 the hair on the right was mostly gone.

So I cut it all short-ish again.

And it seemed to help… Mostly because I managed to adapt my disorder and pick at the hair at the back of my head, near the neckline.

My hair right now is the healthiest it has ever been in six years, but there’s still a long way to go, because I do pull out my hair at the base of my neck, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to stop it. 

I know my disorder is very mild, there are many others like me who have experienced extreme baldness or bald patches that I’m lucky to never have had, but that doesn’t make it any less real. It took me a long time to come to terms with my disorder, and I still have a long way to go, but if you’re experiencing this yourself – or any other compulsive behavioural disorder – then please try and seek the support I didn’t. It’s out there.

For more information:

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/trichotillomania/Pages/Introduction.aspx

http://www.trich.org/

http://www.trichotillomania.co.uk/

http://www.theguardian.com/society/christmas-charity-appeal-2014-blog/2015/jan/09/-sp-trichotillomania-mental-health-10-things-you-might-not-know

http://trichtalker.tumblr.com/

https://www.youtube.com/user/TrichJournal