Thank god it's friday.

                       
I have had an insanely overwhelming & busy week. This is going to be a quick update as a I have a big meeting in about an hour, but wanted to post before the weekend was upon us.

I am on day 4 of my Intra Force 10 day hair system.  I am digging it so far.  To say if it is has made any changes yet, is too early, but I have been taking pictures of the top of my head & maybe after the 10 days, and viewing the pictures, it will be a more obvious way to see if there has been results.

My pulling has been decent this week.  Yesterday afternoon I felt a little out of control & like it wouldn't stop, but I am becoming more and more aware of it.  I vacuumed my car (which had hair everyone), so I could start from scratch with the hair accumulation in my car & I am throwing the hairs out of the window.  This has been another task that has helped to keep me aware of when I am doing since I am an a/c girl & every time I pull a hair it requires rolling down the window.

I have an issue with pulling the front pieces of my hair, and they look very dry and dead.  Last night I pulled one side back in a bobby pin and managed to not pull the one side I put in the bobby pin so I am going to try this tactic today to see if bobby pinning the front accessible pieces may decrease my number of pulls.

I am starting to notice an increase in followers & viewers of this blog, which excites me.  Leave a comment let me know who you are, what you struggle with and if there is anything you'd like to hear more of or see more of in the blog!

Enjoy your weekend everyone :)  Hubby has a baseball tournament so I am looking forward to another weekend away from the chaos.

Come back Sunday for my weekend reveal.

Hubby & I

Hubby found me out, my blog that is - I had told him about it, but had yet to share it with him.  In true hubby fashion, he went to type in "home depot" and "hair pull blog" came up, so now he knows. 

We are polar opposites to the regular outsider looking in. I am chatty, opinionated, & very 'vocal'. He is very quiet, speaks when spoken to & quite laid back. Over the course of the last 9 years, he has toned me down & I have helped bring him out of his shell. When it comes down to it though, we are the same person. We love the same things, we have the same values & we want the same things in life.

We met back when we were 16.  He worked with all of my friends at McDonald's and began hanging around them on a more frequent basis.  At a party on the last weekend of summer before we started our last year of highschool, my best friend told him I liked him, she told me he liked me (I am still not sure if this was even the case for either of us) & within 2 weeks, we were dating.

After highschool, he started his apprenticeship immediately, I worked for a year, then headed off to college for 2 years.  Through my college years, we continued our relationship, travelling back and forth to see eachother every weekend.  After I graduated college and moved back home, the reality that this could be something more than young love began to set in.

At 21, we purchased our first home, at 24, he popped the question & at 25 we were married.

The best day of my life

He knew about my trich relatively early as I can't hide much from him.  When we first started dated, I was not suffering from it at all, but when I began college & those aimless nights of sitting at the computer really brought trich back into my life.  It began to spiral as I took on a job sitting at a desk & started to creep into all areas of my life, not just at work, so he began to experience the signs of it more and more.

He is my #1 support, he is always as understanding as he can be with my 'crazies' & tries to help me beat my trich.  It seems in the car or while we are watching TV, he tells me dozens of times a day to "stop".  Despite the annoyance, and that him telling me to stop raises my anxiety levels, I know he is doing everything he can to help me beat this.

His help & support are just another tool in my aresnal of tricks to kick the trich.

Change of pace

This ziploc bag is not working for me. 

As with most tactics I take on to battle the trich, the idea and the execution were very successful for the first week or so, but my brain begins to conquer it somehow, and I am back to square one.  Yesterday, I did keep some hairs in a bag, but as the day progressed, I noticed myself throwing them away without putting them in the bag, like my mind had had enough.

Maybe I get discouraged when I don't see a noticable change fast enough, but whatever the reason, my ziploc attempts are fading.  If I had to guess, i'd say my breaks were the highest day yet, I felt like I was non-stop breaking.  Pulls would have been quite high as well.

I met with Barb in the afternoon & we determined that most of the typical behaviour therapies, such as aversion, are not successful options for me so we are going to try something a little different.

As I mentioned last week, I am starting to read the book "Brain Lock".  I am only about 60 pages in, but before we meet next I need to be done this book.  One technique I have never tried is attempting to beat my other OCD's in hopes that it will correlate to my trich.  In "Brain Lock", they have a 4 step process that has proven successful.  If I can learn these steps, apply them to all my other crazies, then maybe it will somehow positively effect & carry onto my trich.

It is worth giving it a shot, so that is the new plan.  One of these have to work!

Redken Intraforce Review

My hair dresser recommended this product to me about a year ago.  Apparently Redken had been working on this formula for years & have had a lot of success in clinical trials with people with thinning hair & even cancer patients.

Intra Force has "Redken’s most powerful combination of active ingredients: Zinc PCA, Arginine, and Vitamin E".  I have no idea what any of these ingredients actually mean to the world of hair, BUT they gaurantee results within 30 days or your money back. 

I began using just the Shampoo and Toner (a.k.a conditioner) and as I said in my post last week, I have noticed a serious change in some of the strands of hair.  I now have these thick, strong strands I have never had in the past & my only assumption can be due to this product.  In the last 2 weeks, I have purchased the treatment steps & the micro boost formula in an attempt to kick-start some new hair growth.  I have yet to see a noticable difference, likely because my pulling has been so bad, but it makes my scalp tingle so it has to be working right?

You apply the micro boost first, then the treatment & style normally.  The one thing I really like is I can apply both steps to my hair & when I style, it isn't noticable that I have these products in my hair.  When people recommend oils, or other hair products, it sometimes causes my hair to look disgusting, so I am pleasantly surprised with the lack of doing that.

Step 3 - Treatment

Intra Force Micro Boost

 After looking at their entire product line online, I saw the 10 day program to kick-start growth.  They recommend using it twice a year for 10 days, in fall & spring, when hair thins (I had no idea hair thinning was seasonal!) and it's apparently amazing.  So I ordered that from the only place I could find it in canada (www.spaboutique.ca).  I received confirmation that it has shipped and it is supposed to arrive by this Friday, so I will be tracking my progress over the course of the 10 days once I test out this system.

Redken Hair Advance 10-day System

The line at the start may seem sorta on the pricey side but I bought the salon size 1L bottles about a year ago, I think they were like $25/each and I am still using them so really, for a product that really changes your hair, that price is not astronomical.  If you buy 3 bottles per year of Pantene at Walmart, you are looking at about $18-$20 for the shampoo, so when I break it down that way, it is beyond fair the price that I paid.  The Treatment step is around $20 & the micro boost was I think $40.  I find these products go a long way, so even with a steep initial investment, you only have to buy these products one to two times per year.

I think for anyone looking for thicker, stronger hair, this product is fantastic.  You can search salon locations on the Redken web-site to find your closest retailer or you can order it from places like spaboutique. 

I am away this entire weekend, but as long as my shipment comes in on Friday like they said it would, I will be starting my 10 day hair advance system on Monday.  I will take daily photo's of the top of my head & see if it really makes a significant difference.

Hair Pull Fail

So this bag attempt is going horribly wrong.  I was doing so good with it, but I have fallen off the bandwagon for 4 days straight.  Granted I have been very busy & when I leave the house I have not been thinking about it, but you would think it would be a top of mind priority.

I am going to try to get back on it today, I see Barb the Therapist this afternoon & want to make sure I have the bag going so I can track my day better.

Yesterday was a pretty heavy pulling day.  It started off by breaks, but the hair texture was too strong & thick yesterday and I kept opting for pulls instead of breaks.  I have shorter pieces in the front that are pure break-age & I try to stay away from them because they are quite noticable but yesterday, since I hadn't played in a while, they felt so good and rough that I pulled out probably half a dozen within 2 minutes of starting.  I am really struggling with this, and as the days go by, my hair is continuing to get worse and worse. 

This weekend is my birthday and I was really hoping to be in a better place by the time this birthday came around.  I know how much my hair can change in just a month of low pulling, so I really thought when I started this blog a month ago or so, I had thought how nice my hair could be for my birthday.  Well that was clearly wishful thinking as my breaks on the top of my head are slightly out of control at the moment & the bottoms of my hair are totally broken.

Hopefully after my visit with Barb today i'll feel more motivated & something will click.

Everyday people are winning the battle with trich, why can't I?

Too many breaks & too many pulls

Do you ever have those days where you don't feel like blogging because you are grumpy or tired?  Ya that is me today.  I have a few blogs in the works that will be of detail this week, but for today, I am feeling pretty unmotivated when it comes to blogging.

I had a tough weekend.  I didn't keep my ziploc for the second weekend in a row.  Saturday my pulls in the morning were off the charts.  I had an exam to write and for the 2 hours I was in there, I was pulling/breaking.  I occupied my hands most of the afternoon & evening so it wasn't too bad of a day.  My Sunday pulls were out of control in the morning & in the evening, and I was feeling pretty low in terms of my trich.  I saw a picture on a friends phone and my hair looked like absolute shit.  Its so broken in the one spot, a straightner isn't even doing the trick anymore.

So far today, I have only broken 5 hairs & haven't had any pulls, likely thanks to the hoodie wearing.  I am tempted to just keep my hood on and remain in a sleepy ball until tomorrow, but reality sinks in and I have to go to work. 

One story I can share though from this weekend:  I was at a baby shower and the host was telling me a story about how her daughter straight up chopped off the entire one side of her hair, when she left the daughter alone with the husband.  Since I used to do this as a child, my instant reaction is 'this girl is going to have trich'.  I am sure it is normal for kids to cut their hair, but of course since I did it a few times, I assume it is related.

For all you other trich sufferers who read this, were you hair cutters when you were a kid??

Hair Types

Now that I am tracking, it is clear to you people that I pull/break a lot of hairs in one day.  One of the interesting things about my disease is everyday my hair takes on a different feel or texture.  This is obviously mental, as my hair does not change from day-to-day, but I think it also effects the amount of pulling and breaking I do.

Some days my hair breaks really easy, it feels brittle and weak and the amount of breaks just keep on coming.  Other days my hair feels strong, and thick, then the next day it will be rough and textured.  Most people would never think this about their hair, but since I touch mine so much I am very in tune with my hair. 

I started using a product called "Redken Intraforce" about a year ago.  It is a line they have designed for people with thinning hair.  I plan on writing a much more detailed post on this line, but for now, it is just general background.  Since using that product, my hair has really taken on a new form and I find hairs that never were in my hair mix-up before.  I now have 3 hair types, versus my usual 2. 

Below is an image illustrating the 3 hair types.  On the left you will find my thin hairs.  These hairs are light in colour, and literally are so thin and weak they snap with no effort.  The middle hair is what I like to consider my typical hair.  It is a brown shade, it requires some effort to break and I think the thickness is normal of someone with regular hair.  Then there is the best hairs in the world on the right.  These hairs literally excite the sh*t out of me.  You can likely see the significant difference between the left and middle hair versus the one on the right, but all these hairs came from the same head. 

The hairs on the right should not normally be found in my head.  A dark, rich shade of brown that are so thick and strong, sometimes I can hardly break them.  They give such an amazing feeling of hope as I run them through my fingers, that this could one day be the hair type that is supposed to make up my entire head.  The irony of the whole thing is, since I can usually tell when I have found one with my fingers, I need to immediately see how thick it is, so I pull it out, thus reducing the amount of thick pieces in my hair.  ugh!

My mom has hair very similar to the hairs on the right - and yes I know this because I have had her pull out a hair so I can play with it and see the texture/thickness. 

My Mom's Full, Thick Head of Hair

Maybe these new hairs on the right are signs of good things to come & I can one day have hair as thick as my moms.

63 Pulls 59 Breaks

I pulled 63 hairs yesterday and had 59 breaks.  My pulls out numbering my breaks is a first and I cannot figure this one out.  Did my mind subconsciously know in yesterdays post that I commented on reducing my breaks and cause me to pull more?  Could that even be possible?  I don't even know what to make of yesterday.

May 24 Pulls

I guess I should be celebrating not having pulled 100's of hair yesterdays at the rate I was going but I'm just so confused by the shift in pulls versus breaks.  How can I so consistently break more hairs then pull and all of a sudden have it turn around?  I had a bad day in the car, but then I had to drive an hour or so to hubby's baseball game.  I was behind the wheel this time, versus the night before, and this time I would say I pulled 20 hairs in the course of that hour while I was driving and only a few while I was reading.  I think there is a correlation between having people in the car talking to me and the number of hairs I pull.  We drove 2 other baseball team members to the game so I couldn't do my ziploc hoarding so instead I decided to collect them on my thigh and once they were outside warming up I would put them in my ziploc.  By the time we got to the ball diamond, my thigh was COVERED in pulls and breaks.  Having people talking to me must bring my mind to a different place and my hands are left to work a number on my head.

When I am sitting around with people, chatting, I am aware and making a conscious effort not to pull.  When I am in the car, it is as if people can't see me and I just go about my business pulling.  I don't know how I am going to conquer my car battle. 

I started my day early today so I hope my pulls are manageable.  I have a ton of reading to do tonight for an exam I have tomorrow, so I am going to throw my hoodie on hopefully eliminating an entire evening of pulls to bring my numbers from the last few nights down substantially.

Anyone have any suggestions how I can beat this car battle???

64 Pulls 87 Breaks

Yesterday I had 64 Pulls & 87 breaks.  I am pretty dissappointed in these numbers since

I was on track to have a very stellar day, then a couple factors came into play that really took my numbers to the next level.

May 23rd Pulls

Yesterday was my first attempt at writing each pull or break before I put it into the bag.  It seriously saved me a ton of time this morning, which if only for that reason is worth it, but I really felt the benefit of doing this.  For the pull side, I wrote out the numbers and for the breaks, I began doing individual 'ticks', to see if I found any difference between the two psychologically and by the 12th or 13th tick on the break side, I knew I needed to see a number.  I am definitely going to continue with this method of tracking since it was also good because if I accidentally threw a hair about out of habit, it would register and I would be able to still account for it.

Pull Tracking Page
(Not an ad for Monte Carlo Inns...Only piece of paper I had)

As you can see above, I pulled 64 hairs. Throughout the day I did such a good job of tracking each one at a time, but then you will notice near the end the numbers start to jump several at a time. I was at 29 pulls at 5:30pm, a far cry from 80 I had likely pulled the day before at this time. I was feeling VERY good about the days progress & felt I would manage to stay under 40 pulls, but that changed in a hurry. The red pen indicated when I got into the car for the evenings events (not strategically, I only had a red pen). We had to drive about 40 minutes to pick up a washer & dryer, then from there another 30 minutes to hubby's baseball game, then I had an hour of sitting & reading in the car while they warmed up. In the span of less 3 hours, I pulled 34 hours which is more than I pulled in the 8 hours prior.

As I have always known, being in the car is a real problem for me, but the last major jump happened in the hour that I was left alone in the car to read.  Oh mylanta.  With all my mind power, I COULD NOT stop.   The second I began reading my hands would immediately find my head & the worse part was majority of the time while I was reading it was pulls & not breaks.  I am not sure of the correlation, but I am now determined to find some kind of solution for when I am reading.  At home, I can resort to my hoodie, but in this situation of reading in public, I am not sure what to do.

Break Tracking Page

My breaks still continue to be a struggle, but as you can see, the majority of breaks actually happened during the day and only 27 happened after starting my evening based on the red pen.  The problem with breaking is it still keeps me in the habit of playing with my hair which is really the root of the problem (no pun intended!).  I need to work just as much on reducing the breaks & if I do this, I know my pull numbers will be positively impacted.

I think I am on the right track here, and honestly, if I had an evening where I stayed in & was able to wear a hoodie, I know my pulls would have been under 40 & my breaks under 70, but that wasn't the case, so I have to continue to work on the car & reading situation.

One big thing I noticed yesterday, there was probably 7-10 times where I was on the verge of breaking a hair, I felt it about to go & my mind was aware and I was able to resist the urge to break it, even though I knew it was right there, ready to break.  This may seem little to some, but for me, having my mind recognize and resist that moment is something new.  My numbers would have been much closer to 100 if I had followed through with those breaks.

This evening we have another baseball game, this time an hour drive from home, and I will have that hour of sitting in the car reading again.  I am going to come up with something so my pulls or breaks during that hour do not spiral out of control, or even happen.

97 Pulls 102 Breaks

...yikes.  I thought I had plateaued when I hit 70 pulls, thinking that number was astronomical, but yesterday, well it was a REALLY bad day.

May 22nd Pulls

It may have been the extra hour or so of being 'ready', or it could have been because I told myself it was going to be a bad day, but I did not expect THAT much hair.

By noon, I had a fair amount collected in my ziploc & I felt pretty down about the whole situation.  By the time I saw Barb the therapist later in the afternoon, I was full-on having a really bad day.  I think for the first time I was actually playing with my hair while I was in her office.

I had told Barb I knew today was going to be really bad, and how I sorta felt like I threw all progress out the window after my weekend mishap.  She assured me i'd be able to get back on the wagon & today I am feeling much better.  One idea we threw around was tracking my pulls as I go.  I determined I won't be able to count them in my mind, since sometimes the whole ritual of pulling is very thoughtless, so I know I would lose track.  Instead we came up with the idea of writing them down so I am going to tape a piece of paper to my ziploc and mark the number everytime I put a pull or break into the bag. This tactic will hopefully be a better trigger in my mind for where my actual pulls and breaks stand versus seeing them accumulate in the bag and it will save me the 15-20 minutes it has been taking me to count the stupid hairs.

Lets hope I have better results to report tomorrow morning.  I feel the tracking while pulling/breaking could be a great discouraging tool, but I thought that about the bag too, so here's hoping!

Problem Zones

So I was bad again.  I didn't keep my ziploc baggy of hairs yesterday and I have no idea what my pull/break numbers were.  I already have my ziploc bag going for today, so I should be on track to monitor my pulls for tomorrow.

I did good for the start of the day and I would say my pulls were under 10 until about 2pm when I sat down on the couch, then the pulls starting coming at a higher rate.

I have touched on this in the past, but I will expand a little.  I have two places that are very bad pull spots for me and I would say 98% of pulls happen in these 2 spots.  First, being my car & second being my couch/being on the computer (they usually happen at the same time).

When I started my current full-time job, my pulling in the car was not an issue, it was actually a spot I never pulled in.  I had been working a desk job, and the pulling was gradually becoming a problem, so when I transitioned jobs, I was excited that I would be in the car since this wasn't a problem zone.  Well that quickly changed.  I would say on a daily basis, 75% of all hairs are pulled or broken in my car.  If I was a 10-2 driving, with both hands on the wheel, this obviously could not be an issue, but like most people, I drive with one hand, which leaves my second hand with nothing to do.  I have tried occupying it by playing with things, but no matter what, as soon as I am thinking about something other than my pulling, I am back pulling.  I have spots in my car where I used to drop the hairs after pulling, that I would have to collect the hairs from everyday and throw them out the window, since the accumulation would be so high.

My second problem spot is when I am on my couch on the computer.  When I am typing a blog post for example, I have no urge to pull as I am using both hands, but the second I stop typing, I am pulling.  I have pulled 2 hairs since I started this post, both when I was done a paragraph and having a thought process on the next paragraph. (I just re-read that paragraph and broke 2 hairs)  Generally I try and always wear a hood when I am on the computer, because I recognize the problem, and in the privacy of my own home, have the ability to wear a hood, but this morning I had an appointment early and I am back home already dressed and ready for the day, so I can't wear a hood since it would mess up my hair.

Hairs on my laptop

I am working on getting better in both of these spots, and the ziploc bag has significantly helped with the car pulling, not as much with the computer pulling, since I think I am in a different state of thinking when on the computer.

I have already pulled more hairs then I normally would pull before 11 a.m. so I am going to try and rope in my pulls for the rest of the day and try and stay present.  If I keep up this pace, I may be in trouble with my pull and break count tomorrow

Hair Pull Fail

Well that went horribly wrong.  Friday around 5pm I went to place a pulled hair into my trusty ziploc bag & it has dissappeared.  Duing my shopping & moving things around to head away for the weekend, my ziploc bag dissappeared.  Somewhere lying on the ground is a ziploc bag full of my little hairs.

Already on my way away for the weekend, and for some reason not packing any additional ziploc bags, I was bagless for the weekend. 

Friday was an average pulling day, and based on my guesses i'd say I pulled about 50 hairs, breaks are unknown since they register less in my mind.

Saturday was slower.  I spent most of the day doing renovations at a student rental property we own so using my hands, equals less pulling.  I'd say my pulls were under 40.

Then in comes Sunday...Oh mylanta.   I spent over 2 and a half hours in the car, then 3 hours sitting around socializing with my family then another 2 hours sitting around a table chatting with my hubby's family.

I had a really bad day.  I don't know if my mind was being defiant because it knew I had no bag to track, but I would say I pulled WAY more than the 70 hairs I tracked the other day.  I was totally out of a control.  I hope that will be my last BAD day.

I now have a game plan to always have additional ziplocs because I believe it reduces the number drastically and makes me more accountable for my actions.

In Canada, today is Victoria Day so we do not work so the plan is some gardening outside which will occupy my hands, so hopefully I can have a low pull day to start my week on the right foot.

41 Pulls 62 Breaks

Well that experiment went well!  Yesterday I drastically reduced my number of pulls to 41 and my breaks to 62 & I got the number of 'pull breaks' to 1.  I wish I could have reported zero but my urges got the best of me, and I broke one pull.

May 17th Pulls

This morning as I was tediously emptying my ziploc bag (the little breaks static to the bag!), I knew immediately my numbers were going to be much lower as the pile looked so different than the last two days.  A rush of excitement came over as I counted yesterdays pulls, anticipating what that final number was going to be.   For the first time in the last 3 years, I felt change coming.  I really can't believe I was able to reduce those numbers so drastically in one day.

I worry about today, as I know I am going to be spending a lot of time in my car, which is my number one pull spot, but I am now totally determined to continue to reduce that number.

Yesterday I started my day a tad later than normal, so that helped with less car time, then when I was in the car, I was really trying to fight the urge.  It really is so incredible that even when I am working so hard to fight something, the second my mind drifts off and thinks of something other than not pulling, I am back pulling.  In the evening, I spent from 5pm-midnight with a girlfriend & out at my hubby's baseball so I was really conscious of not playing with my hair.  On the 45 minute car ride home, I wore my hoodie which also played a part in the reduced number, because normally a 45 minute car ride spells trouble. 

So even though I am celebrating yesterdays low numbers, I cautiously move forward, knowing today could be just as bad as Wednesday.

The weekend is usually low pull season for this girl, so I have high hopes when I recap my  pulls on Monday morning, I will be able to report some low numbers but regardless, yesterday was a step in the right direction, and I'm pretty pumped about the progress.

Enjoy your weekend xo

Pull vs. Break

I go through phases with my trich.  Sometimes my fad of the month is pulling, other times it is breaking.

For the last little while, it has been breaking, and eff, is my hair taking a toll.  Around ear level of my head, you can see a distinct line of broken hairs & the top of my head has an insane amount of what most people would consider to be 'fly aways', but are actually breaks.

Let me give you a little background on how the habit works:  when my hands are left with nothing to do, they immediately revert to my head.  It always innocently begins with running my fingers through my hair, then I proceed to find a single stand of hair, and run it through my thumb nail & the edge of my index finger (see below for the lovely callus' I have developed from doing this so much).  A distinct sound runs through my head of my nail running along the strand of hair, then it always end with the sound of a break, or the sound of a pull.  Yes...they have their own sounds too.

Callus on my index finger

For me, my goal is always a break versus a pull. My thought is even if I break the hair,at least the root is still in my head and I won't be bald.  It is a difficult process to explain to people who don't have trich, but basically when I run my fingers along a strand, the end result is either a break or a pull. 

Below gives you an idea of what a 'break' looks like.  It is a very small piece of hair, usually less than an inch, that comes off the end of a piece of hair, that thankfully has remained in my head.   Succcess!  (Except when I do 95 a day! sh*t!)

Hair "Breaks"

Below is more what a "pull" looks like. It is generally a longer strand of hair, unless I have yanked a fresh growth piece from the top, and I feel some serious 'remorse' after every pull.  Yesterday, I felt this feeling 70 times. 

Hair "Pull"

When I talk about the other kind of breaking - a "pull break" -  I am referring to my habit of taking a 'pull' and in a systematic way, stringing it through 2 of my fingers and breaking it into a smaller piece, then doing this for as long as possible until I feel it is broken to its full potential. 

This entire process - from the initial touch to the final break - is quite thoughtless, and is done in an almost robotic way.  This is why yesterday's achievement of only 3 breaks is off the charts.  On Monday, I would have broken those 70 hairs further to make anywhere from 140-200 pieces of smaller hairs.  Yesterday, to only have done it 3 times, is such a step for me.  I am beginning to bring awareness to myself, fight my urges & break the habit.

This should hopefully help you understand the difference between a break and a pull, then the "pull break".  A wee bit confusing, but in my mind, I have no other way of calling them or explaining them.  I am hoping the "pull break" is quickly going to become a thing of the past, with the other 2 to follow!

70 Pulls 95 Breaks

Yesterday I pulled out 70 hairs & broke 95 pieces of hair.  I am completely shocked at this number.  I would have said my pulls would have been under 50, and I really did not think I break off close to 100 pieces of hair in one day.

Yesterday's Pulls & Breaks

If I keep on this pace, I will pull out 980 hairs & break 1130 pieces before the end of May.

The one good thing that came out of yesterday is I did not consciously break a single fully pulled hair.  My total for the day was 3 - that is full hairs broken smaller than when pulled, and those were strictly out of habit & I was peeved as soon as I broke them and realized.  That is pretty outstanding for me.  Not a single hair on my post yesterday had not been broken to what I felt was its full breaking potential.

All this pulling & breaking talk is even confusing myself so I think it's time for a more detailed breakdown on my trich habit which i'll touch on in my next post.

So depsite the surprisingly high numbers of yesterday, everyday my goal is going to be to decrease that number in my subject line & end goal, for both to be zero.

I think I have a long way to go, but I needed a starting point and here it is:

70 Pulls 95 Breaks

Daily Recap of May 15 2012

Today I am going to begin what is a time consuming but I think beneficial activity - daily recaps.

I had an a-ha moment yesterday where I realized I needed some accountability and something tangible to compare & work towards.

Below are yesterdays pulls.  I took the time to collect every hair I pulled into a ziploc bag.  I would say this is about 95% of the hairs I pulled yesterday.   There was some obvious throw aways that slipped my mind as I still try and get into this new habit, and a few pulls from the morning before I decided to start collecting them.

Part of my habit is breaking each piece of hair, as many times as possible, so I couldn't get an accurate count on the total number of pulls versus breaks which I am going to do today.  I am going to try and not break any pieces of hair.  Not saying I won't break any pieces off my head, but if I pull a full hair, I will not break it into smaller hairs.  I know this is going to spike my anxiety levels but in order to be able to track my pulls, I can't break the hairs.

The picture is slightly disturbing, which I guess is the point of this exercise, to be able to get a realistic grasp of what I am pulling.  When I toss them away, and don't see a day's worth of pulls in one daunting image, it seems less like a problem.  Hopefully this new activity will be the accountability I needed to shock myself into having a lot more self control.

Not breaking my hair after a pull will be a feat in itself and a baby step towards kicking the habit, as I have determined the break is just as addictive as the pull.

Hopefully I can stick to my guns and have a break-free Wednesday.

Enjoy your day xo

Inspired

After writing this mornings post & feeling quite low, I proceeded to create an alias facebook account & join several Trich facebook sites, as well as some OCD sites.  I am trying any means possible to get some inspiration, feel less alone & muster up some hope.

The facebook group simply titled "Trichotillomania" is inspiring & if you suffer from trich and are reading this and are not apart of that group, I suggest finding it.  I have never really looked at any of these group pages, since I don't want them to be linked to my real profile (as per being ashamed of my trich) 

I spent the last half hour looking through posted pictures to the group, seeing some people's success stories & reading other members struggles.  So many of these people are woman my age, who seem totally normal and you would never suspect is battling trich.

Today almost feels like the beginning of something big.  Not going to lie, after writing this mornings post, I looked back and it felt depressing & I was in a bit of a slump for the rest of the day.  I am going to begin a daily recap column tomorrow, which I will obviously go into more detail with tomorrow & try and implement the vision and plans I have been toying with for this blog.

See you all in the morning

xo

My biggest fear

I have subconsciously been avoiding talking about my trich, despite the fact that is really the point of this blog. 

There are so many things to touch on.  There is my history with my hair, there is my current habits & rituals, there is how I have tried to conquer it, my fears, all my thoughts.  I have so many things that revolve around this disease that I am seriously at a loss.  I guess for the time being I am going to try and write 2-3 posts per week on something to do with my trich.  I have a feeling it is going to all feel very disjointed but being such a complex disease, I guess it is only fitting.

Today we will discuss my biggest fear...being bald.  I could cry thinking about this, as I know if I continue on the path I am currently on, it is the only inevitable result.  When I see woman who are going bald, I get instantly nauseous.  I cannot stop staring, and it makes me sick to my stomache. The blood feels like it has drained from my whole body & whatever is in my stomache is about to make an apperance to the outside world.  I am not judging any of these woman, that is not the point as I know there are many reasons why woman go bald, but for me, the only reason is trich.  In my mind, it doesn't matter how the woman I am looking at got to be that way, all that I can imagine is that being me.  I feel so sad and helpless, like I'm never going to be okay, and nothing I do is ever going to work.

My first time visiting a psychiatrist was propelled by the fear that I would be a bald bride.  I wasn't engaged, but knowing it was likely in the coming years, I would have recurring dreams of me having large bald spots on my head on my wedding day.  My wedding has since come & gone, and with the help of some hair extensions for my voluminous bun, no one would ever know my daily struggle.

Every year I think "If I continue on this path, this time next year, I will be bald".  Somehow highly visible baldness has yet to creep up on me, but with my trich on a downward spiral & an increase in my number of pulls per day, I know I cannot avoid the feared outcome forever.

I know the below image is how mine is going to gradually start.  I already am seeing the onsets of this.  If others can really notice the thinning/baldness is unknown to me but because of my obsession, I can feel/see specific problem areas.  My main pulling is from the top of my head, so as it continues, I know I am going to begin thinning through there first.

I can't help but be both fixated and disgusted by the image above.  My heart races, my palms get sweaty, my eyes feel tears welling up.  This is my reality if I do not beat this battle.

That is the sickest part of this disease.  As awful as this image makes me feel, and even knowing this is what will happen if I pull anymore hairs, I continue to do it.  I cannot stop. 

When the wind blows....

I have been hair obsessed for as long as I can remember.   After really diving into my past, there are a few key contributors I believe to have caused me to resort to hair pulling.  I am not trying to shift blame, but more or less discussing things in my life I think have played in a role in my hair obsession & to give insight on my life.

For this post, I can thank my fabulous brothers.  I have two brothers.  My oldest brother is 9 years older than me, and my second brother is 5 years older.  Growing up, I was always very close with my oldest brother and had a more love/hate relationship with the middle one as we were closer in age & I probably annoyed the shit out of him.

My brothers & I - Late 1986

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a household where there was no shortage of humour.  The majority of our humour stems from my mom, and has trickled down onto her children.  My brothers are seriously two of the funniest people I know, and despite the permanent damage they have caused their little sister, I can't imagine having grown up in a house without the amount of laughter we had. 

As the youngest child & the only girl, I got the brunt of most of the ongoing, cruel jokes in our household.  Some have stuck with me, others I find equally hilarious to look back on, and kind of wish there was someone younger than me so I could have equally punished them. 

I once had a book with two characters named "Sarah & Thomas", and in one of them, they 'discover' each others bodies.  Frankly, it was completely inappropriate.  In it they referred to Thomas as having a penis and Sarah as having a slit.  When does SLIT become the appropriate term for vagina? Anyways, my brothers used to play this horrible joke on 5 year old me, where they said they would call the slit doctor & have him come sew up my slit.  My oldest brother would pick up the phone and dial 555-SLIT.  He would say it & dial it very slowly ..  5   5   5   S   L    I    T.  I would scream & throw a tantrum and my brothers would be dying laughing.  I can almost guarantee knowing my mom now, she was dying laughing too but through her laughter trying to make them stop  Thankfully this cruel joke didn't cause me to have any form of slit fears, but just wanted to paint a picture of the kind of hilarious, yet mean, environment my brothers raised me in.

5   5   5   S   L   I   T

The one relating to my trich, although at the time would have seemed quite harmless, I believe this was a catalyst for my self-conscious/obsessive behaviour relating to my hair.  I am going to thank my oldest brother for this one, as I can only imagine him being the one to have created this lovely song, that throughout my child was sung to me over and over, and to this day, still gets sung to me, oddly enough usually when I bring up my trich.

So here they are...the 3 worst lines in the world, sung to a lovely, catchy melody, that rings through everyone in my families head when we think about my hair.

*When the wind blows, when the wind blows, sara's hair doesn't move at all*

Meeting Barb

My Trich got really bad in March.  I was at a desperate point of needing to seek professional help again.  I had given the psychiatrist route a go once before, but at the steep price, and lack of results, I abandoned ship.  I googled some potential options close to my house, and came across one facility that was of interest.  When I phoned the number, a lovely receptionist who I could tell was around my age answered the phone.  I assume these people hear some crazy stuff, considering where they work, but when you have to tell someone around your age that you pull out your own hair, you feel much crazier & self conscious.  I hesitatingly explained that I have trich and immediately she replied "I will put you in to see Barb!'.

Nothing makes you feel more crazy then needing to see a Psychiatrist or Therapist.  There is such a stigma attached to it, you never say to someone "I have an appointment with my therapist". I say it to my husband, my parents, my brothers, but they know my struggle and see it as a positive, not a negative. For most, it sounds out of a movie and like real people don't do it, so saying it out loud is not an option.

The first time I met Barb was a warm afternoon in early April.  In order to get to know me, she goes through a lengthy questionnaire about my life, my family, my job, hobbies, etc.  Immediately I liked her nature, you could tell she was caring, and warm.  Half way through our meeting, when discussing some of my anxieties, she opened up to me about suffering from panic disorder, and that was sort of a game changer for me.

I don't think people who don't suffer from any mental illness can really understand what it is like.  It is irrational & overwhelming at most points, but having someone who has suffered them self, feels less like they are judging you, and more like they are really trying to help and like they want you to get past it as much as you do.

On our second and third visits, we really laid out every OCD and anxiety I battle, in hopes of relating them back to my trich.  We have been doing some trial and error on some behavioural changes for my trich, which I will touch on in a later post, as well as digging into other obsessions and anxieties.

This past session, #4, could be the most effective to date when we dove into my struggles of over eating. The short of it is, I cannot resist that urge to continue eating.  After diving into how I had success shedding 40lbs & resisting those urges to overeat during that time, and explaining that blogging my daily achievements and findings was a major part of it, a light bulb clicked.  What if I did a blog, talking about trich, my hair pulling, my daily successes or failures?  Maybe this could be the turning point in my recovery, where I begin to see patterns and can crack down on the root of my trich.

So here we are.  That is how this blog idea came to life, in a little office in Burlington, Ontario.  I wanted to introduce Barb for a couple reason.  Mostly to give credit for kickstarting my blogging attempt & so when I say 'barb' in a post you will know who she is but most importantly, so everyone knows

I see a therpist (...That's sort of out loud right?)