Picking
Hi everyone — this might be a little weird for me to share, but I need advice.
I have a pretty severe compulsion to pick at the skin on my fingers. It started when I was a kid as a way to cope with anxiety, and now I’m an adult and still do it constantly every single day. I’ve been doing it for about 18 years 24/7. My fingers are raw, sore, and visibly damaged, and I’m honestly really embarrassed by how they look.
I’m also an artist, so my hands are allways visable to me which just adds to the frustration and shame. I’ve tried to stop so many times over the years. I’ve tried using rings and fidget items that are made for picking, I’ve tried wearing Band-Aids, I’ve even tried getting acrylic nails, but I’ll literally just end up picking the acrylic off.
Even thinking about stopping makes me anxious — like physically tense. If anyone else deals with this or has had any success managing it, I’d be really grateful to hear your story/advice. It’s something I want to get under control.
@faith012 hello faith and thank you for sharing your experience. Firstly I can assure you that while it's causing you considerable distress it isn't weird - what you've described is known as BFRB (body focused repetitive behaviours) and is actually rather common, being considered a subset of OCDs. I actually had this in the form of hair-twirling; I wasn't even conscious of how frequent an occurrence it was for me, but once I realised it was a BFRB and wasn't going away by itself I took a CBT-type approach - becoming aware of when I was doing it, what the drivers were, taking a momentary pause - this was enough to (eventually) break the pattern. CBT is considered helpful in OCD treatment and I've linked to our OCD guide below: it may be worth a try for you. It also sounds as though you've tried a number of distraction techniques which haven't had any lasting effectiveness; what I can also tell you is that OCDs also respond well to SSRi pharmacotherapy, to reduce the anxiety associated with the compulsive behaviour. I've also linked to research that discusses this option. I'm hoping you find a way through this faith, thank you again for reaching out.
https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.20230226
