Recognize and disagreement the negative feelings and thoughts
Involving in non-judgmental awareness along with mindfulness helps you to identify feelings and thoughts, particularly the negative ones that either pave the way or follow hair pulling behaviors. Once you identify the negative feelings and thoughts, you are in a position to deal with them.
It is better to seek help from a professional therapist to work through problems but you can learn to dispute negative feelings and thoughts by writing them down on a paper and deliberately disproving or reframing them. For instance, if you can’t help with your hair pulling behaviors, you can write down what you feel and reframe to: “I can learn managing hair pulling behaviors.”
Separate from the behavior
Trichotillomania doesn’t describe you. You are defined by other things and trichotillomania is compulsive behavior. Behaviors happen but they are distinct from you. Write something about yourself that doesn’t include trichotillomania. Write about hobbies you enjoy, your character traits, and how people describe you, who love you. Whenever you need a reminder, keep this list handy.
Produce competing responses
In Habit Reversal Training, a treatment for trichotillomania disorder, people learn to be actively involved in behavioral habits that make hair pulling difficult or impossible to do. As hair pulling involves hands, a person with trichotillomania can use different ways to keep their hands from pulling hairs and engage in doing something else. For instance, clamping fists tightly when urges to pull hair arises, engaging the hands with stress devices or fidgets, or wearing gloves can also help.
Generate stimulus controls
Transforming the environment so that hair pulling becomes impossible is another Habit Reversal Training. For instance, a person may pull hair at some location in a house that triggers it. Or someone may pull hairs only when he/she is alone. In such cases, the person must avoid these triggers by changing the location at home or avoid being alone so that the puling becomes difficult or even impossible.
Connect with others
Joining support groups or other people who are facing the same issues can help deal with trichotillomania. You can connect with such groups both in-person and online to learn and get encouragement from others and increase your confidence by facilitating others.
Use some tools to interfere with your habits
Pulling hair involves your hands, so what if something alerts you when your hands are doing their job? Habit Aware developed technology that is a great example of a wearable tool that can alert you when your hands are going towards your hair.
Celebrate victories
No matter, they are large or small, reward yourself for all achievements. Your very first celebration could be completing this article and pledging to recovery.
