CAUSES: HOLISTIC CAUSES

Old Habits Die Hard

Basically, besides all the other aspects of this disease, you have basically picked up a bad and addictive habit – no different than smoking or any other compulsive behavior. So it may be a little rough at first breaking the habit. You have to be firm and forgiving with yourself through the process.

There is an old adage about developing good habits and it goes something like this. If you can do it once an hour for a day you can learn to do it every day. If you can do it once a day for a week, you can learn to do it every week and if you can learn to do it once a week for a month, you can learn to do it every month. There is a lot to be said of repeating good behaviors to offset bad habits, but more will be discussed about these methods later in this book.

In many ways, the habit of skin picking may just be a conditioned reflex. Think of Pavlov's dog. A Russian physiologist trained his dog to salivate whenever he heard a bell, because he ate dinner after the bell. If you felt any kind of relief after successfully popping a zit once, you have set in motion a behavior your body learns to associate with relief and stress reduction. Your body will remember the feelings and will associate the chain of events that leads up to the picking and drive you towards action again in the future.

In many cases, you may have 'picked' up the habit from another person in your family. It is fairly common for pickers to have a history of family picking. One of your parents or an older brother or sister may have picked and that's where you first learned the pattern.

After I became hyperaware and started to try to heal my picking, I started to notice that my father picked at his face when he was driving in the car – especially if he was nervous about something or in traffic. My mother used to be a habitual cuticle picker when I was growing up. She has since conquered this habit for the most part and is very proud to show off her pretty hands. But I know for a fact that when she gets worried about something, she backslides and it shows up in her cuticles. I also remembered my brother dealing with eczema that he scratched at when he was a teen. I never really put two and two together until years after this had cleared up for him. However he still picks at and bites his nails.

So look back and try to identify where a family member may have modeled picking behavior to you. The more aware you are of the behaviors that went on around you – the easier it will be to identify and treat your own.

NEXT PAGE >>

Hosted by itempo.net | Designed by homecamp.com | Site Usage Agreement
Self Injurious Skin Picking SISP, Stop Picking on Me, Stop Picking On You ©2004-2008. all rights reserved.