Project Dermatillomania by Laura A. Barton

The disorder can go as far as affecting people’s ability to live regular lives, causing them to avoid social situations and romantic relationships. I hated myself for not being able to stop.” “For a long time, I was overwhelmed by shame, both while I was doing it and when I’d see the damage. Taking a shower becomes unbearable.” In addition to the physical pain, there’s emotional distress, continues Barton. “Sometimes I make lesions so deep that they hurt for days. “I have scars from head to toe,” she says. Barton, who has suffered from excoriation disorder since she was young and wrote about it in Project Dermatillomania: The Stories Behind Our Scars and Project Dermatillomania: Written on Our Skin. That’s the case for 30-year-old author Laura A. The areas most likely to be affected are the face, arms and legs, but some people go as far as picking at their ears and scalp. The deeper they are, the harder they are to treat.” “When the sores or lesions heal, a significant amount of collagen remains, forming pitted scars and discoloration. Joseph Doumit, a Montreal-based dermatologist. “Recurring skin-picking can damage skin and even cause serious infections,” says Dr. “The behaviour can be deliberate, to satisfy the urge to ‘fix’ an irregularity like a pimple, a mole or an itchy patch of skin, but it can also be an unconscious effort to regulate mood, either by calming anxiety or reducing boredom.”Īny satisfaction is short-lived, however, and the habit can quickly lead to sores, bleeding and skin lesions. Thompson Anxiety Disorders Centre in Toronto. Peggy Richter, a psychiatrist and the director of the Frederick W. “People suffering from it can’t stop repeatedly and intensely picking at their skin, to the point of damaging it,” explains Dr. Officially recognized as a mental disorder since 2013, excoriation disorder (or skin-picking disorder) is, like trichotillomania (hair pulling), believed to be directly related to obsessive-compulsive disorder.

According to Anxiety Canada, I’m not alone: 1.5 percent of the population-mainly women-is afflicted with excoriation disorder to differing extents at some point in their lifetime. At the first sign of a blocked pore, a blackhead or a blemish, it was game on: I’d pinch, rub or pierce it into oblivion.

This habit turned compulsion had been part of my day-to-day life since I’d first started suffering from acne. My obsession with picking at my skin was now bleeding into my professional life, and it was time to confront reality. Her words hit me like a ton of bricks-not because it was the first time someone had said it but because I needed to test this particular treatment for an assignment. He aesthetician stood in front of me and gently explained that she could not perform a laser treatment on my skin because it was too damaged.

Project Dermatillomania by Laura A. Barton