If you’re an individual with excoriation disorder (a.k.a. dermatillomania and skin-picking disorder) there is no doubt you hear your fair share of remarks from friends and relatives. These people don’t necessarily understand the disorder. Though this obsessive-compulsive disorder can be debilitating at times, no one will understand your struggle of trying to quit unless they have been there themselves. Here are six things we are tired of hearing.
1. “Stop picking!”
If it was only that simple! Of course, these people want the best for you, but they don’t know just how impossible it is to stop picking—no matter where it is. It can be on the face or arms, but just because people see your scars, scabs, and skin doesn’t mean that you can control the sensation to “fix” it.
2. “Did you cut yourself? You have a lot of band-aids on your fingers.”
The Band-Aid struggle is real. You can never have enough boxes of these things laying around. It’s not like they actually stop the picking, though. Sure, your fingers or arms might start looking better with them on, but that doesn’t mean you’re not subconsciously (or consciously) picking at those Band-Aids every few minutes.
3. “Why are you so anxious?”
This one isn’t as common for me, but it still happens. Just because you’re picking at your fingers doesn’t necessarily mean you’re anxious. Of course, anxiety can be linked to this disorder, but that doesn’t mean as soon as you start picking it’s because you’re anxious about something. It’s more like “Oh there’s just one little hangnail left, that won’t hurt to get rid of.” or, “there’s a loose piece of skin—I need to get that off and I won’t touch it anymore.”
4. “That looks bad.”
Thanks for the warning, Captain Obvious. As if we didn’t know that our skin-picking looked bad, there’s always that one person to remind us of all our insecurities. This disorder can also be impossibly bad to deal with if it’s combined with body dysmorphic disorder. Not only with BDD do you worry about your looks to almost a perfectionist standpoint, but not being able to stop picking at your skin will make that BDD flair up even more.
5. “If you don’t stop you’re going to have scars.”
No shit, Sherlock. It’s not like we want to have scars, but we know it’s highly possible and highly probable. Scars are not our friends, but they remind us what we do to ourselves in order to try and help serve as “reminders” to stop. Does it always work? Of course not, but stopping is nearly impossible to do without medication and a lot of self-control.
6. “You would be so pretty if it wasn’t for all those scars.”
Hearing this is not a compliment. We think we’re beautiful (or handsome) anyway, so people informing us we WOULD be without our scars doesn’t make our self-confidence flourish any… at all. The fact that people are paying that much attention to our scars is actually pretty intrusive.
Even if you are suffering from excoriation disorder, don’t let that define your self-worth. There is no doubt that despite what you think about yourself, you are beautiful. Even though you feel worthless some days doesn’t mean you are. You may struggle with self-esteem issues, but trust me when I say that you are a beautiful person and are worth it. Someone else will always see you as more attractive than you see yourself, so wrap those fingers up in band-aids and slap some more on the rest of your body to help control that compulsion. Your scars define who you are, so wear them. Don’t give up. You can overcome this hurdle.
