You may not believe it, but I do not have fully natural eyebrows, and I simply can't let them grow back. I always pluck them out with my bare hands. I haven't had my own fully natural eyebrows for years.
There is a name for this. It's called trichotillomania. It's a pretty long word for excessive, compulsive hair pulling. It can be called "trich" for short, and it is a mental disorder that is a part of the Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors or BFRB family of disorders.
Alongside the hair pulling disorder, there is also the skin picking disorder (excoriation disorder, formerly known as dermatillomania), nail biting disorder (onychophagia), and lip and cheek biting disorder (lip bite and cheek keratosis). What's important to note about these is that many people practice these behaviors at some point in their lives. Everyone can relate to plucking out a troublesome hair, biting off a hang nail, chewing on their lips or biting the inside of their cheek. If everyone does these things, does that mean that everyone has all of these disorders? No. Of course not.
Just like with any disorder, the quantity and severity of the behaviors or symptoms are what differentiates normal experience from disordered experience. Most people chew on their nails every now and then- usually to trim or groom them in a pinch, whereas someone with onychophagia will excessively and often times compulsively bite their nails to the point of drawing blood, inflicting injury, or causing infection. Everyone will pluck out a stray hair every now and then, and some people purposefully pluck and trim their eyebrows for neatness, whereas an individual with trichotillomania continues to pluck and pull until their scalp or skin is raw and bleeding- until their fingers are sore from all the bare-handed plucking.
There is still some discussion surrounding what category these disorders truly belong to. Some mental health professionals categorize them as impulse control disorders, and others classify them as being related to obsessive-compulsive disorders. This creates a bit of a problem considering the fact that impulses and compulsions are two different things. Which category is more accurate will likely depend on who you ask. For myself, my hair pulling is far more of a compulsive thing than it is an impulsive thing. For now, these disorders have carved out their own category: Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. It's not the most smooth title, and it doesn't roll off the tongue too easily, but it does describe what these disorders are at their very core: repeated behaviors focused around the body.
It's embarrassing to admit that I pull out my hair in this way. I use an eyebrow pencil every day in order to feel comfortable going out in public. Eyebrows are an extremely important facial feature, and they're the chief way that we recognize one another and read facial nonverbal cues. Without them, people look strange and alien, and their nonverbals become distorted and harder to recognize. My family and a few close friends have become accustomed to seeing me this way, but there are also plenty of people who have never seen me without my brows carefully penciled back on and would likely be jarred to see me without them.
Within my immediate family, there are three of us that are hair pullers. My dad, my older sister, and myself all pull and pluck our hair. My dad tends to focus on his eyelashes and facial hair, and my sister at one point pulled a bald spot on the very top of her head. I attack my eyebrows the most, and when I can't pull there, I go for the hairline nearest my temples and ears along with other areas of body hair. Considering that two of my family members have the same problem, there seems to be an aspect of heredity to these BFRB's.
However, other factors can contribute to and exacerbate symptoms of BFRB's such as general stress levels, social environment, depression, and the presence of other comorbid disorders. For some, the BFRB is something that is done consciously; they do it on purpose with a goal in mind and will not stop until they either feel satisfied or succumb to shame. For others, it is something that occurs without their awareness, and before they know it, they've created a pile of hair all around them or made themselves bleed. I fall somewhere in the middle. If I feel a hair that is out of place, too long, or sticking up, I pluck it, but once I start, it becomes very hard for me to choose to stop, and I lose awareness of how much I'm actually pulling. Next thing I know, my eyebrow has been plucked bare, and I even feel frustrated and anxious that I cannot pull anymore. The shame comes afterward once my fingers are too sore to continue or I've made myself bleed.
I don't just pull my hair, though. I also pick my skin and bite my lips, and although it is to a less severe degree than the hair pulling, these also cause me to feel embarrassed and ashamed. It is not uncommon to have multiple comorbid BFRB's at the same time. So not only do I fear accidentally rubbing my eyebrow make up off my face and resist the urge to pull them and ruin the makeup, I also often have open wounds on my skin that I just can't leave alone. I end up having scabs and wounds that take weeks upon weeks to heal, and I often catch myself bleeding in public and frantically try to find a tissue to dab it up and hope that people won't notice or ask me if I'm okay.
These disorders are messy and embarrassing and much more common than you might think. Trichotillomania alone has over 200,000 cases per year in the United States. If you or a loved one is struggling with a Body-Focused Repetitive Behavior, you can learn more at BFRB.org.
As a final note, this is an open statement to all of us who are struggling with these disorders: Don't give up. You're still beautiful. I understand the shame, the embarrassment, the pain that you inflict on yourself and how out of control it feels. I understand. I feel it, too. You're not alone, and there are resources out there to help you. Keep your head held high, and do whatever you need to do in order to feel comfortable and confident- even if that means covering up the damage or letting it all out on display for all to see. We are all beautiful. You are beautiful.
