Skin Picking

I’m on disability and have been for 10 years. I live in a community area that is specifically targeted for seniors and those on disability who are low income. My neighbor of 3 years is bipolar and narcissistic. She has told me this herself. I have major depressive disorder, CPTSD, Anxiety, Hypersensitivity, Skin Picking Disorder, Insomnia, Agoraphobia, Self Hate, and OCD. I have 2 family members with her same diagnosis. Two of my counselors and my psychiatrist finally got me to cut the two family members out of my life for my mental health safety. It was the best thing I did for myself as they wouldn’t respect my boundaries once I started to put them in place. Unfortunately I’m not able to do that with my neighbor. I can’t even have a private conversation in my own home without her ease dropping on it. I caught her getting close to my windows as I saw her feet. I said “OMG she’s at my window as I can see her feet. I can’t even have a private conversation in my own home!” I was having a telahealth meeting with my previous counselor. He tried to get me to talk to our property manager about it back at that time. I finally did speak with our new property manager about it last week from the urging of my new counselor. I looked into moving into another unit in my complex but I can’t afford to do it. My counselor suggested putting a radio in front of the window in the room I’m choosing to have a conversation. But how do I start to set boundaries with my neighbor. I rarely saw the two family members in person. They mostly did their damage through phone calls, texts, Facebook posts and messenger. So it was easier to take care of dealing with them. But this neighbor I have to see on a regular basis. Before things got tense between us I was the one who did all of the driving to any place we went. She never said thank you, offered a bit of gas money or said I’ll buy your lunch since you drove. I drove her to her colonoscopy appointment last year when gas was over $5 per gallon. I figured it up and it cost me $62 dollars round trip to do that. She didn’t pay me for any of it, breakfast or say thank you. Someone please help me figure out what I can do to protect myself from the manipulation, guilt trips and gaslighting that I receive from her. #bipo #NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder #majordeprissivedisorder #CPTSD #Gaslighting #Agoraphobia #SkinPickingDisorder #OCD

Hi, my name is 16joan. I'm here because I suffer from skin picking on my fingers and toes.

#MightyTogether

*I am 18, I just haven't graduated high school yet*

I've been struggling with skin-picking as long as I can remember, and have actually had two minor surgeries to correct severe ingrown and infected toenails. Both surgeries were completely traumatizing, and at the end of the second one the doctor told me that continuing this way would not be good for me in the long run, and I responded by saying I had struggled with dermatillomania for years and I was aware of the issue. He dismissed me, and my father later said he probably thought I was just another teenager reading too much on the internet. My dad also said right after the surgery, "this traumatized me more than it did you" (He was present for the procedure, I was only 14). I was furious. How could someone so dear to me say something like that about something he witnesses daily. It consumes my every moment, and he wanted to say that he had it worse because he witnessed some of it?

Sadly, the views of my parents haven't changed since then, but that's not why I'm writing this.

I currently attend a performing arts high school, and my skin picking is hurting me when I play my instrument (cello). The damage to my cuticles and around my nail beds gets so serious that my hands start to bleed after rehearsal, and at home I don't bother practicing because of the mental anguish it gives me that I can't do what I love. I need help, and don't know how to change anything when I already have so many other problems (possible narcolepsy, autism, adhd, depression, anxiety, etc).

I read so many success stories about people who manage to live their lives in spite of the issues that pull them down, but I'm not sure how to bounce back from all this.

#Dermatillomania #Selfharm

Does anyone else have a compulsion of rubbing a baby blanket still. I also want to stop skin picking so bad but my attempts suck

I have been diagnosed ADHD since early childhood. I didn’t start picking at my skin until I was around 14 though, which was when I started to develop bipolar 2 and borderline.
I really struggle with intense skin picking, to the point where I stand in the mirror for 30 minutes and try to pop every single pore I can find. I get hyper fixated and almost dissociated. I cause myself acne and scarring, but I can’t seem to stop when I’m doing it. It usually gets worse when I’m stressed or bored. I do it mostly on my face, but arms, legs, and chest. I’m wondering if this is from ADHD and if other people experience it? Or is it a form of OCD or from my personality/mood disorders? #skinpicking #ADHD #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder

I've never been diagnosed with any skinpicking disorder formally but I used to pinch myself, hit myself etc when I was young because I was the one who should be hurt.
Fast forward at least 25 years and sometimes when I come back in from a bath, I'm happy with my skin, how the soap made it feel and smell... Until I find anything that stands out. I know I shouldn't pick because I'll be mad at myself about what if someone sees blood on my clothes?
It's like every time I'm fine with how I look, the next minute, I'm pinching, trying to pop something. Then my mental rumination goes on,
you're ugly
you don't know how to care for yourself
you're evil
you're a coward for not committing suicide
you're shit.
Everyone's using nonverbal gestures to talk about how awful you look
they say one thing, maybe a compliment but they're meaning the extreme opposite

I dissociate, but don't notice it until some time passes and my partner on the inside is calling my name, the name I use because I hate my given name,
he's trying to get my attention because I'm bleeding. Bleeding? What? Who? me probably.
Shit. I know I'm evil. Have to get the evil out, right? Only way to do that is to make it flat.
inside partner manages to come out, wash the hands, put something like menthol on the cuts.
I come back.
Mental rage begins.
My parents always made fun of me for having pimples, and even more so when their cleanser etc acne stuff didn't do a damned thing. They made fun of my teth.
And I can't get those words out of my head.
I need something that feels the same, making the same motions but not on me. We once got some oranges. for some reason peeling them felt like picking but wasn't. The same goes for peeling boiled eggs. But neither of those is portable or easily renewable. So how do I not do this? I don't know if it's anxiety, wishing to flattening the bumps to hide them or if it's me punishing myself but doing it in such a way that even if everything is taken away from me that I can still hurt myself. Rationally I don't want to, but emotionally I just hate myself more than anything or anyone on this planet. I don't want to exist. But I know the others in our bands do want me to, and do care. I'm the one who wants to fight by fighting myself, to run by not being myself, having someone else just take over all the time. That last one I'm getting better at balance between letting others who are safe enough and want to come out do so, but also being myself. I just don't know what this is, and because we have a lot of others inside who struggle, it's hard to find enough time to ask about this. Most of the people I know inside have something like this that they do. For some, the evil isn't as strong, but for me and one other especially lately, it's hard, sometimes impossible not to do this. It's like I'm not allowed to feel like I'm anything other than evil. Not evil like ruin the world evil, evil like I should be a worm crushed beneath someone's shoe. Evil like repulsive and a shame to the world. I know fixing my view of myself will take time, but I really need some things, with descriptions not pictures, that others use to make the same kind of feeling in a safer way. Please. I would really appreciate it. I'm picking before I know I'm picking. #CPTSD #Dissociation #ChronicDepression
#Dermatillomania

oy oy oy. I'm isolated, lonely, and one of my other people has been triggered to hell and back. Sorry to rant but I have one friend who moved away last year. I'm living in an apartment complex that doesn't feel safe, the faintenance guys and such just come in whether or not you're there, with no call in advance. I'm on lists for government subsidized places but no dice yet. I think if it wasn't for my inside people I'd be even worse than I am. Lately there's been a lot of confusion for me about what makes me my own individual aside from them, for example a lot of us love stones. I love stones too, collecting them. I used to be easily able to define myself, I love Russian as my favorite language. Over the summer we had several months of stress and someone new came out. He got me into music in turkish and I feel I can't be a person who likes that because I have loved russian for so long and I still do, but I'm confused. Part of me thinks I should be static, that things about me as a person should stay the same. I feel like I'm recreating myself over and over with each version having some things in common will its predecessor but some things are different. Also, have noticed that my skin picking is getting worse. I think it is less about anxiety these days than it is about a way to hurt us without seeming to. A lot of mh providers I have talked to say it's always about anxiety and it wasn't until years after I first found out about it that I was reading a blog by another person who lived with abusive parents and she said picking was about anxiety but more about SH for her. Oh, and did I mention therapy session are always too short to talk about all this? Sometimes I send my therapist my journal entries like this one but never know if she finds the time to read them or not. Sorry this is all over the place because my worry wheel is on overload.