The holidays were supposed to be a time of good cheer, good friends and for many, a time to reaffirm our faith in a higher-power and to give thanks for all we have. It is also a time of high stress, expectation, disappointment, sweets, erratic sleep schedules, final exams, deadlines, hectic travel and post-holiday blues. This often leads to an increased incidence in pulling for those with trichotillomania.
I had about a dozen phone consultations with children and teens with trichotillomania and their parents in the first week of January. Most of them were new clients that had seen our blog and thought about calling us for many months (and in one case years), but it was the dramatic increase in pulling that they experienced or observed over the holidays that finally prompted them to contact us.
If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you know that stress can have a huge impact on the urge to pull. It makes sense, therefore, that the craziness surrounding the holidays can lead to increased hair pulling and/or an increase in the urges to pull out hair. Just knowing that there is a reason can often help ease some of the guilt and sense of loss of control that many people feel in regards to their urges to pull. But knowledge isn’t enough to stop pulling; we’ve got to get to the underlying cause of the urge to pull, which is often an imbalance in brain chemicals called neurotransmitters.
The holidays and New Year can be a magical time; yes there is often increased stress, but that stress doesn’t have to send us into a tailspin. Learning techniques to help reduce the impact that stress has on you can certainly help; if you also suffer from trich – or the constant, unrelenting urge to pull – rebalancing your neurotransmitters can help you eliminate those urges so you are free to enjoy “the most wonderful time of the year”.
