New Beginning
Wednesday morning, on 9/21, I cut off all of my hair extensions. I decided to go back to being bald for awhile. I kind of missed having a shaved head, since I’m one of the few girls it seems to look good on. I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on it already!
I had mixed feelings during the process. Halfway through, I struggled, looking at myself in the mirror and thinking back to all of the times in the past when I’ve shaved my head because I HAD to. I didn’t “have” to this time, although after cutting the extensions off I never would have been happy with the short hair underneath. So in a way, all of the old feelings of failure came back while I was doing this.
But I’ve decided that since there seem to be no more interruptions in my treatment in sight, I’m going to give it all I’ve got, with a big push and instead of having the temptation right in front of me and struggling the whole way, I would simply remove the temptation and make things easier for myself. Now, my plan is to keep the hairstyle for a few months until the bald patches fill in, go forth with my CBT training plan, and hopefully begin to grow the hair by Jan or Feb.
I have also decided to try giving medication another shot, because recently, in the last several months I have developed another repulsive behavior… Dermotillomania .. it started with scratching my scalp because there was dandruff… I would look for this under my fingernails afterwards and eat it afterwards. Then I began causing sores because of the intensity in which I was scratching, and that soon led to searching for scabs, pulling them off, and eating them. Never in my life have I had this problem, and I am 29 years old right now. The fact that at this age, I have developed this kind of problem, signifies to me that my obsessive grooming issues are only getting worse, and that medication is not only a good idea, but could be necessary at this point. I am causing more self-harm than ever before, and I haven’t been able to get on top of it even with psychotherapy. I’ve also had to remove my acrylic nails for work over the last few months, and my nail-biting has become quite extreme again. So, I am going to try and work on all of these issues at once, with the help of my wonderful therapist.
And so I am meeting with my doctor on Tuesday to discuss a treatment plan and decide what medication to try next…. now that I’m no longer in a close relationship, the sexual side effects of the antidepressants won’t bother me … in fact, having a lower sex drive might actually be a GOOD thing for me right now, since I’m not in a relationship.
That is all for now… I hope to begin writing in here regularly again to keep track of my progress.