I am realizing that as this blog shifts from something I used as an undergraduate to something I am using as a graduate student and soon to be clinician that the context people may view my blog in may change. I would like to emphasize that at this point I am a student and not licensed to practice psychotherapy.
This blog exists to help me organize my thoughts about different experiences I have had. It also helps to allow me to share things which I generally feel unable to share in my day to day life. If other people derive some benefit from it that is great, but I want to emphasize that this blog is still primarily intended for my own personal support and I would not categorize it as a blog which intends to be educational.
Along that line, nothing on this blog should be construed as medical advice. With the exception of a couple list type posts (my therapist list for example) I don’t generally go back and re-edit posts later (except to fix typos). If I do make an update, it will be clear what have been changed since the original posting. In that light, posts should be viewed as my opinions at a particular point in time. It should be taken into consideration that my posting frequency is highest on this blog at times when I am struggling so my posts reflect my thinking during difficult times in my life which may not match how I feel at other times.
I have a very liberal comment policy. I remove spam and other blatant advertisements. I remove comments that are far off-topic. For the most part I will approve any on-topic comments, even if I disagree with them. Although I have comment moderation on, comment approval should not be considered an endorsement by me. That said, this is still my blog so I reserve the right to arbitrarily approve or remove comments in whatever way I like.
Tales of a Crazy Psychology Major 
I have to say I have never related to someone so much on hair pulling. I started in the fall of the 5th grade. I can remember the first hair, my mom and brother were in the front seat argueing and I was staring out the window. I started playing with my eyebrows, then my eyelashes. By the time holiday break came around I was hairless on my face. Instantly I went from being ignored at school to being laughed at and harassed constantly. Which just made it worse. My friends said nothing. My parents were hurt, horrified, ashamed and angry. My mother is a well known psycologist in the area with her ph-d. She sat me down and asked me to stop, begged me. She was embaressed of me. She would leave self-help books in my room. Pages open on the computer. But never really helped me. She was angry. I felt worse and worse. She yelled at me ‘why can’t you pull where no one can see it?!’. One time she ripped my leg hair out and ask me if I liked it.
Now an adult, I still struggle. But being older I’m better at hiding it. I am dissapointed with my mother. She shamed me like everyone else in my life. No one helped me draw my eyebrows back on. I taught myself. I grew to hate myself so much and be full of anxiety all the time. I started cutting. Not to kill myself, or to show off. I hid it very well. It would calm the anger and aniexty I felt. It was something I could control.
I didn’t mean to leave my life story but.. I have to this day never met anyone like me. I didn’t know there were others, only internet stories of people like me. It was taboo. No one who liked me said anything. I told people who called me ‘sphinx’ or ‘gross’ that I had a bad wax job that never grew back.
Boyfriends never asked. Never said anything about those long hours I locked myself in the bathroom. But it was good. But their sisters did. They posted on social media asking if he woke up with my eyebrows rubbed off on his face. Her male friends tagged me asking me to draw in their penis hair. If I leave imprints when I go down on men. I wanted to die all over again. I was happy this trend of filling in your eyebrows came in. It hid me in the sea of make-up guru girls. No longer would I have to explain myself.
But anyways, I have never spoken this or wrote this out before. Its taboo I guess. Thank you for sharing, sometimes it reminds me I’m not alone. Did you become a psycologist because of Trich? I became a photographer, because I hated photos of myself. I didn’t want my hairless face to show up on the internet. I learned photoshop in middle school to fix my eyebrows and make them symetrically. Now a successful wedding photographer with a more tamed pulling areas and expensive make-up I look back and wonder if things would have been different if I joined a group or had therapy. But I suspect I will never stop. I try, but its too hard.
Thank you again for yoyr words of support. I wish you the best!
-Tiffany
Is there a way to contact you? I’m new to your blog but I’ve always wanted to make one of these to just ramble and blurt out crap that I can’t share with loved ones or write in a Facebook post. I have just never gotten around to it. I was brought to your page by googling “best tool for cutting wrist”. I haven’t read much of your stuff yet, but I feel like you’re the only person I’ve come across who feels that urge to cut in the rough moments in life but not exactly to the point of suicide. Just like your own personal outlet. I understand if you don’t really get back to people if their reach out to you is lacking in anything interesting, just thought it would be nice to talk to someone who has a special place in themselves for self-harm.