My CBT Experience with Lisa

I thought I'd write about my experience of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy so that you can compare your experience with mine or so that you can get an idea of it if you are considering it.

I started by going to the doctors to tell them I had Trichotillamania. The doctor was not amazingly understanding, she seemed a little bit freaked out, (though that could have been my paranoia) and she referred me to Lisa, their CBT therapist, to start the next week.

Lisa was really nice, and walked me through a path of tasks over the weeks, which included keeping a diary of all the times that I pulled my hair out, including when, where, how much and how I felt before and after. Then we gradually analysed the patterns in when I pull and pin-pointed certain situations where I was more likely to pull, and discussed how I could try to avoid or minimize these situations. Although avoiding my boring job was pretty tricky!

It was really beneficial to talk to Lisa and started to normalise the process or discussing my hair-pulling. She never judged me, she just wanted me to get to wherever I wanted to be, which, at that time was, to be not pulling my hair out anymore.

The down side though was that, through spending so much time focussing on not pulling my hair out, I ironically ended up doing it more! I think that this was a worthwhile sacrifice though, afterall, to make omlettes you do have to break a few eggs!

Lisa also encouraged me to try various tactics to stop the pulling, like sitting on my hands or moving into another room. I'm sure I even tried wearing gloves so I couldn't grab it! Anyway, to cut a long story short, despite looking seriously cool sitting on my gloved hands, none of the methods worked for me, they just took up so much mind-space and left me frustrated at trying and failing.

A few months later my sessions with Lisa came to an end and I was referred for further CBT but the waiting list was almost a year, so I didn't bother. That was 5 years ago now, and I still pull out my hair just as much, but don't get half as frustrated because I don't fight with myself to stop it. The only time in the last 10 years that my eyelashes had a chance to grow back was in my first year at uni when I was constantly busy working or seeing friends, though also always ill as I never had time to recover.

I'm sure one day when I find a job I enjoy and have a full social life and hobbies I will gradually stop pulling my hair and I think that this is a better goal to have than the frustrating battle I had with myself through CBT. I think that for me, I just find it hard to do nothing, and somehow that got me into the habit of pulling out my hair, I always used to fidget as a child and had fads of toys I just wouldn't put down. When you grow up though all the fun toys are gone so I had to find something else to occupy my hands when I'm bored.
I vote, bring back more toys for grown-ups!

Anyway, I'm not against CBT, I'm sure it works for some people and would love to hear how your experience of CBT was or what your thoughts are!