I have been thinking a fair bit lately about going to see a doctor about my skin issue. There is gonna be a fair bit of rambling thoughts ahead if you want to just skip over this post.
The picking of my skin has gotten worse lately, due to the stress from my job and the process of getting a new one (oh, i got that job, btw), and has been causing some tension between ben and me. He tells me I need to go see a doctor about it, I say I know I do, I get stressed and pick more and he sees and gets angry. Rinse and repeat. So I have been trying to work out what it is that is stopping me from getting help. I think it kinda simplified down to a few things:
1. what if I get told there's nothing really to be done and I just have to 'try harder to stop'?
2. what if they put me on some medication that messes with my head and I'm not the same?
3. I normally pick at my skin when I am trying to focus on something, normally writing, and worry that if I stop picking I don't know what else I can do to help me focus.
4. Admitting I have a problem that I can't fix by myself makes me feel really pathetic. I felt like this when I went and talked to someone about my depression in Canberra.
Now all of these reasons are not rational at all, and I recognise that, and they are not really very good reasons anyway. I still have this mental issue with doctors in general, so it is really scary in that respect. I am able to rebut every argument I have against going and talking to someone, and I have no problem talking about it to you guys, or ben, or myself, but my brain is still stubbornly going "nuh uh, you can't make me". I have always said that if someone wants help they need to make that first step, and shouldn't be forced into seeing someone, because they might get bitter about the whole situation and not try as hard to help themselves as they would otherwise.
The thing is, though, I realised that if ben keeps getting angry at my skin picking then I know I will just get sneakier about it, so as to 'not worry him'. This is a bullshit excuse to continue doing what is bad for me and avoid the inevitable confrontation, and I knew it was bullshit as soon as I thought that excuse, butI know from experience that that is what would happen (because I have done so in the past, with my family). Last night I realised that this is what my dad does with his alcoholism; he knows we get mad at him drinking when he shouldn't, so he drinks when we aren't around, and hides the bottles, so the confrontation doesn't occur. But then it does when we find out and it makes everything worse. I have a big ol' bundle of issues based around my dad and worries about ending up like he has, so this has kinda blown my mind. I keep thinking about the things I say, where I change "I can't stop doing this" to "I don't want to stop this". "I have tried and it just doesn't work" to "I have tried, but not really". I am able to admit (at least to myself) that I do get some sort of enjoyment out of this process, which is a pretty strange thing, and that is probably a large reason why I haven't tried harder to stop. I guess it must be the same way for my dad, but to a larger degree, because he is willing to choose alcohol over his health and family. I imagine my family looking at me the way they look at dad, and it breaks my heart. I don't really want to say that I am addicted to this like my dad is addicted to alcohol, but the parallels between the two situations are a bit scary.
But then I realised writing out all this that I am not as bad as him. I don't want to ruin this relationship over something as stupid as picking at my skin. At the moment there are times when I am almost proud of doing this to myself; I look at it in that I choose to do this, it is my decision, it is my body and I can do whatever I want to it, and somehow that makes it ok in my head? That being said there are also times when I look at my arms and at the damage that I know I inflicted, and I feel like the most pathetic person in the world. I don't really understand how my brain rationalises this. All I know is that I have enough issues with myself as it is, and if I can stop all this and feel better about myself then I would be an idiot to not take that chance.
tl;dr, I think I have taken the first step of the first step in getting help with my dermotillomania problem. now I just gotta get ben to get me to go see a doctor for a referral to someone. Eep.
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