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Habit reversal training for body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) includes improving awareness and self-monitoring, controlling stimuli, and creating competing responses. Stimulus control and competing responses sound very similar.

Using Competing Responses to Manage Skin Picking Competing responses are movements or activities that are incompatible with habitual behaviors like skin picking. In simple terms, if your hands are not available to use for picking at your skin, you won’t pick at your skin.

If you were to ask people who suffer from excoriation disorder whether hormonal changes influence the severity of their picking, they would likely say yes. Research supports this anecdotal evidence in several ways.   First, the onset of excoriation disorder tends to occur during puberty.

Has anything like this happened to you? You suddenly become aware that time has passed and you have no idea how it happened? You’re in a class or a long meeting which does not require much participation and you come to awareness when someone pokes you to let you know it’s over? You’re binge-watching Netflix and realize you’ve eaten an entire bag of popcorn when you only wanted to eat half? The scientific explanations for this phenomenon abound, however, for those who suffer from skin picking in an automated way, passive or sedentary activities can be triggers.