STOP PICKING - START LIVINGSTOP PICKING - START LIVING
Throughout my experience as a therapist working in community health clinics as well as private practice, I worked with many clients who had a trail of therapists in their history and a jaded view about therapy’s effectiveness. Before giving you advice on finding a good therapist, understand that I am not criticizing therapy or those who provide it. Counseling is a noble profession and many people work in it out of a desire to help people. However, with that desire to help people comes the limitation that sometimes we think we can help anyone who comes through the door. Unfortunately, people who tend to seek mental health treatment tend to take the therapist to whom they are assigned when they call a clinic. They do not realize they have options and that they can ask for someone else. In this article, I’ll provide some tips about finding a good therapist as well as how to tell if a therapist is right for you.
To those outside the mental health profession, credentials do not mean much. However, when looking for a therapist, you should know that the educational and training backgrounds of the people who have letters after their name are important to the way they provide therapy.
Psychiatrist
The best advice comes from those who have been there and this month we have the pleasure of sharing the words of a client who went through the Skinpick.com program, which makes them an expert. As this client says, people are diverse, and everyone experiences skin picking disorder in a different way which means the treatment program needs to fit the client’s needs. No matter where you are in your recovery journey, Skinpick.com can help.
In the continuing quest for effective treatments for OCD and BFRB’s, a recent systematic review looked at ten studies that used biofeedback for a treatment intervention to determine if it is a viable treatment option.
Biofeedback is a process of learning how to control physiology to help people manage biosignal triggers of disorders. Biosignals include heart rate, body temperature, respiratory patterns, skin conductance, and muscle activity. Essentially, a person learns to self-regulate these processes first by recognizing physiological sensations and changes followed by learning techniques to manage them.
Anyone with excoriation disorder likely has gone to a dermatologist at some point. There are physical as well as psychological reasons for the development of skin picking disorder, yet for a long time, dermatology focused on the skin condition. With advances in science and technology, the field of psychodermatology is gaining more recognition.
We know how impairing BFRBs can be but know little about risk factors that lead to them. Some research points to genetics, others to neurological malfunctions, while still others to psychological causes with little to no research about the family environment and its role in the development of BFRBs like skin picking disorder.
There is already evidence showing that children of anxious or depressed parents tend to experience anxiety and depression because of genetic and environmental factors. Often, people with skin-picking disorder also have anxiety or depression but the evidence is less clear when trying to figure out of the anxiety causes the skin-picking or vice versa. While genetics play a large role in the mental health disorders people develop, the environment is also a strong factor in that it not only has an epigenetic effect but also a cognitive and behavioral effect. Epigenetics is the influence of the environment on gene activation and explains why twins raised apart have different diseases and mental health disorders despite having the same genes.
Quality of life is an important concept in mental and physical health research. It is a subjective assessment of whether a person is satisfied with their life and how they rate their overall well-being. This measure helps researchers and mental health providers understand how people with mental health disorder view their personal experience. For example, someone could have a diagnosis with skin picking disorder, but rate their quality of life very high because they either learned to live with it or can manage it to their satisfaction. Quality of life measures also helps show progress throughout treatment. Someone who comes to therapy for help with a mental health issue may take a quality of life assessment and after several weeks or months of treatment take another one and compare the two results. Not only does it demonstrate progress over time, but it also indicates how a person feels about their life overall.
In a recent study, researchers at the University of Chicago wanted to learn the clinical, personality and cognitive measures associated with quality of life for young adults, focusing on impulsivity and compulsivity. The University of Chicago does a lot of research on body-focused repetitive behaviors, substance abuse, and problem gambling, all of which are considered compulsive or impulsive disorders.
One of the diagnostic criteria for excoriation disorder is picking at one’s skin until wounds form. When wounds heal, they form scars which often do not go away. However, new technology can help reduce or eliminate scars. This article will talk about scars, how you can prevent them, and how to treat them.
Scars can be ugly and draw attention where attention is not desired. However, part of preventing scars from occurring as well as treating scars is understanding their biological purpose. According to the American Academy of Dermatology Association, scars form when your body repairs damage to the skin. And like sealing something with duct tape, the body makes the repair thicker than the original skin, especially if the wound goes through the top layer of skin. Some scars are colored a bit differently than the surrounding skin; some are flat, indented or raised. New scars usually form with a red or pink color, but as it ages, it may turn a lighter or darker color than your skin. When your body makes a lot of extra wound-covering tissue, the scar becomes bigger than the original wound while sunken scars are those caused by inflammatory wounds such as acne or chickenpox. When inflammation causes blemishes, it also destroys the skin’s collagen.
The human brain loves shortcuts. First impressions, stereotyping, schemas, and habits are all ways the brain demonstrates laziness. Another way to consider habits is that they free up brain resources that can be used for other things. In many cases, these shortcuts are helpful such as detecting dangerous places or people, helping us understand the world around us, and staying healthy. However, in some cases, habits get out of control and become stronger than our ability to stop them. The negative aspects of strong habits can be seen in people who try to quit smoking or stop eating sugar, and to some extent, body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs). While BFRBs are more compulsory than habitual, researchers are trying to distinguish when a habit becomes a compulsion. If they can find that mechanism, then perhaps they can interrupt it or fix it thereby reversing the compulsion.
photo courtesy of The TLC Foundation http://www.bfrb.org/ecap
The TLC Foundation is now accepting applications for its Early Career Award Program (ECAP). ECAP is a mentorship and career development opportunity that supports rising stars in the field of body-focused repetitive behaviors, including trichotillomania (hair pulling) disorder, excoriation (skin picking)disorder, and related conditions. |
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