compulsive skin-picking

today, for the first time in my life, i realise that the old oft-quoted, and oft joked-about, line ‘the first step is admitting you have a problem’ is relevant to me. because i am addicted to skin-picking. you can relate it to anxiety, you can relate it to OCD, you can relate it to impulse control disorders - and all of these things are accurate - but at the end of the day i am addicted to the process. to the cycle. and, to my embarrassment, i knew a long time ago that i ‘had a problem’ but, instead of...

(and things you should know if you’re not)  i've spoken about compulsive picking before, but never in much detail. it definitely resides within that privileged 'acceptable' sphere of mental health disorders alongside depression & anxiety (let's not pretend that schizo spectrum disorders aren't still stigmatised on a whole other level) but, nevertheless, any disorder that contains an element of self-mutilation is always going to earn you the side-eye from some people. so here are some facts that you definitely already know if you do it (but it's nice to hear you're not alone) and that you should know if you're...

i’ve rewritten this first sentence about 12 times because i can’t really decide what the tone of this piece should be. today feels like a good day and so the ‘condition’ that plagues me doesn’t seem to be ruining my life quite as much as it does on the bad days. i quote ‘condition’ because, until recently, i’ve never thought of it as such. i’ve always just been a ‘picker’ - when i was 11 and i split my head open after an unfortunate PE incident, i vividly remember, with piercing agonising clarity, lying in the darkness the night i...