Some stages that old-timers remember going through

• the first flush of excitement after finding the board and knowing you aren't alone or crazy
• that first excitement sometimes causes us to be pull-free for several days; in at least one instance a board reader stopped pulling her first day and never started again (as far as we know--we haven't heard from her for awhile but that could just mean she was ready to move on)
• your first success, the one you think will go on forever
• tension as you start to wonder if it really can last forever
• your first slip up, either the one you started fearing would happen or the one which snuck up on you and made you start to fear another one would happen
• learning to be persistently pull-free (getting up more and more quickly after you slip), which has quite a lot of pride associated with it at first
• then staying involved in the effort after the novelty wears off
• it starts to get tiring when you realize that even with all your successes you still have some tendency to pull out your hair
• a certain peace comes with figuring out that you can minimize your slip-ups and go long periods without urges, but it isn't all "fun"
• the excitement of seeing hair growing in
• learning what to do with your hair as you face things like beauty salon appointments which you may have avoided for years and years; some opt for a short cut so that the hair will seem even quicker but some just let their beautician do the best they can with the "layers"
• learning to accept your new look, because if you haven't had scalp hair or lashes or brows in a long time then you aren't accustomed to that look on you
• learning to accept your new look even if it doesn't live up to all you dreamed about it--we often have unrealistic beliefs about what we should look like, based upon the last "good" picture we took (like that one from grade school before you started pulling, right?)--one good thing to do is take new pictures to get used to what others are seeing, and start having fun "babying" yourself. Spending a little extra money now is not a bad thing--think of it as therapy
• at one or more points above, convincing yourself that you really want to go pull-free, because lots of things change in your life when you are pull-free, for instance you have to figure out what to do with the time you used to spend pulling, but not over-agendize yourself to the point that you start pulling again
• for some, there is the stage of moving on; many people consider hair-pulling something they "used to do" though some of us hang around to remind you that, like life itself, "trich is a marathon, not a sprint."

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