Why does the bulletin board have this effect on me?

From a post on the bulletin board:

(I added the above after I wrote all of the below. I feel it makes some of the below redundant. I'll fix that later. :-)

I've completely stopped pulling. (If this is you, don't read this part now! Wait until you slip, if that ever happens! We hope you never slip!!!)

Some people come to the board and immediately stop pulling. The effect can be so profound that for several days or two weeks or a month they really believe they will never pull again. And there are some who as far as I know have never again pulled significantly.

Some report being free from urges. Just as remarkably, some report feeling an intense urge that any other time they would have given into but then some sort of ultra-consciousness takes place when they think about something related to the bulletin board.

Among people who are able to immediately go several days pull free, many have crisis periods or plateaus at sort of standard times---after about a week, and again at about two weeks, and again at a month. One common thought at two weeks is fear and disbelief. Repeatedly we hear statements to the effect of, "I can't believe I've made it this far--I'm starting to get very anxious about how much longer I can make it." One prevailing attitude is that if you can make it to a month, things get much easier. "Easier" is a relative word, though. When it is hard it is still hard, but when you've consciously set a record something happens to you. Freedom and hope are pretty good words to describe it.

On the other hand, many go for months wondering if they will ever have a breakthrough and be able to report even one "pull-free" day. From what I can tell, though, most make it. Part of the reason is that they have folks helping them recognize less obvious forms of success. Changes in attitude, such as from utter despair to love of self, are successes. Reducing pulling or picking from every minute to just several times a day is success. Learning not to look at oneself in the mirror and thus succeeding at not pulling or picking on one's face is success even though the hairs that one identifies by touch might still come out.

To be honest, I think there are a few who have gone long periods of time without relief from pulling but who still come to the board and give moral support to others.

And there are those who have totally accepted themselves as pullers and have no desire whatsoever to stop. During my first week on the board I had no intention of stopping pulling. My mission in life was to pass my doctoral exams and tell other trichsters to "love yourself no matter what." And then I just decided to go ahead and try because everyone else was and I wanted to fit in. :-) I gave up several times but one friend in particular kept being so sweetly supportive that I had to keep trying again. She kept saying things like, "I understand that you have a lot going on in your life and you'll try to stop when you are ready and I'll be proud of you no matter what." How do you fight against such pressure? ;-) And now, 12 months after finding the bulletin board, I can go three months with almost no pulling with hardly any effort. This has happened twice. I believe that after any crisis I can quickly get control of myself and again be almost entirely free of urges for at least two months again. And I believe I can stretch this time out so that one day I might be 99% pull-free. I still save that "love yourself" attitude in my back pocket so I can take it out when I slip, because I know that I can't predict everything, as when those two kids ran out in front of my car (and I didn't hit them but I found my hands in my hair once I made sure everyone was okay) or when I had to drive through a snowstorm in a borrowed vehicle to my first professionial conference (and I got a dime-sized bald for my troubles).

I've been pulling more than ever.

I haven't heard of this often, but it does happen sometimes. I heard a good explanation once of why this might happen. I'll try to find it in the archives. The basic idea I remember though is that before you found the board you were repressing a lot of feelings. Once you found the board they came bubbling up to the surface. Your increase in pulling does not necessarily imply that you are now giving yourself permission to pull. It might be the result of all of those feelings you are now dealing with. Once you work through them (and we have faith that you will) the prevailing opinion is that you will be able to start focusing on stopping the act of pulling, but now with a better chance of physical control and a much, much better chance of appreciating your own worth even if you don't stop pulling.

I'm an "old-timer" now and I feel like a bit of a faker because new posters are giving me huge amounts of praise when I haven't really done anything that special ...

Okay, okay, I don't know how common this is, but I know at least three of us who have felt it and it gives me a lead-in to the topic of

How support groups work:

I have received an essay on this through email which I will try to find so that I can include it here, but the basic idea is like tutoring math (that's what I know best, folks! :-).

A freshman or sophomore in college might take calculus and get an A or even a B and decide to apply for the job as calculus tutor. The fact is that they probably don't know calculus very well. They mostly know the shortcuts they learned for the exams. And they've forgotten at least half of the material because it was only in their short-term memory. But that's okay because the other sophomore tutors are in the same position and you're all bluffing it. (And the coordinators in charge of the tutors know this ... but the fact is that these tutoring jobs go to sophomores. That's just how it is done.)

So now you have a sophomore trying to answer questions for a freshman or another sophomore or the forty-two-year-old who has returned to college and hasn't seen algebra since high school. The student now in calculus is sure the tutor knows what she is talking about. The tutor is wondering if the student can see she is bluffing. But she doesn't quit.

Eventually the student has most of his homework done and has learned a little about the background theory. The tutor, though, has learned a lot. Concepts she barely understood before have now crystallized. She sees "why" and not just "how." And her self-confidence grows and grows.

She still feels like a bit of a fake and thinks that someone else could have helped the student better. She might be right. But probably things are going to be foggy for the student this first time around no matter who is teaching him. If he really wants to understand it, he's going to need to put it to use in a practical situation or at least find someone to listen to him explain it.

We muddle through and gain experience and then pass on our experience to others who are muddling through. We help them a little. We help ourselves more. Even new people can do it. More than once a very new person has been offering help to another new person and stopped halfway through her message and said, "wow, it makes so much sense when I say it that I am finally beginning to realize that I ought to do it too."

Another good word for the whole phenomenon is "brainstorming." We just come onto the board and vent and that is good emotionally in itself but sometimes somewhere in all of our venting perhaps we'll find a concrete gem of an idea to add to the tricks we use to overcome trick.

Whatever stage we are in ...

Whatever stage we are in, we don't have to feel guilty about what we are taking from the board, whether it is more than we feel we deserve or less than we think others are hoping for us.

If you don't obviously "succeed"or if you crash after you've been "too" enthusiastic ...

If you don't obviously succeed or if you crash after you've been too enthusiastic, you are still welcome. We've all been there. There is no need for embarrassment. There is still something you can offer the board and something you can take from the board, if only to let other people know that it's okay for them too to come to the board when they are at an awkward stage in their trich progress.

If you need a break from the board or if you are ready to "graduate" ...

Many of us find the bulletin board suddenly becomes overwhelming and we say goodbye "forever." Then some of us show up again the next day ... though some are strong enough to hold out for a month or so. :-) If you skim the board after you say goodbye, you're likely to hear lots of folks begging you to come back, but we understand that you might need time to get your off-line life in order. We're just letting you know that we love you and that we'll miss you.

Sometimes folks leave too because they feel like they're making trich an even bigger part of their life than it was. We undertand that too.

I've refrained from posting after some slips because I've needed to completely get hair off my brain (pardon the pun ;-) and I knew that though I would report the slip later, I needed to make sure I had time to relax so that later I could say, "a couple of days ago I had a problem but I'm better now." I'm not saying you have to stay away until you stop pulling! That's just an example of how I felt that immediately posting and acknowledging my bad times might actually prolong the bad times. It was just something I felt was true about my particular situation.

And some folks "graduate." That's ideal. Some of us hang around to point out that there have been success stories, but most of the success stories are people you don't see anymore because they've overcome the worst aspects of trich and are ready to move on. Some of us say that we will fight trich for the rest of our lives. But some of us say that though we might occasionally pull hair again in the future, we mostly think of pulling as something we used to do.

Whatever works for you. Really. And congratulations for each type of success you've had. And good luck with the entire rest of your life. :-)

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