Why not just accept the hair-pulling behavior?

Well, frankly, I don't see anything wrong with it. I had accepted it to some extent when I found the bulletin board (I had resigned myself to having no lashes or brows and to keeping my hair ultra-short so that I couldn't easily pull from my scalp). I actually explained to a lot of people about my pulling. I would tell them and they would seem to accept that it was about the same as nail-biting. Here are some of the reasons I changed my mind:

If trying to stop will hurt you, then stop trying. It isn't worth it. Know how very beautiful you are inside. If you don't feel beautiful inside, then work on trying to find the beauty that is in you--it is there. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. If you are not ready now, and even if you don't think you ever will be, you are welcome on the board. Somewhere inside me I will keep nourishing the hope that you will be ready to stop someday, but I know what it is like to have to make a choice between having hair and having a life, so I personally will never judge you for working on other things in your life.

Here is why I kept trying, though, most of the time:

• Everyone else on the board was trying not to pull, and I wanted to fit in. :-).
• Several old-timers on the board made it sound so wonderfully possible to quit.
• I prefer my looks when I have lashes and brows (though I think I prefer my ultra-short blonde hair to my longer brown hair. :-)
• If I could quit pulling I would ultimately have less to explain to a society where lots of people still look at me strangly. Perhaps not explaining and just letting others live with their curiousity could be part of "accepting" oneself, I don't yet have it in me not to ever worry about what others are thinking.
• I don't want to let worry about my chances of being employed stop me from applying for jobs.
• I don't want to let my worry about the thinness of my hair or my absence of brows stop me from swimming or any other fun thing.
• Again, just accepting the behavior might imply not worrying about what potential employers or people at the beach think about me, but I still can't quite bring myself not to ever worry.
• But again, the main reason to stop pulling is because I have the confidence that it truly is possible, with possibly lots of work at first but with less work later. That hope of less work later makes the whole effort to stop seem worth the initial investment. I might even try to stop biting my nails soon, too. :-)

Why stop now and not later? Because, in most instances, we're going to have about the same amount of stress later as we have now, though maybe of a different kind. In fact, stopping pulling could actually reduce the overall stress in our life once we get past the initial arduous stages of the fight. However, you have to do what is right for you. If you have a once in a lifetime opportunity that stops you from having the time to invest in stopping pulling, then you gotta do what you gotta do.

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