Things are looking up

Last week I put my "monthly plan" into action and it's been fairly successful. I think having a monthly goal just seems less intimidating then "i'll never do ______ again". So much of managing trich and changing habits is the mental aspect.

I'm not going to lie, I am tired and cranky this week. It's one of those days where I really probably shouldn't be allowed to be in the same room as other people. It's probably a combination of no-smoking, being tired, the crappy/rainy weather, and just general life stress.

This is my official update: I havent smoked since last week, haven't pulled any hair since Saturday night (literally nothing which is great), I've exercised every single day, even when I've been exhausted, and I'm sleeping a lot better. All in all, not a bad week although it has been a very, very hard week of adjustments.

So now that it's been a week, I'm going for 2 weeks. There are plenty of stressors in my life right now, the boy situation (which has improved with "awkward guy" but there is still the issue of dating 2 people- a decision must be made soon), figuring out whether I should cut business ties with my friend who I was going to start the firm with, money issues as always, blah blah blah. It never ends. I wish I was one of those people that could accept that life will never be fully "stress free" but I'm just not. So I'm trying to figure out how to manage my trich and everything else in the face of stress.

I was on the Trich yahoo support group and emailing with another girl when I thought about my issues with control and symmetry (and I still havent changed my "display name" to my actual name which is kind of sad). Just the other day, on Saturday, when I was having a bad pulling spell I realized that despite knowing I needed to stop, I had to keep pulling to make sure that both eyebrows were "even". It didnt matter that it meant more pulling and less hair one one side but everything had to be kind of the same. It was unacceptable in my mind to leave stray hairs out of place if they didnt look "symmetrical" and each eyebrow was in the right shape. I dont know if that makes sense but hopefully you understand what I mean.

Anyway, a lot of trich for me seems to be about control and release. I need to be able to control what I pull and as screwed up as it is, the hairs need to be pulled in a certain way. If I leave a hair 'out of place' I know that I wont be able to stop. The anxiety of thinking and obsessing over that hair will literally cause my entire body to tense up and I wont be able to think of anything else.

Well I guess this turned out to be a little bit of a random post (but arent they all kind of?) so thanks for reading and if you have any tips on how to stop or control the urges, please let me know, I need as many new ideas as possible. Thanks!