#skin-picking

[hannaxjo]

[20riley25]

I feel like a rabid animal for scratching off every imperfection in my skin until it bleeds

[oleworm]

Words about our hands

(I) The shape of your thumb intrigues me.

The boldness of your knuckle. Flesh-meagre, acute in its angle.

The concavity that follows the direction of the finger. The tendon like tension bridge suspended, anchoring the last and most useful phalanx.

The nail is shapely. Though you don’t always remember to trim it, it is never overlong but always the exact dimension that it is meant to be.

The surface is smooth and shines with collagen — I am jealous but more than that admiring, having ruined mine by picking. It will grow, so you tell me, so long as I limit the compulsion.

I care more for you, smiling in reflex every time that, in a picture, yours appears in the background of whatever it is that you have chosen to show me. A flamingo coffee cup, an embryonic sketch, an orange shaped, through artificial means, to look like the Venus of Willendorf. Don’t be confused. I love to see what has come to your attention, but it is the slip of you that I love, the part of you that grasps them and once held me.

(II) You dream of a devil entering through the rip in your finger.

The skin tears like paper. You have done this before, to concentrate the fear from the outside in. You feel that you are in control. You trick the body into believing it, though there is nothing more to this than a complete lack of control. How does this benefit you? Letting the dirt and yes, the devils in, staggering the healing for the next time.

Assuming that there will be a next time, that the scarring has not crossed the threshold of irreversibility. It is getting there, with how easy it is to tear down the dotted line. A child could do it. Are you worse than when you were a child, and could but would not do it? You can never know. You could not choose because there were no choices. It was beyond the realm of possibility.

[love-live-yohariko]

Tw: skin picking

Is it just me or do posts about dermatillomania always focus on skin-picking of the face? Like yeah a lot of people pick at their faces, but what about the people who pick at their fingers/cuticle area? Why aren't there more posts about them?

[crosspression]

Wieso versuche ich es überhaupt...?

Ich vertraue meiner Mutter nach 10 Jahren Skin-Picking an, was ich da mache und sie zeigt sich verständnisvoll. 

Einen Tag später sieht sie meine Wunden und sagt mir, dass ich aufhören soll so viel an meiner Haut zu kratzen...

[autism-asks]

Another replacement stim for skin picking might be fluffy slime (shaving cream, glue, then last add borax mixed with water) that dries out. It bubbles and creates easy places to pic and rip, plus the slime is nice before you dry it and you have to play with it a bit so it deflates first.

Thanks for sharing!

-Kath

[autism-asks]

Last minute positivity Friday—I got a set of those little rare earth ball magnets that make a cube and you can play with them, and they are INCREDIBLY satisfying to fiddle with and might even help me cut down on a skin-picking habit/stim. Yay!

Sounds good! :)

-Kath