Awareness Week 2014: Meli and Ashley
The following poems were written for Awareness Week 2014 by two young women named Meli and Ashley. ——– Tongue in Cheek by Meli I keep biting my cheeks to get rid of imperfections as if I didn’t trust...
The BFRB Conversation
Discussion is an important part of awareness—the good, the bad, the theories, the speculation, the triggering, the non-triggering, and whatever may fall in between. For BFRB Awareness Week, we want to start those kinds of discussion to break the...
Meet the Leaders: Brenda Cameron, BFRB Calgary
The Meet the Leaders Series is an opportunity to learn some information about your peer support leaders before you attend a meeting. ——– Hello and welcome to the Calgary CBSN Support Group! I am very excited to hold our first...
BFRB Back-to-School Tips: Kindergarten to Grade 12
Back to school can be difficult for many reasons, and for those of us with BFRBs it can be even worse. Maybe over the summer, our pulling or picking got significantly worse. Maybe we are worried about how we ...
Dermatillomania vs. Self-Harm
I can understand why people would think dermatillomania is self-harm. Back when I was first trying to figure out this skin picking thing, I though it must be self-harm, too, but now I understand it differently. I used to...
Real World Awareness
We live in the age of the internet, where we can type literally anything into a Google search and find information and answers on anything we want to know. And yet, a lot of people still don’t seem to...
Meet the Leaders: Kelsie Hanna, BFRB Edmonton
The Meet the Leaders Series is an opportunity to learn some information about your peer support leaders before you attend a meeting. ——– Kelsie Hanna, Trichotillomania My vision for the group is to bring people together so they know...
The Dreaded Relapse: Dermatillomania
This guest piece comes from Danielle Roberts. Danielle is a Canadian freelance writer who graduated from the University of Calgary in 2010 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. She is an avid runner, reader and mental health advocate...
I Shaved My Head To Stop Pulling My Hair Out: A Trichy Tale
A guest post by peer support group leader Julie Mason. ——– On January 17th, 2014, my hair and my head were in rough shape. I would say that about half of my hair was gone. After ten years of...
Conceptualizing Trichotillomania as a Disorder of Addiction
The following is a research paper written by Brittany Meredith who is a Master of Counselling (Psychology) student in her second year of study. She wrote this paper last semester for her Psychology of Addiction class. Her interest in...
“Trichy” Parenting: Tips for Parents of Trichsters
I wanted to write this blog because I know that while those with trichotillomania have many questions about treating their disorder, I know that parents do, too. In fact, they may have even more because all they want to...
Obsessive-Compulsive & Related Disorders: Changing Concepts, Changing Science
Four of us from CBSN were able to make it to the 2nd Annual Frederick W. Thompson Centre Anxiety and Related Disorders Centre conference at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto on Monday, March 10. As it was a full day...
An Overview of Toronto’s March 4th Peer Support Meeting with Dr. Sinyor
On March 4th, the Peer Support group based out of Toronto had the opportunity to have a guest: Dr. Mark Sinyor of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. We had posted to our Facebook page asking if anyone had any questions for...
Dolls and Disorders: Interview with Chloe McCarty
Recently, I came across the story of a young girl named Chloe, a 14-year-old trichster who was giving away a number of MGA Entertainment’s “True Hope” bald Bratz dolls. Ironically, it was in the dermatillomania Facebook groups that the...
Wigging Out
Growing up, all I wanted was beautiful, thick, long hair, like all the girls on TV and in the magazines. I wanted long hair because it was beautiful and feminine. Because girls just have long hair and it was...