Trichotillomania

Trichotillomania

What is it?

Do you know what does trichotillomania means? Are you familiar with this term? Have you ever witnessed? Well, trichotillomania is basically a hair-pulling mental disorder. A person suffering from it, might experience pleasure in doing so. Furthermore, the hair can be from head, eyebrows and various parts of body.

Causes:

To Relieve Stress:

People pull their hair mostly when there are in any kind of stress. Moreover, they pull their hair as a type of relaxation from the stress. They feel pleasure in doing so.

To Minimize Boredom:

When people feel a bit bore, they intentionally or unintentionally pull their head hair. This gives them feeling of relieving boredom.

To get rid of Negative Emotions:

For the patients of Trichotillomania, they overcome their negative emotions, just by pulling hair. They find this as the only way to get rid of their negative emotions.

How to Overcome?

There are hundreds of tips and tricks that people can use for treating and dealing with this interesting yet dangerous disorder. Here are few important ones:

Cognitive Behavior Therapy:

This is a kind of therapy that people can go for. The objective of this therapy is to deal with the problematic thoughts of a person that is causing them to show repetitive behavior. They trap irrational thoughts which in turn control behaviors. For example, therapist identify if the patient pulls his hair only in stressful conditions. He than try to minimize the stressor to change this problemmatic habit.

Controlling obsessions:

Obsessions are the poblematic thought patterns that can be practice at home. For example, the family can play the role in it. Similarly, they should make the person busy in other things so that their attention can get divert.

Rewards and Punishments:

Apply a reward and punishment method to overcome this behavior. For example, If the person doesn’t repeat the behavior, reward him with his favourite things. Punish him everytime if he repeats the behavior. In fact, this technique strengthens the good behavior and weakens the bad ones.

Habit Reversal Training:

A habit reversal training is the one in which the person’s behavior is changed by doing the reverse. In this technique, the causes and consequences of the pulling of hair is identified. Therapists minimize the reason and situations which trigger this behavior.

Conclusion:

Trichotillomania is obsolutely the most common disorder. People mostly pull their hair when in a deep thinking or feeling stress. Not every habit is a disorder. If the same abnormal behavior of hair pulling persisists for more than 6 months, then you surely need to see a therapist.

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