Personal

In learning about Acceptance-Commitment Therapy (ACT) as it relates to excoriation disorder, I had to experience how intense an urge was in order get through it, including recognizing physical reactions to finding or resisting an urge. With my teeth clenched, when I held back on this urge I also felt a hollowness in my chest.

Despite being in recovery from dermatillomania since 2015 with a few minor blips along the way, I wasn’t sure what to expect from my skin picking disorder when I became pregnant in May of 2019. With body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) having links to hormones I prepared myself that my recovery could waver during pregnancy.

It’s hard to accept a condition that you didn’t want and never asked for. The difficulty in coming to terms with having a mental health disorder that causes visible wounds on the skin can be overwhelming in day-to-day life. How can a person look at their skin and be okay with what they see? I learned how

The senior years of elementary school would have been the perfect time to learn about these mental health afflictions at an age-appropriate level. If taught from a simple, non-judgmental, place I would have still felt alienated as I did in grade six when peers would look at me in health class during discussions about acne as if I was going to add in a personal perspective.

Author and mental health advocate Angela Hartlin shares her journey to recovery from compulsive skin picking after she appeared on The Doctors in 2015.