Home
0
I've been lurking this board for a while, but never felt brave enough to write anything until now. I'm a 31 year old woman and I've been picking at my face and body since I was a teenager.
I've been suffering from PCOs since puberty and when I was 16 the doctor got me on the pill which kept my skin clear for years. Eventually 2 years ago I had to get off because of some health issues. So I started to get blemishes again and now I suffer from a severe case of dermatillomania. I'm lucky enough not to have real inflamed acne, a part from the occasional hormonal breakout: all I get are some clogged pores, blackheads and sometimes small whiteheads (which may turn into cystic acne if squeezed). But of course I squeeze everything I can find until all it's left is raw skin. I also dig out blemishes and cysts with tweezers, I can pick for hours and hours without realizing.
In the last 2 years I got so many scars it's insane!
I have indented scars, white scars, slightly raised scars, red spots, brown spots, everything.
I've tried so many times but I've NEVER been able to stop picking for more than 4 days, ever.
Strange enough, I also have some periods where my skin recovers and looks almost normal with minimal makeup: in those (rare) days I feel so good, happy and confident! But then I just start picking again, even harder, until my face is mutilated. And everything begins agains, the eternal cycle of healing-picking-healing-picking.
Anyway, I usually pick at my cheeks and chin, and dig out ingrown hair from in between my eyebrows. Lately all the blemishes I'm getting are some very weird small spots around my smile lines, chin, jaw and in between eyebrows. They don't hurt and don't seem to go away on their own. If I manage to squeeze them usually they just grow back after a while, over and over again. They look VERY deep, like whiteheads under the surface of the skin. I'm sure they're not milia, cause milia are very close to the surface, while these spots are under layers of skin. The skin over them isn't smooth, they look slightly bumpy, which of course makes me crazy! When I squeeze them hard sometimes they get out: the content is white and very runny, almost liquid, and exits from many pores nearby.
Other times I have to take my tweezers and create a wound to dig them out, which is very hard because they're so deep rooted! These ones look more solid, like a white embedded core of sebum or something.
I didn't get these things 1 year ago, what in earth could they be?!? Cysts? Clogged pores? Hair follicles? Underground scar tissue? Collagen? Do you get them too?
My dermatologist said she didn't know and not to worry, to use Differin cause they're "just pimples". ---> totally NOT!
Pimples, blackheads and whiteheads look different and surface after a while. I'm afraid I might have damaged my pores so much they've scarred all over, so the sebum stays trapped inside.
I feel sad and hopeless, like I've mutilated myself. If only this could be a wakeup call for me to never pick again!!
