#at least he wasn’t an emotionally unavailable parent unlike most of them

[tra-le-patatine-a-fuoco]

“in italiano non esiste una parola per descrivere un genitore che ha perso un figlio”, I know in french there’s the word “parange” (parent+ange) that’s been used often for years, but some people are against it because it has a religious connotation or sounds too soft, so it had been asked to find a new word for it but I don’t know if they ever did.

#because it was already some time ago #must look it up again someday #my parents had to live through that too a couple of years before I was born #i always wondered what our lives would have been like if it didn’t happen #often do that still #I know it affected my father a lot #I mean I won’t go through very personal stuff but #he became extra protective of us to the point where his own family often mocked him for it #at least he wasn’t an emotionally unavailable parent unlike most of them #like do they really not understand how trauma works?? #it took me some time to understand exactly where it came from but I eventually did #don’t know how as an adult you’re not even capable of putting yourself through other peoples shoes sometimes #I’m sure it would have helped him to have some psychological help though but he never liked that #anyway good thing I said I wouldn’t get too personal about it #rant over sorry #I’ve been watching like 3 episodes in a row and it’s doing things to me

[sky-fortress]

oc masterpost

uhh so with the oc question thing i reposted i realized i’ve never actually made a masterpost of my characters, so here it is! it’s going to be a long one, so everything of importance is under the keep reading. 

each character will have their own little info blurb (length depends on how developed they are and how much i have to say about them)

this post will also be linked in the bio of this blog and on my art blog (( @sazand0ra )) so if i reblog an oc question post and you want to ask something, you can just pop back and look! ❤

PKMN TRAINERS

Phika “Phoenix” Artemovich 

Phika is an Interpol agent, rank Superintendent, who lives in Jubilife City. She started on her Pokémon journey around Sinnoh when she was 10, traveling for about six-seven years and visiting Johto and Kanto in the process. She joined Interpol when she was 17 and has been working there for 12 years (she’s 29 as of right now). 

She’s not the most mentally strong (she cries very easily), as work leaves her stressed and sleep-deprived, though she always tries to perform her best. On top of that, she also believes that she was cursed by Darkrai when she was 19 -- though she doesn’t dare let anyone in Sinnoh know because of how superstitious people are. Phika is very kind and gentle, earning her the codename “Agent Mother,” and is very protective of her friends, family, and Pokémon. 

PKMN Team: Infernape (starter), Luxray, Gengar, Milotic, Togekiss, Steelix

Bella Émilie

Bella is a Pokémon trainer from Courmarine City in the Kalos region. She ran away from home at age 14 after receiving a Froakie from Professor Sycamore (he made a special visit to Courmarine City to talk to her about being a trainer w/o her mom’s knowledge). As a result, Bella is fiercely independent and almost unbearably stubborn -- she’s also carrying along quite the superiority complex with her, hiding deep-seated feelings of inferiority with a cold and aggressive exterior. 

She ended up taking on Team Flare as per the plot of X/Y, though she never really got along with the main friend group (Calem, Shauna, Tierno, and Trevor). Her and Calem also had their own rivalry, though she never thought of it as one because of how easily she beat him down every time they battled (her superiority complex shone through whenever they interacted). However, as of now, nine years later (she’s 23), she’s mellowed out some, though those feelings of inferiority haven’t quite gone away. Bella’s also close friends with Phika and may or may not have a small crush on her (she does), though she does tend to worry about how little Phika takes care of herself.

PKMN Team: Greninja (starter), Talonflame, Sylveon, Haxorus, Lucario, Meowstic 

Lyssa Ahreiz-Ridecki

Lyssa is a mechanic from Goldenrod City in the Johto region. She wasn’t really that interested in Pokémon battling when she was growing up, and preferred to spend time in her dad’s workshop, helping him to tinker with and fix machines, and go around the city with him fixing appliances and other things for people. As a result, she became a mechanic herself, establishing a name for herself in Goldenrod City and the surrounding area (her father is very proud of her for that). 

However, her talent unintentionally got her caught up in organized crime. Lyssa was recruited by the Pokémon Pinchers to work as a mechanic for them, fixing their Control Gauntlets and Z. Z. Flyers. Though she wasn’t told at first everything about the devices she was fixing, Lyssa eventually figured out what was going on and tried her best to throw a wrench in the works (figuratively) whenever she could. Eventually, as the leadership of the Pinchers began to break down, she left -- and ended up getting a little more into Pokémon battling, after realizing that she might need to be able to defend herself better in the future. Right now, she’s caught up with an android named Robyn and Silph Co, but that’s still developing. 

PKMN Team: Pidgeot (starter), Ambipom, Drowzee, Honchkrow

Robyn

Robyn is an android created by Silph Co. that currently resides in an apartment in Goldenrod City. Her main purpose is to spy on residents in the city and steal their info, then transmit it back to Silph Co for their own purposes. She also goes out and gambles with the money she steals from people -- while no one has figured out yet that she’s actually a robot, there are some regulars at the Game Corner who are starting to get suspicious of this short, white-haired girl who’s apparently some sort of gambling genius. 

Her apartment room was discovered accidentally by Lyssa, who followed her home after seeing her in the Game Corner, and soon figured out that she was in fact, some sort of robot. She tried to mess around with Robyn’s circuitry, not knowing who made Robyn, and now has a target painted on her back by Silph Co. 

PKMN Team (for defense): Porygon-Z, Meowth, Espeon

Nicky Griffin

Nicky is from a large, large, large performing family in Castelia City, Unova. She grew up playing the violin and learning to dance, taught by her grandmother and two older sisters. She’s the fourth out of eleven siblings, and has too many cousins, aunts, and uncles for her to keep straight. Because she’s not the oldest, or the youngest, or the best performer, Nicky turned to street art to try and distinguish herself -- her alias is Nee-Coletti -- and while her family doesn’t know about her “other hobby”, at least not totally, they probably wouldn’t mind (at least she hopes so). She also does a lot of street performance, playing her violin while her Pokémon dance -- something they’ll also do in battle. 

She left on her journey initially to return a Pokédex that Bianca lost when she was visiting Castelia City, and went to Aspertia City, since she’d heard that’s where Bianca was heading. By the time she got to Aspertia City, Bianca had left, though she was able to get some mentoring from Cheren, and ended up getting her first Gym Badge from him. They’re still friends, and will call on the X-Tranceiver when they have the time. Nicky’s also friends with Bianca, who she met after finally returning the Pokédex -- they get along great! 

PKMN Team: Lopunny (starter), Mienshao, Scrafty, Emolga, Roserade, Floatzel

Alexandra “Alex” Rye

Alex is a Pokémon Trainer from Lentimas Town in Unova and is the third oldest out of five kids (she’s the exact middle child and she’s not super happy about that). She grew up putting on puppet shows for her younger siblings and other kids in town with dolls she made herself, and eventually started making her own clothing as well. She was hurt in a landslide when she was about 13, delaying the start of her journey for a year, and now walks with a slight limp as a result. 

She loves ghost and dark pokemon (her team is made up of conventionally “scary” pokemon), from time she’d spend in the Strange House outside of Lentimas Town. In fact, that’s where she met her first Pokémon, Banette, who just followed her home one day. They’ve been friends ever since. However, to other people, she’s not as nice -- Alex is perpetually bored with her life, and will usually mess with other people (stealing their things, scamming them with magic tricks, etc) with the help of her Pokémon for a little bit of excitement. 

PKMN Team: Banette (starter), Mismagius, Hydreigon, Galvantula, Drapion, Zoroark

Nova Roscoe

Nova’s a coordinator from Slateport City, in the Hoenn region. She’s still a little inexperienced, since she’s young, but more than makes up for it with enthusiasm! She also loves coordinating her Pokémon’s outfits with hers when they perform -- sometimes she’ll buy plain dresses and sparkle them up a bit just for fun. (i don’t have that much for Nova,,, she’s one of my least developed characters so there’s that) 

PKMN Team: Dustox (starter), Froslass, Skitty, Natu 

Juno Xe

Juno is a florist who took over running her parents’ flower shop in Konikoni City. She’s not much of a fan of battling, but did take on the island challenge with her twin brother, Yarrow, at the urging of their parents -- it’s tradition, after all, so they should at least do it (they couldn’t stay in the shop forever)! For the most part, Juno’s very good with handling customers, though her phony-sweet “customer service” voice will start slipping out when she gets annoyed -- with customers or her brother. 

She has a huge fear of losing people/saying goodbye after her older sister was caught in an accident involving Team Skull. Her parents never told her the entire truth of what happened (that her sister was actually part of Team Skull), though regardless, the incident left her terrified of losing people close to her. As a result, she can be unintentionally controlling and toxic -- something that Yarrow experienced first hand while he was still back at the family’s flower shop. 

PKMN Team: Dartrix (starter), Stoutland, Oricorio, Espeon, Liligant, Alomamola

Yarrow Xe

Unlike his twin sister, Yarrow abandoned the family’s flower shop in favor of wandering aimlessly through the various regions in the Pokémon world. He enjoyed taking on the island challenge and relished the freedom that he was given while traveling -- making coming back to the flower shop incredibly difficult. The expectation of their parents is that the two of them would complete the island challenge and then come back to manage the shop, and while Juno was fine with that, Yarrow was completely opposed to it. 

However, he was easily taken advantage of and manipulated by Juno when he tried to leave. Yarrow had (and still has) emotional trauma left over from when their sister died that he never worked through properly, or even acknowledged, leaving him emotionally unavailable and unable to express himself properly (though that last part goes back to when he was a child). He eventually broke away after the two of them had a huge fight, and never looked back -- he doesn’t even like going back to Alola, if he can help it. He’s stubbornly independent and tries his best to keep people away from him (emotionally and physically), and is a fierce competitor in battle. Yarrow’s noticeably gentler around his Pokémon, and sometimes opens up to them -- though this is only because they can’t actually say anything back to him that he would understand. 

PKMN Team: Decidueye (starter), Tsareena, Umbreon, Alolan Raichu, Bewear, Komala

MYSTERY DUNGEON (they’re all gijinkas btw)

also spoilers for all of the mystery dungeon games below 

Merrie (Psyduck)

Merrie is the hero of Pokémon Blue/Red Rescue Team (i’ve only ever played blue but i’d assume the two are the same) and the co-leader of Rescue Team Feathers! She’s a a bit of a glutton, and will sometimes snack on apples while she and Chica are exploring dungeons together. Because she’s a Psyduck, she’s prone to getting bad headaches, especially if she doesn’t use the move Confusion a lot in battle. She’s also incredibly clumsy and forgetful -- she sometimes forgets that she used to be a human in the first place. 

Moveset: Water Gun, Scratch, Ice Beam, Confusion

Chica (Combusken)

Chica is the sidekick of B/R Rescue Team, though because of Merrie’s forgetfulness, she manages a lot of the team stuff and job requests. It was her idea to form a rescue team, though sometimes she wonders if joining forces with Merrie was such a good idea. She can come of as very brusque and guarded if you catch her at a bad time, but she is very protective of Merrie (though this usually shows through her rolling her eyes and scolding Merrie for getting into whatever trouble’s going on this time). 

Moveset: Flamethrower, Attract, Brick Break, Peck

Siobhán // Soren (Charmander)

Soren is the hero of Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky, and the co-leader of Team Chikomander. She carries around a bat with a few odds and ends stuck in it as a weapon, and is usually very quick to anger, especially if those she’s close to are threatened. For the most part, she’s sweet and helpful, and genuinely enjoys her job as a member of Wigglytuff’s Guild -- though she does argue with Chatot about the whole money thing from time to time. 

The reason she has two different names is because when she was in the future, her name was Siobhán -- she also wasn’t a human, but a weird mash of Darkrai after the Dimensional Hole he was traveling in was attacked by Palkia (this video is where this whole thing comes from and since i personally really like this theory, it’s now soren’s backstory). When she arrived in the past and met Rita, she didn’t want to give her name to a complete stranger, so she said her name was Soren. This caused some confusion when Grovyle was introduced to the mix, and it was revealed that the two of them used to work together in the future. 

Moveset: Flamethrower, Slash, Shadow Claw, Sunny Day

Rita (Chikorita)

Rita is the partner of EOTDS and the other co-leader of Team Chikomander. She’s a big bookworm, and likes to keep books in their bedroom at the guild (though she sometimes worries that Soren will set them on fire by accident). Her weapon of choice is a green tome that she uses to summon grass attacks -- she doesn’t really need it, but it makes her more confident in battle. Rita can be a bit of a coward sometimes, and is known for being bossy, but she does try her best as an explorer (and to keep Soren out of trouble). 

Moveset: Solar Beam, Magical Leaf, Light Screen, Synthesis 

Úrsula (Dewott)

Úrsula is the hero of Gates to Infinity, and the co-leader of The Hydroclaw, handling most of the jobs and other requests (her weapon of choice is a naginata). She came to the Pokémon world from Venice, Italy, though at this point she doesn’t remember much about her life in the human world. Soon after she came to the Pokémon world, she convinced Axel to go and talk to Quagsire about buying the land he wanted even though his money had been stolen a hours ago (this is all a different au where Quagsire is still part of the underground so some things are a little different). She’s stubborn and incredibly loyal to her friends, almost to a fault -- she’d do anything for them, so she can be easy to take advantage of if you get close enough to her. One of her favorite pastimes is cooking, and she’ll sometimes get up early in the morning to cook breakfast for everyone, just to show she cares. She expresses a lot of emotions through cooking and food. 

Moveset: Water Pulse, Razor Shell, Pursuit, Fury Cutter

Axel (Fraxure)

Axel is the partner of GTI, and the other co-leader of The Hydroclaw, handling the development and building of Paradise. He comes off as intimidating to many -- partly because he’s a dragon type, partly because he carries around an axe with him. However, as a surprise to some, he’s actually gentle and kindhearted for the most part, though he still does have some lessons to learn in terms of friendships and other emotional connections (and Quagsire’s going to make sure he learns those lessons at some point). He also really likes Úrsula. Like, really, really likes her. The two of them are practically joined at the hip. 

Moveset: Dragon Dance, Dual Chop, Pursuit, Dragon Claw

Ramona “Rara” (Treecko)

Ramona is the hero of Super Mystery Dungeon, and the co-leader of The Ash-Roses. She’s mute and communicates through her own form of sign language, as well as written notes. Between her and Cinders, she handles a lot of the logistics of the team, including packing travel bags and planning their explorations. She still struggles with the aftermath of the Dark Matter incident, and blames herself for not seeing what was going on with Nuzleaf sooner. 

dark matter au ramona: in this au, ramona ends up falling under the control of dark matter along with nuzleaf. dark matter is able to take advantage of her insecurities about her place in serene village and feelings of resentment towards some of the other villagers. it’s found out she’s being controlled by dark matter on the top of revelation mountain, and instead of going to the voidlands with cinders, she works with nuzleaf, yveltal, and the beheyeem going around and turning Pokémon to stone. 

Moveset: Giga Drain, Energy Ball, Dragon Breath, Pursuit

Cinders (Cyndaquil)

Cinders is the partner of PSMD, and the other co-leader of The Ash-Roses. He’s cheerful, chatty, and has a tendency to get himself and Ramona into trouble very often. Cinders is also really passionate about exploration -- like really, really passionate, to the point of near obsession -- and will sometimes get ahead of himself when it comes to exploring new places. Since he’s also the reincarnation of Mew (or whatever that whole thing was it was a blur for me tbh), he also has the ability to read people’s minds, though this happens sporadically. He’ll usually say the thoughts he hears from others out loud, or respond to them as if it was part of the conversation. This usually freaks people out quite a bit. 

dark matter au cinders: cinders is pretty much the same throughout this au until it’s revealed that ramona is under the control of dark matter. from that point on, he’s more frightened and desperate than normal cinders, and becomes much more subdued after the whole dark matter incident blows over. he and ramona don’t really have the same kind of friendship that they had before, either. 

Moveset: Flame Wheel, Double Kick, Quick Attack, Ember

OTHER

these two are from a world that i was working on with a friend a while back. we aren’t doing anything with said world anymore, but i decided to keep these two around and develop them (and hopefully their world) a little bit more, because i was already attached to them by the time we stopped working. 

for some basic background info: polaris and gabriel are from a nomadic tribe up in the north of the world called eira-taith. one of the traditions of the tribe is that, to be considered an adult, you have to travel on your own for one year and then return. when polaris went out on his journey, he came back to find everyone dead. gabriel was technically the only survivor because he had ran away in search of polaris before everyone else was wiped out. as of right now, they just wander around the world together -- they don’t really have a place to go. 

Polaris Eider

Polaris is the oldest out of six in his family. Because he was the oldest, he was treated as a “third parent,” and given the responsibility of looking after his younger siblings before he left on his year-long travel. He would force down his own feelings and problems to properly be able to take care of everyone else, and as a result, isn’t the most emotionally expressive. He’s not very talkative, and usually has a stern expression on his face. Polaris is also a skilled archer -- however, that’s about all he can do in terms of weaponry. 

Gabriel Eider

Gabriel is the second oldest out of six -- meaning that after Polaris left, he would be the one in charge of taking care of all of their younger siblings, at the age 14. He ended up cracking under the pressure and anxiety of Polaris not surviving on his own, and ran away, fortunately right before their tribe was wiped out. At some point, he was attacked by a group of bandits and was blinded, losing both of his eyes. His anxieties only worsened afterwards, though he tries his best to hide that and his blindness through being combative, stubborn, and overly-dramatic at some times, much to Polaris’ chagrin. Before losing his sight, he could use both a bow and arrow and daggers, though he’s not able to do all that much now. 

#very long post #fortress characters #character masterpost

[zarla-s]

Some asks real quick... I’m not sure I’ll get to a bunch of the older ones, honestly. They pile up really fast...

This is a cool idea but not an easy one to implement! You’d have to use a special plug-in to let the Ghost be able to see the title bar of whatever you’re working on... and I’ve never actually used it, I just read about one that’d do that while doing general ghost research. I’d have to really invest some time into research and experimentation to see if I could get something like that to work...

The whole experience really freaked him out on a lot of levels. He did a cost-benefit analysis afterwards and figured the risks of that happening again outweighed the benefits of fixing it. (Healing Sans after assuming he’d never heal again really freaked him out)

They’d probably get along up to a point, but eventually their egos would clash and they’d have a big hissy argument and refuse to speak to each other, haha. I guess it depends on what Bill would offer... though, if Gaster suspects Bill as being an avatar for a greater force like a human, he’d probably be somewhat wary.

Toriel’s robe pattern has a stupid amount of detail in it, haha.

Thing is you never even get a close or good enough look at it to see most of it half the time. way to go, self.

No one absorbed them, they just left them there. Absorbing a soul is a really scary lifelong commitment, and I figure a lot of monsters would be a bit wary with forever sharing their body 50/50 with a stranger who was just trying to murder them and everyone they cared about.

I figure human souls have to have some kind of half-life, otherwise the surface would just be littered with every human soul throughout the history of the species. So after enough time they dissipate on their own (or perhaps they turn into ghosts?).

Like... give you a written test? I hadn’t thought about it, haha. I was thinking about having him possibly write reports about your behavior though that you could check, but they were really idle thoughts that I hadn’t focused on too hard.

Honestly, I just wanted one item to have a hard limit, so I decided on mugs. |D

He doesn’t want to dodge your attacks, he wants you to hit him.

I’ve mentioned it before, but they were emotionally unavailable at the least, haha. Not very into physical contact, a little controlling. Very unlike the goat parents.

I have some plans for an interaction along those lines, let’s say, but that’ll probably be when you can have the brothers and Gaster out at the same time.

There’s a reason he doesn’t look that different from then to now, actually!

Sadly not too many... it’s possible people are making them and just aren’t telling me! And I know there’s at least one that exists (or was in-progress) that wasn’t sent to me since it was a private gift for someone else. But, let’s see... who do I have...

One WIP ghost that got sent to me for debugging help

Another WIP Battling minigame ghost that I don’t think got finished? But I could be wrong

Papyrus

Desktop Caretaker

f_lowe_y

Basic Sans (there were a lot of variants on this one Sans, I think I have all of them though)

Ichimatsu

Sam and Max

Sans and Papyrus (Mostly mashing the two separate brother ghosts together)

Yu-wol and Je-in (they got taken down and are now unavailable)

Multiverse Sans

UC Sans

That’s all the English ghosts I have! Well not counting my own. I have a lot of Ghosts in other languages though that I study for ghost research and stuff, though you really can’t get much out of a Ghost casually if you can’t understand their text... it still remains my fond dream that Ghosts will take off in English. I love them so much! If you’re working on one, don’t give up! I want to see it, I promise you!

Ah, first you have to have him long enough that it’ll prompt you to tell him your name. Then once you’ve done that, you can change your name in the config menu. You can change your name as many times as you want, haha.

#asks and answers #ukagaka #ukagaster #handplates #spoilers?

[kendrixtermina]

Cold Hearted Girl Blues

The “Cold Hearted Girl Blues” Anthology, & associated story ideas.

Just to be safe, TRIGGER WARNING for Disturbing Content and unhealthy attitudes that are in no way representative of reality. 

Depiction =/= endorsement. 

(Final order may vary)

Part A: Avoidant Attachment Style

Indifferent Girl Playlist - “The expression ‘I don’t feel so well’ makes no gramatical sense. It should be ‘I don’t feel so good’, unless you mean to imply that your ability to feel is hampered.”

Cold Hearted Girl Blues - “One Day she won’t love you either.”

Barren Heart - “The hypocricy of writing about things you know nothing about.”

There Was Nothing In Gauf’s Room - “It’s not her fault, either. What you get is what you see. ”

Failure to Manifest - “Sometimes, this situation has her feeling like she doesn’t exist.”

Cold Hearted Girl Gothic - “Just this single, isolated Conciousness.”

LEERE IST EIN PRIVILEG - “#Introvert Pride.”

Dweeb Life - “Ah, the obscure Joys of bein a shut-in”

Heroin Chick - “Involving no actual heroin.”

You're in a laundry room - “There has been a bit of a failure to connect with this world.”

Biology / inertia - “Even her happiest relationship didn’t go over without being compared to a robot at least once. Balancing extreme introversion with a live-in boyfriend.”

Diffusion - “She has no idea what she looks like. It always surprisesher what people say about her.”

Cold Blooded - “It’s a style of communication, apparently.”

Crazy Headphones Girl - “What could he possibly see in her?”

Cold Hearted Girl Erotica - “Her Kink is compartementalization, but she also dabbles in questionanble sex on drugs threesomes with a hooker.”

Cold Hearted Girl Tumblr - “Preempting the Discourse(TM). I was done with the 2010s when they were a new thing.”

Cold Hearted Girl Musings - “She tries to avoid the common pitfalls, at least in theory.”

Cold Hearted Girl Adventures - “She realizes that she’s the sort of person who breaks people’s heart; She’s like this asshole boyfriend from all these lovesongs.”

Cold Hearted Girl's Lament - “She’s usually the one who has to take it upon herself to be be the rational one and tell you ‘No’.”

Cold Hearted Girl Challenges - “Even the Best of her relationships involved her being compared to a robot at least once.”

Life is Gross - “Including the bits of it that are commonly accepted to be loveable and cute.”

Indifference II: Emotionally unavailable morally ambiguous chick - “There are character flaws, ppl. Being an asshole is generally a bad thing.”

Cyborgery I (the becomming) - “Even when she’s right with you,she’s so far away”

The Minimalist's Wet Dream - “She leads her life with a bare minimum of human contact.”

Alphabet Girl - “It would be one thing if you were competing with the universe, but it’s really her ingrown, self-absorbed world you’re playing second fiddle to.”

Peel - “You thought you could find a normal person underneath, didn’t you?”

Part B: Maladaptive Daydreaming

Endzeitromantik - “No one wants to admit these days that they ever liked NuMetal but she sees no reason to do the same.”

Unapologetic - “She’s not romanticising what she thinks you think she’s romanticising. Or so she thinks.”

Luciferosis - “She’s in love with the Devil and is planning to leave in order to be with him. Of course, she will be missed, but of course, she doesn’t care about it. She’s the sort of asshole who’d fall in love with the Devil.”

Opheliac - “There are multiple ways to be in love with the void. The most relevant ones are not featured in this piece.”

Lone Diggin' - “Going to restaurants on her own.”

The Girl In The Tower - “To preserve something valuable in safe, protected garden... that is not what you did.”

Bizarro Self - “She’s put some thought into this, actually.”

Dreamer Things - “That’s what she calls them, anyway. ‘Dreamer’ may be an euphemism here.”

Make Me Wanna Die - “She just wants to be special, probably because she has no idea what real suffering is. Words mean things, you know?” 

Favorite Love Songs - “Though her real life is barren and deprived, she has a rich inner life. Well, then again, how ‘rich’ can an ‘inner life’ be that only ruminates tiny indirect tidbits of information?”

There Is A Little Harley Quinn In All Of Us - “Unpacking the Whole Badboy Complex. It’s not what you think it is.”

Strange Little Girl - “You really should be going.”

Abstract Dreams - “She doesn’t think they mean anything but she’s willing to indulge the thoughts.”

Joy, Joy, Joy, the Melancholia Rolercoaster. - “She likes to think she has feelings.”

Immortelle - “Involving no Actual Immortals.”

I Feel Personally Victimized By Those 19th Century Romanticists - “Even I am not sure what she’s trying to rove here.”

My Fantasy - “Her kink is apparently freezing to death.”

Cyborgery II - “She envies people whose calloused hands show their dedication to their passion.”

Reality Death - “Silly Rabbit, of course the world keeps turning when you’re not there to observe it anymore.”

Dandelion - “The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all. But sometimes it’s better to be the Dandelion, which can take root anywhere and everywhere.”

Plunge - “If there’s some A grade deaster going on, she obviously won’t miss out on watching.”

Fairytale Ending - “My favorites were Sleeping Beauty and ‘The Salt Princess’. Go on and psychoanalyze me.”

Recontextualizing - “She has different words for it now.”

Peeping Tommie - “It’s at it’s purest where it belongs the least. Or perhaps she just grew the fuck up.”

Paper Flowers - “She’d like to think they mean something.”

Part C: Exercises in Counterdependency

The Butthurt Electra Playlist - “She’s got enough self-awareness to call it that, but not enough to realize it was a bad idea.”

She Will Have her Revenge - “She’ll come back as Fire/ To Burn All the Liars/ Leave a Blanket of Ash on the Ground.”

Hate Poems - “Or: Giving yourself Headaches over people who aren’t worth it”

Pavlov redux - “If you can’t understand like a human, you have to be beaten like a dog” - “Actually, Daddy Dearest, you’re not supposed to beat dogs, either.”

Im Real Good At Hating - “Honestly! I’ve got to have some talent somewhere. ” 

Fuck You Specifically- “Her Lips: Fuck You. Her Hair: Fuck You. Her Clothes: Fuck You. Her crippling self-motivation issues: Fuck You.”

My whole existence for your amusement - “And that is why I’m here with you.”

Sick & Tired - “Yes I know what you think of me, you never shut up.”

Been A Son - “Why does she spend so much time searching for some kind of reason for what you did? Even if there was, it wouldn’t justify your actions.”

Make a list - “It’s supposed to be a therapeutic excercise.”

choice - “It’s the Morton’s Fork of emotions.”

gross girl - “FAART. FAART. She picks her note and eats it. ”

BratFactory - “She outright heard her mother say that she has no value to that man except as a mother to make children.”

AntiStar - “Back in the day, I became obsessed with the thought of a lightless Luminary, an existence that is the very opposite of light.”

Adaptation - “It’s amazing how much a human can twist themselves into a pretzel. It was a matter of survival at the time, you see.”

Emotional Abuse Checklist - “BINGO!”

Remember That We Suffered - “You have no idea what pain is.”

Cyborgery III: We can Rebuild Her  - “Perhaps these vagrant years were simply the means to piece herself back together.”

Idetifikation mit dem Aggressor - “Apparently she looks just like him.”

Es Kocht Die Eifersucht - “A parent is supposed to protect a child from the bad experiences of their youth, not inflict some creepy reenactment of them upon you.”

Curmudgeon (Long Way Home) - “She’s that thing you go to when you want to have a cheap laugh.” 

Visibility - “Your Father Loves you! why can’t you see that?”

Touchy - “You bet she is.”

Light - “She thinks she used to be Light once, but she can’t be sure.”

If I Die, I can be replaced - “I will leave you all behind, move to spain and adopt some children who actually deserve my time and money. Perhaps they will finally appreciate me, unlike you ungrateful wretches.”

My One Mistake Was That I Couldn't Let You Down - “Turns out she wasn’t quite Cold Hearted enough.”

PART D: USELESS, USELESS, USELESS CHILD

Fuckyeahmedicalgrossness - “In my humble opinion, the human brain is way too squishy.”

Something in The Way - “You can always find something.”

Unbirth - “Barely Functioning Lump of Human Flesh. Except no, that’s unfair to the people with real problems. I suppose ‘asshole’ will do.”

Donald Duck Volcano - “I’m not gonna sugarcoat her this time.”

My Wretched Soul Desires Violence - “It’s not pretty, but it’s true. It shouldn’t be but it is.”

Verbal Disclaimer - “I’m not claiming I’m perfect either.”

Useless Child - “How was she supposed to learn if you never let her do anything?”

Madwoman in the Attic - “And they always knew she would be the family spinster.”

Unfair Existence - “At the risk of sounding like a millionaire campaigning for a tax on poverty.”

The Mutant - “Way to make that 9 year old feel like a freak of nature... in the end it’s probably a kind of arrogance.”

Green Grunge - “It’s her jam, except not really. She sure can’t claim to be an expert.”

In Defense Of That Legendary Divorce - “The whole concept of ‘stay for the children’ is utter bullsh*t”

My Fantasy II - “I’m gonna kill all yo fuckers. That’s what quiet people who keep to themselves are supposed to do, right?”

Cyborgery IV – Plastic Death - “My Fetish: All the weak parts of the real me, cut away and dumped in a bucket of medical waste.”

Schreckschraube - “It occurs to her that she’s terribly gross to them.”

Nemo, or as my father lovingly calls me, "Chiquilla de Mierda" - “It’s Spanish for ‘Shit Brat’.”

Hasmereir - “Some of the cruelty is lost in translation, but it basically means ‘Make-Me-Laugh-Thing.’”

You Stink - “Bullies aren’t known for being very creative people.”

Sweet Sweet Reality - “She’s not completely out of touch with it.”

Is there More To Lose Than Gain - “Apparently yes, but she’s not sure how to get it anyways.”

Alraune - “Always with the legends and the soulless children. I think she has a type.”

Confession - “I plead guilty. Mostly to existing.”

Way Too Old For This And F****ing Bored Of It - “Even she is sick of all her emo bullsh*t.”

EPILOGUE: WHATS THE USE OF FEELING BLUE? - The next step, apparently, is crying.

#chgb #writing #baby tries to art #trigger warning

[nappyfreesince2003-blog]

Mum and Dad

I want your attention. I’m trying to use as few words as possible to say as much as possible as fast as possible because I want this story to be told. I want people to know what happened and how it changed everything. But it’s a long story, and the people involved are real. They are very real. Will you give me the time and patience to do them justice? I want to tell the truth as best I can.

This all happened a month ago and I want to tell you everything before the details become fuzzy. I only have tonight, and then I’m gone forever. I’m going to throw you right into the action as soon as I can. But first, I want you to understand where, exactly, I was coming from…

 My desk was in the front of the classroom furthest from the window. I slung my bag down and pulled out my notepad and coloured pens. Colour coding was one of the few joys I allowed myself during that period of my life. Exam season was coming up and it was everything to me: my whole future was riding on these few months.

             Amber pulled out her file and put it on the desk next to mine.

             “Do you think we’ll get our mocks back today?” She asked as she slumped into the chair next to me. She looked as sleep deprived as I felt.

             “I don’t know,” I said, “I hope so. How do you think it went?”

             “Honestly, I don’t know, my cramp was so bad when I took it I don’t even remember any of the questions.” Amber normally outperforms me, and honestly, to my shame, I felt a little bit glad that maybe this time I got the higher grade…

             “Well, it’s chill anyway,” I tried to reassure her as she lay her head down on top of her file in despair. “It’s just a mock. We’ll go through the hard bits in class together anyway. Then you can resit it at home. I’ll sit it with you too, I’m pretty sure I didn’t get close to 100%, I ran out of time on one of the last questions.”

             “Thank you,” she mumbled through her folded arms. Amber had an air of cuteness about her that was impossible to pin down. I used to just ignore her, she was just another member of the Asian crowd that didn’t socialise with anyone who wasn’t ‘one of them’. But Amber had always wanted to reach out. She was friendly and appreciated my dedication to passing my exams unlike any of my friends from previous years… most of whom had dropped out or moved on at this stage. She had become my only real friend. Or at least, the only person I spoke to daily, and I was slowly becoming very fond of her.

             When we got our papers back she was staring at a C and I was frowning at a B. This was not acceptable on my terms. At this point I should be getting As, there’s only months until the final exam. I scanned through the annotations. Too much detail and not enough structure. My jaw clenched as I read the words. I can’t ever seem to shake that comment. Amber had the opposite problem, she skimmed everything but didn’t expanded on anything. We read each other’s.

             “Want to come over tonight?” I asked, with a ‘or we’re fucked’ kind of smile

             “Oh God, yes please,” she buried her face back in her arms. I stroked her smooth, wiry hair and made comforting noises.

             “Megan?” Miss James had popped her head around the door asking for me. “Mr. Brooks would like to speak with you.”

             A couple of idiots on the back row went “Ooooh”, while Amber comedically whispered “Don’t leave me like this.”

 I was waiting outside the headmaster’s office. I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. I’d gone from smoking joints behind the bike shed to little miss straight As, and everyone knew I wasn’t going back. I still felt nervous standing there though. I vividly remembered the last time I was here: begging for mercy… promising I would never do anything again, I was a scared little bitch. There was a cold sweat breaking and my skirt felt a good three inches too short.

“Hey, whot you in for?”

A distraction. A dopey, beat up kid with a thick, thick accent, but a distraction all the same.

“Me?” I gave him a look of shock, “I didn’t do anything…”

“Awright,” he grinned as the cogs in his neatly shaven head, then, shaking his head he said, “yeah yeah me nei’ver. U’m tellin’ you all these cops are bent.”

“Amen to that,” I smiled sideways. “What’s your name?”

“Will. You might’uve heard o’me.”

I hadn’t. But I did recognise the black spray paint stains on the whites of his palms.

“Was it you that graffitied the math block?”

He looked surprised, “Yeah awright, keep it down, though. Whot’s the giveaway?”

I told him. Then, seeing worry creep over his already jumpy deminer, I said, “It’s impressive. I like the style. She’s pretty good looking as well.” For context, the graffiti depicted a 7-foot, tasteful black and white stencil of a curvy nude woman. Well, tasteful for anywhere but in a school. This guy was most likely getting expelled, maybe suspended. But he had my respect.

“Thanks,” he smiled and directed those big brown eyes right at me.

I’ll say it here to cut the suspense, I had thought he was cool. But I wasn’t planning on being his mate. There are a lot of cool people around, you can’t be friends with all of them. This guy smelt like trouble from a mile away (amongst other distinct odours). My life did not need another “bad boy” to pull me off the rails. I was straight, clean and emotionally unavailable… he does have a cute smile though.

“Hello dear,” the receptionist waddled over to me, her glasses swung around her neck like the shackles of a slave. “Are you ready?”

This woman scares me. She always has. “Yup.” I responded shortly.

Will gave me a flat ‘well, good luck’ sort of smile as I picked up my bag and walked into the office. Farewell handsome stranger, ‘tis the last you’ll see of my hard-working ass.

 The Headmaster is a good guy. He’d given me more than my fair share of second chances. I like him. I like his style. Right now, he looked like crap though.

“There’s no easy way to say this, Megan…” he took off his glasses and looked me straight in the eyes, something he only does when it’s gut-wrenchingly serious. Fuck. He sighed deeply, “Your mother passed away this morning.”

“What the fuck, sir?”

I can’t describe the physical sensations that those words caused in enough detail for you understand how it felt. It was something like getting into a bath that was exactly the temperature of a human body, except incredibly intense and uncomfortable. It also felt as is my face had a migraine, like a dull tightness that caused some kind of slow panic along the spine.

“I’m sorry Megan. It was a car crash… I don’t know any more details than that” he paused, “We suggest you take the day off school to be with your family. Your Dad is collecting your siblings, he asked that you head home by yourself…”

A car crash? Shit. The bastard that hit her…

“Okay.” I said, “Is there anything else?”

There was a loaded pause.

“Um, excuse me?” He fumbled about, even so far as to look for a piece of paper on his desk. “No, no, that’s it.” He was so flustered, I would have found it sweet if I hadn’t been running my whole childhood through my mind. “Wou-Would you like someone t-tto take you home? I can organise a lift pr-probably?”

“That’s okay. Thank you for the offer,” my whole system was in shock and I was on autopilot. In hindsight I should have broken down and cried. But all I could think of was getting home, seeing my dad. Finding out what happened. And doing whatever it takes to make this feeling of loss and confusion go away…

I stood up and put my school bag over my shoulder.

“N-no problem.” He stammered. This man very rarely stammers. The gravity of his discomfort dragged my heals backwards.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, sir, thank you for being sensitive.” I could hear the tension in my jaw. I felt very vulnerable, very emotionally exposed.

“No problem. I mean, of course.” He regained himself quickly. “If you need more time off or some teachers to send you notes from the lessons you’ve missed today, please let the school know.”

“Of course, sir, thank you.” I departed with what was almost a bow.

I returned to the waiting area with a stiff look of shell-shocked trauma.

Will looked up at me, I remember how much I wanted him to look away. He started to speak, to make some joke or something, I don’t even know what he said, I just walked out.

 The walk home felt too short. I thought of mum. The information didn’t seem real. It felt like a horrible horrible joke. I wanted to go home and find my mother in the kitchen, daytime drinking because her shifts are so fucked up it may as well be 7 o’clock for her.

One thing you need to understand about my mother is, well, she didn’t give a shit. She worked her ass off at the hospital every day and then came home and ran our family. When I showed up in the emergency room last year with a stomach full of hard liquor, she didn’t lose her shit for a second. She didn’t try and punish me or make me feel worse than I already felt about myself. She sat me down, she talked me through it and she convinced me I was worth… something. That I was loved. Not many parents are cool enough to do that. My mum earnt my respect that day. And now she’s gone? The concept felt wrong. So wrong. So twisted, fucked up and wrong.

I wanted to see her. I wanted to see Dad and hear him tell me it’s a false alarm. That they made a mistake. That mum was at the hospital rugby tackling a junkie with no idea anyone thinks anything different.

But I knew it wasn’t going to happen. It was over, it was done. There was nothing I could say to myself that would change the situation. I remember stopping and sitting on a bench for a couple of minutes and taking breaths. I felt like lighting up a cigarette for the first time in a long time. But I didn’t have one on me. So, I just sat. I sat, and I breathed, and I calmed myself down.

When I put my key in the door and turned it I remember feeling incredibly heavy. It was as if opening the door made it all real. Home was never going to feel the same again.

The first thing my twelve-year-old brother said to me was, “This is shit, Megan. This is pure shit.” He was holding my baby cousin in his arms pressing her to his chest and holding his hand over her ear as he swore. He was sniffing through tears and he was right. This was pure shit.

“Where’s Hopper?” I asked, “Where’s Dad?”

“Hopper’s upstairs in her room.” He nodded towards the staircase, “And Dad went out to get cigarettes.”

“What!?” I said, “Dad doesn’t smoke.”

My brother just shrugged and looked down at baby Moon, she was fast asleep.

“I’ll be right back, ok?” I held them both close to me and kissed him on the forehead.

I went upstairs. Hopper was curled up on her bed with her toys. Her eyes were closed, and she had my brother’s big black headphones on over her little blond head. She was weeping loudly. As I approached her I realised she had my mother’s teddy bear folded under her arms. The teddy bear was a gift from one of my mum’s boyfriends before you finally got together with my dad. She kept it and showed it to her kids. Many mothers wouldn’t do that. But mine did.

“Hopper.” I said as I nudged her shoulder as I sat down on the side of her bed. She had a soft pink shirt on that was already getting too small for her.

She opened her eyes and wailed a new wave of pain. She flung her arms around me and wept into my belly. Her tears and snot slowly soaked their way through my top. I stroked her hair and shushed her gently. How the hell was I supposed to deal with this? Normally when Hopper cries dad takes care of it. How could he leave them in the house alone at a time like this? What if I’d decided to get cigarettes? Who would be here for these three?

As she snuggled her face into me, George’s headphones fell off her. I heard a heavy beat coming from them. I pulled then to my ear.

“Hopper?” I asked concerned

“Ummhumm,” she muttered from my lap.

“Is this gangster rap you’re listening to?”

“G-George” she sniffed through tears, “George ga’h’ve it to. me.” A fresh stream of tears rolled out of her big gorgeous eyes, “Am I in tru-trouble?” She asked me sheepishly.

“No, of course you’re not,” I said softly, stroking her hair again, “If anyone’s in trouble it’s George. He may not be old enough to listen to that but you’re definitely not.” The after a pause I asked, “Do you like it?”

“I-I don’t know,” she said, sitting back on her bed, “It’s angry and it makes me feel safe. I don’t know what they’re saying. Sometimes bad things…”

“That sounds about right.” I guess when there’s so much emotion inside you, hearing anyone expressing anything feels cathartic. Where was my emotion? I felt heavy. I felt shocked. But I didn’t feel… loss. When and how was it going to hit me. When was I going to realised it wasn’t a dream?

George walked in with Moon, his face was sombre.

“I wanted to be with you two,” he said, “Is it ok?”

Hopper nodded. And made space on the pink bedcovers. Normally she hates having him or Moon in her room, but today things were different.

George passed me Moon while he climbed onto the bed.

“Shoes!” protested Hopper.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said as he slipped off his old dirty trainers and put them neatly next to each other by the door. Again, this kind of behaviour was very rare. George never listened to anything Hopper said and constantly crossed her boundaries to get some reaction. You don’t know the little shit, so it’s hard for me to express how much this whole thing changed him. But over the few days after mum died, George matured about six years. And this was the first sign.

Moon was gently sleeping in my arms. She had no clue, all she knew was that everyone was more quiet than usual. A strong smell wafted peacefully from her nappy.

“Can I hold her?” asked Hopper.

“She just pooped.” I said.

“What’s going to happen now?” She asked without any regard to my answer

“Honestly, I’m not sure guys.” I said, “We’ve going to wait until Dad gets home and decide what to do.”

“There isn’t anything to do, she’s gone.” Said George with eerie calmness.

“Well,” I said, “A lot of things are going to have to change.”

“Like what?”

“Um, I don’t know,” I reasoned, “Dad probably won’t be able to stay at home all day, he’ll need a job. I’ll probably need to get a job too. You guys will need to start doing more things for yourselves, like tidying your own rooms. And help keep the house tidy.”

“Do we still have to go to school?” asked George.

“Not today, for sure.” I replied and scruffed the top of his head up, “You two look after each other. I’m going downstairs to change Moon’s nappy and call Dad. Okay?”

I didn’t have the answers for my siblings, and my mind was far too overwhelmed to come up with distractions. Thinking was like wading through a swimming pool of tar in the dark. I needed some form of guidance and my first port of call was my dad.

Baby in one arm I scrolled through my contacts until I found him and hit the little phone symbol on my android. The phone rang. I tucked it into my shoulder as I grabbed a clean nappy and the changing blanket. Being the oldest of three with big enough age gaps to matter, I knew the routine backwards and forwards. That being said… it had been a while.

The phone stopped ringing, “Um. Hey, this is Mark. It’s the usual story, you can leave a message, but I never check my voice mail. Text me. Okay. Bye. Ffks”

I hung up before the beep. Really Dad? I thought, now’s the time to screen my calls?

Irritated, I put the phone down. And laid the sleeping baby out on the blanket. The movement woke her up and she slowly started to register the uncomfortable feeling in her nappy. I had to act fast. I gently removed her little pink trousers and rolled up her t-shirt. Yep, that was the smell of baby poop. I peeled off the soiled disposable diaper. She was only just moving to solids, and you could tell from the distinct texture of the shit she had gifted me with.

Why was a baby this young living away from its mother and father? You may ask. And the answer is a story for another time because, as I was scanning around the shamefully untidy kitchen looking for some wet wipes, the doorbell rang.

I ignored the first few rings as the baby’s crying grew louder and louder and I searched under the junk mail and groceries for something I could use to rid this world of my baby cousin’s latest creation. But then they started knocking, and I heard the words “Police, open up.” I nearly shit my own pants. Policemen still scared me.

Quickly washing my hands, I ran to the door. I opened it.

“Hello?” I said, somewhat aggressively so that they might catch the hint that it wasn’t a good time. It was a man and a woman with the classic blue attire but no hats. I never learnt what the hats meant, but I assumed these two were lower ranking since they had a uniform on.

The woman was shorter, in her thirties and had thin blond hair tucked into a neat bun. She had a kind face sympathetic expression. The man was average height and slightly underweight. He seemed like the kind of person who became a police officer because they got bullied a lot in school.

“Hello, Miss.” Said the woman, “We’re looking for Mr. Sherwin.”

That was my Dad.

“Me too,” I said smiling ironically, “can I see your badges?”

[ionecoffman]

Why It's So Hard to Treat Compulsive Hair Pulling

Christina Pearson was 14 years old when she started pulling out her hair, creating bald patches on her head. She was taken to a psychiatrist, but in 1970 there was no name for her disorder, and certainly no treatment.

The doctor issued a psychiatric discharge that removed Pearson from high school. In that moment, she felt relief. Going to high school meant that somebody might pull off her hat and reveal that her head was mostly bare—a possibility she found “so frightening that anything was better than that.”

In the ensuing months, Pearson holed up at home, pulling out her hair and feeling, she says, like a monster. Scared and searching for relief, she eventually decided to leave. “I hitchhiked across Mexico at 14 and was doing peyote out in the desert, all kinds of things,” she says. “I really lived a very fringe life.” At 15, she started picking her skin, her body frequently covered with open sores. By 20, she was addicted to drugs and alcohol.

At the age of 30, Pearson “finally got sober.” She had started a small telecommunications business with a friend in Santa Cruz, California. In 1989, she received a phone call from her mother, who had just listened to a story on the radio about a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. “There’s a name for what you used to do,” Pearson’s mother told her, not knowing that Pearson still pulled her hair. The news that there was a name, trichotillomania, “rocked my world,” she says.

After decades of feeling shame and isolation, she began to feel hope: There were others out there living with the same condition. Pearson started a support group. A Seattle news network invited Pearson to appear on air, where she spoke about her life and provided a number for a trichotillomania hotline that she planned to operate herself.

She returned home to over 600 messages.

“People were crying and sobbing and begging for help,” says Pearson, who spent a week calling each person back. “It was the best therapy I ever had, because I heard my life coming out of other people’s mouths.”

One night in bed she had what she calls a peak experience, or spiritual vision. Pearson decided to walk away from her business and devote her life to improving public awareness of trichotillomania. “I was scared shitless. Me: I’m a drug addict, I’m a small-business person, I’m in sobriety, I have an eighth-grade education, and I’m going to get out there and change the world and some weird pathological disorder?” says Pearson. “I just was terrified.”

But then she adds: “When we receive that kind of inspiration, what I’ll say is this: We are called all the time. Rarely do we choose to respond.”

Step into any classroom or coffee shop and, the odds are, at least one person in the room has a body-focused repetitive behavior (BFRB), such as trichotillomania or skin-picking disorder.

People with BFRBs perform repetitive self-grooming activities such as picking, pulling, or biting. These can cause emotional distress and damage to the body, but the people performing the behaviors can’t stop. At their most extreme, these conditions are life-threatening.

A significant minority of people with trichotillomania (commonly called “trich”) ingest their pulled hairs. Over time, the hair can block the intestine and require surgical removal. Skin picking can lead to infections that require intravenous antibiotics and skin grafting.

More commonly, BFRBs take an emotional and social toll. They often begin in late childhood or early adolescence, making kids vulnerable to bullies. Echoing the experiences of many, a man in his late 20s described middle school as “absolute hell” because kids perceived him as “the weird kid with missing eyelashes.” Another woman, now 30, recalled watching her classmates play keep-away with the wig they had snatched off her head. Furthermore, BFRBs are often a source of conflict between child and parent, which can heighten a child’s feelings of shame and isolation. Meanwhile, in adults, the condition can lead to fear of intimacy, missed job interviews, and hours lost each day to picking and pulling.

Individuals living with BFRBs often keep their condition a secret, hiding the physical effects with make-up, wigs, and layers of clothing.

As a result, many are surprised to learn just how common these disorders are. Some experts estimate that 2 to 5 percent of people have trich and roughly 5 percent of people have skin-picking disorder, also referred to as “ dermatillomania” or “excoriation disorder.” Precise numbers are not available, however, because there has been no large-scale global study of BFRBs.

Although trich has appeared in the medical literature for over a century, it was not officially included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) until 1987—a full 17 years after Pearson made her first visit to a psychiatrist, and six years after I entered the first grade and started pulling my hair too.

My mother took me to a dermatologist, who didn’t offer any advice. As it turned out, I was part of a subset of kids—including toddlers and even babies—whose symptoms simply go away without any kind of treatment. By the end of the school year, my hair pulling had stopped. For most individuals, BFRBs are chronic, lasting years, even decades.

Skin-picking disorder was added to the DSM in 2013. “We were over-the-moon ecstatic when it was given its own diagnostic label,” says Nancy Keuthen, the director of the Trichotillomania Clinic and Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. A diagnostic label validates people’s experiences and encourages them to seek treatment, she says. In the absence of a name, the tendency had been to think, “I don’t know anybody else who has this, I must be really weird,” explains Keuthen.

Now, both disorders are included in the chapter on obsessive-compulsive and related disorders. On the surface, OCD and BFRBs share similar characteristics: Both involve strong urges to perform repetitive behaviors. But unlike OCD compulsions, BFRBs are soothing, even pleasurable. And the behaviors are rarely the result of the specific obsessions that characterize OCD.

This distinction matters because the conditions benefit from different kinds of behavioral therapies; and whereas medication is a first-line treatment for OCD in the United States, for example, there currently is no Food and Drug Administration–approved medication to treat BFRBs.

In fact, compared with better-known psychiatric conditions such as OCD, BFRBs remain markedly under-researched. “Historically, there has been almost no funding for these disorders,” says Keuthen. Funding usually goes to conditions that are seen as significantly affecting quality of life or that make it difficult to function in the workplace.

BFRBs can do both, but, says Keuthen, they have been misunderstood as “bad habits that lazy people have.” This obscures the critical distinction between ordinary self-grooming (who doesn’t occasionally pick a scab or pluck a hair?) and the clinical case where the behavior goes on and on, causing significant distress or impairment, while the person feels wholly unable to stop.

Christina Pearson founded the Trichotillomania Learning Center (since renamed the TLC Foundation for Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors) in 1991. Her goal was to help people, especially kids, avoid the fear and secrecy she had lived with for so long.

She wanted to offer authoritative information that could help people. There was just one problem: That information didn’t exist.

There was also an incredible amount of stigma. At least some of this can be traced back to the medical literature of the 1950s and ’60s, which tended to blame the parents, particularly mothers, of individuals who pulled their hair.

One report from that period examined 11 children with trich. The authors, professionals at the U.S. National Institutes of Mental Health, concluded that the children’s behavior stemmed from intense conflict “between the child and the original love object, the mother.” The children, they wrote, pulled their hair “with large amounts of libido” and used hair pulling as a substitute for an emotionally unavailable mother.

About the fathers, they wrote: “[They] can best be described as passive-aggressive individuals, mostly of a passive type who were persistently controlled by their spouses.”

Perhaps this is why when Pearson was taken for treatment, the psychiatrist asked her mother, “What are you doing to [your daughter]?” The question caused her mother to cry. “It was not good. It was very shaming,” says Pearson.

This judgment and blame continued even after trichotillomania was added to the DSM. Pearson began renting booths at professional conferences. In the early years, psychologists would walk by and actually make fun of her, pulling their own hair. Pearson says that one dermatologist warned her that people who pick their skin and pull their hair are “often psychotic.”

She recalls one young man who had been told by a mental-health professional that pulling out his hair was like public masturbation and he needed to stop. In another conversation, a Swedish doctor insisted that Swedes don’t get trich. Pearson suspects that some of the stigma stems from the fact that grooming is associated with other animals—cats, dogs, mice—and people don’t want to acknowledge humans’ connection to the animal kingdom.

Something else that contributed to the misunderstanding was that trich was considered an exceedingly rare disorder. The first prevalence study wasn’t published until 1991, and at the time, the DSM criteria for trich were more stringent than they are today. In addition to having a strong impulse to pull hair, resulting in hair loss, individuals needed to experience tension prior to pulling and “gratification or relief” while pulling.

Consequently, researchers found that 0.6 percent of the general U.S. college population had met the DSM criteria at some point in their lives, but noted that among this group pulling leading to visible hair loss was reported by 1.5 percent of men and 3.5 percent of women.

In 1990, Pearson attended one of the first-ever professional talks about trichotillomania, given by a psychologist called Charles Mansueto. There, she met a number of interested clinicians, including Carol Novak, a psychiatrist from Minnesota, who had written a pamphlet about trich.

“Back in those days, we had no internet. Nobody knew the word trichotillomania,” says Novak, who went on to become the founding director of the TLC Foundation’s scientific advisory board. Around that time, Novak, Mansueto, and Richard O’Sullivan, a psychiatrist who currently practices in Madison, Connecticut, attended a retreat that Pearson had organized for people with trich. Novak remembers the participants expressing frustration and anger with the mental-health field “because they had been so mistreated by professionals.” Soon thereafter, more professionals agreed to join the board and conduct research in the field.

The causes of BFRBs are still poorly understood, though individuals’ responses to different medications may provide clues to BFRBs’ biological underpinnings. For example, medications such as Prozac, which target the neurotransmitter serotonin, have not proven effective in reducing BFRBs for most people—though experts note that some individuals may benefit.

Two small randomized controlled trials testing N-acetylcysteine (NAC), an amino acid that can be purchased in health-food stores, resulted in marked reductions in both hair pulling and skin picking for roughly half of study participants (though some receiving placebo also showed improvements—16 percent demonstrating reduced hair pulling, 19 percent reduced skin picking). NAC influences glutamate, a neurotransmitter involved in reward pathways. A small neuroimaging study also showed impairment of reward pathways in people with trich, but larger studies are needed to confirm these findings.

One such study currently underway is the BFRB Precision Medicine Initiative, which has been funded by TLC donors. It’s taking place at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, the University of Chicago Medicine, and Massachusetts General Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. The goal is to test up to 300 participants using a variety of methods, including interviews, imaging, and bloodwork.

Nancy Keuthen is the principal investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital. She notes that up until now, researchers have tended to study BFRBs in narrow slices. For example, a research team might run a small brain-imaging study. While this approach could uncover an interesting abnormality, it isn’t especially helpful without a broader network of data to illuminate the abnormality’s cause and effects. Additionally, larger sample sizes are needed to ensure that study results are generalizable to a wider population.

Liz Atkin, a British artist with skin-picking disorder, is at the front of the room, setting hand wipes on tables. She wears a red cardigan over a T-shirt sporting splotches of orange, yellow, green. “We’re going to get messy!” she says to four girls sitting in the front row. Her enthusiasm seems entirely genuine yet impossible for 8:30 a.m.

It’s a Saturday in April, and I’m attending the 25th annual TLC conference for BFRBs. This year, it’s in San Francisco. The conference is just one of the ways that TLC aims to help people directly. I’m here with nearly 500 others, including individuals with BFRBs, their families, clinicians, and researchers. This session is an art class for kids aged 11 and under.

“What we’re going to do is make our marks,” says Atkin after roughly a dozen kids have taken seats and introduced themselves. She holds up a stick of charcoal and explains it’s a piece of wood that’s been burned. “I have compulsive skin picking, and charcoal really helps me.”

Atkin distributes the charcoal and paper and asks the kids to make a dot.

“Paul Klee said ‘A line is a dot taking a walk,’” she says, holding up her own sheet of paper and making a black spot. From there, she demonstrates various rubbing and smudging techniques, before bringing out pastels so the kids can add color.

“I think my drawing’s going to end up looking like my cat,” says the girl sitting next to me, wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs sweatshirt. Her picture does indeed resemble a calico cat with patches of black and orange.

Atkin asks if anyone wants music, and someone requests Prince.

Above the music, Atkin asks, “Is drawing a nice thing to do? Why do we like drawing?”

The group offers varying responses: Drawing calms your mind. You can express yourself. There’s no wrong way to do it.

“Why are we working with stuff that’s messy? Why is that useful? We’re using materials that have a texture to them.” Later, she’ll explain to me that for many, BFRBs are texture-based disorders. Art engages the body and mind, giving the person a focus other than the BFRB.

I’m sitting in a row with a boy and a girl. I overhear the boy ask, “What’s your thing? Mine’s skin picking.” The girl says matter-of-factly, “Mine’s trichotillomania.”

They fall back into silence, drawing on the black paper.

It’s taken science some time to catch up with what people with BFRBs have known for years: For many, there’s a strong sensory component to the disorder.

A pair of studies published in 2017 and 2018 were the first to report that individuals with BFRBs have higher rates of sensory over-responsivity to external sensations than the general population. In other words, they respond intensely to things like sounds and textures. The phenomenon—also sometimes referred to as “sensory-integration dysfunction” or “sensory-processing disorder”—was first described in the 1970s by the occupational therapist Jean Ayres. Since then, sensory over-responsivity has been most frequently studied in association with autism, and more recently in OCD.

In one of the studies, people with trich were twice as likely to have severe to extreme sensory over-responsivity to touch and sound. One study participant described her struggle with clothing: “My tactile discomfort lies in how I feel in clothes. They always feel too tight and uncomfortable as soon as I step out of the house. For this reason, I only go out when absolutely necessary—school or work.”

Later that day, it occurred to me that I have had my own experiences with sensory over-responsivity. As a child, I found almost any type of clothing itchy: tights, cardigans, sweaters, sleeves that tapered into elasticated cuffs (as seemingly all kids’ clothes did in the late ’70s). I have a vague memory of being left standing in a department store after my mother had walked away, exasperated with trying to find me a winter coat.

Others at the conference share similar experiences: “I used to throw things at my brother, who was just regularly playing. I’d throw books at him because noises were too much,” says one woman who still struggles with high-pitched sounds. Like many others with trich, when she pulls her hair, she’s looking for a certain type.

“I’m looking for coarseness in those hairs ... I’m looking for hairs that aren’t straight, hairs that are curly, hairs that don’t feel right—that are too long or too short. For me, it’s a very tactile disorder,” she says.

When researchers talk about BFRBs, they often speak of “subtypes” to acknowledge, among other things, that people with BFRBs may pick and pull for very different reasons.

One person might pull her hair at night as a way of winding down for sleep. Another might pick his skin out of boredom. Another might pull out his eyelashes under stress. For some people, all these things and more might be triggers. Why? No one can say for sure, but many of my conversations with affected individuals included mention of the work of a psychologist named Fred Penzel.

In the early 2000s, Penzel introduced the stimulus-regulation model of trichotillomania, based on his work with patients.

“It would appear that pulling might, therefore, be an external attempt on the part of a genetically prone individual to regulate an internal state of sensory imbalance,” he writes.

According to this model, a person with a BFRB is exposed to the same levels of environmental stimulation as others, but their nervous system is unable to easily manage it. “It is as if the person is standing in the center of a seesaw, or on a high-wire, with overstimulation on one side, and understimulation on the other, and must lean in either direction (by pulling) at different times, to remain balanced,” he writes.

“Picking or pulling adds or subtracts stimulation,” says Karen Pickett, an Ohio-based therapist. “I have yet to find someone that this [model] doesn’t apply to, to some degree.” Why does this matter? Because the picking and pulling actually serve a purpose. This is why the behaviors can be so difficult to stop.

A number of studies have found that some individuals with BFRBs have difficulty regulating their emotions. A 2013 review notes that as a group, people with BFRBs have higher rates of psychiatric conditions such as depression and anxiety than the general population. In addition, many report that their BFRBs provide relief from negative emotions, including boredom, tension, anxiety, and frustration.

Several of the people I interviewed told me their BFRBs started during a period of negative emotion. Aneela Idnani started pulling her eyebrows and eyelashes as an adolescent, after moving to a new town where she felt like an outsider and was bullied at school. For her, pulling served as a coping mechanism.

A couple of years later, Idnani’s father died of cancer. “I didn’t know how to deal with it,” she says. “[As a society] we don’t talk about uncomfortable things, and so we have to find ways to deal with them.” She hid her condition into adulthood. Three years ago, she started seeing a psychologist, who helped her unpack some of her emotions.

Haley O’Sullivan started picking her skin at the age of 20, a year after a traumatic sexual experience. “It started with two hours in the mirror picking at ingrown hairs like on my armpits or my bikini line,” she recalls. “It was also picking at zits on my face and other places on my body.” For several years, O’Sullivan led a support group in Boston, and she’s working on starting a group in New Hampshire, where she lives now. She is careful to point out that not everyone with a BFRB has experienced trauma. In her case, however, skin picking is “my body’s way of trying to say, ‘Hey, I’m not okay.’” Skin picking creates a positive sensation for her, at least in the short term: “Obviously it doesn’t feel good emotionally afterward when you’re like, ‘Oh man, look at this damage I caused.’”

O’Sullivan has seen several therapists and has been successfully treated for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. But she says she feels a little stuck in her BFRB recovery. She has done a lot of research, but lacks access to a specialized clinician. There simply aren’t enough therapists with expertise, she says. And even once you find someone, the clinician may have a long waiting list and insurance might only cover a handful of sessions. “It’s not really conducive to a full recovery,” she says.

In many countries, including high-income places, there are treatment gaps for mental health.

I spoke with a graduate student from Scotland, Marta Isibor, who sought help for her own skin-picking disorder in her late 20s. Isibor was offered conventional cognitive behavioral therapy, which helped her understand why she picks, but she wasn’t offered treatments that place more emphasis on minimizing the repetitive behaviors—such as habit-reversal training, or the Comprehensive Model for Behavioral Treatment, a specific intervention created to treat BFRBs.

The U.K. lacks specialist clinics and expert BFRB researchers, says Isibor. In fact, after publishing a study on skin-picking disorder as a mature bachelor’s student, Isibor traveled the U.K. presenting posters at conferences run by the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh and the British Psychological Society, among others. Most of those present had never even heard of BFRBs, she says.

She had to explain the basics: symptoms, where BFRBs sit in the DSM, the difference between ordinary and clinical self-grooming. She says that people are often surprised to learn how common BFRBs are, and that people hide their condition due to shame. This may be especially true of people with skin-picking disorder, she speculates, because of its association with blood, scabs, germs, and infections.

O’Sullivan says: “You come to a place like this [the conference], and you’re finally with people who understand. But you still can’t escape the fact that once you leave here, people don’t know what it is you have.”

Currently, the treatment for BFRBs with the most empirical support is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy called habit-reversal training, developed in the 1970s as a treatment for tics. During this therapy, a person learns to recognize the context in which pulling or picking is most likely to occur. With this awareness, people can then plan to substitute a competing response. For example, when faced with an urge to pick, someone might instead make a fist, or play with a fidget toy. In some studies, more than half of adults with trich achieve short-term improvement. However, some find it difficult to maintain the results over time.

The psychologist Omar Rahman recently conducted a promising study of habit-reversal training in kids with trich. He says that the goal of the therapy is to give the brain an opportunity to become habituated to the urge, meaning you can ignore it or respond with a substitute behavior.

Over the years, Rahman has come to believe that there’s really no real way around this if you can’t learn to manage the urge, which may explain why habit-reversal training doesn’t help everyone, or why improvement doesn’t always last.

For this reason, researchers and clinicians have increasingly sought to augment habit-reversal training with other means of helping people with their urges. For example, mindfulness-based strategies can help a person observe and accept negative emotions, sensations and urges without needing to act on them by pulling or picking.

Christina Pearson stumbled into mindfulness in the early 1990s after a series of therapists and medications were unable to help her. “Nobody knew what to do,” she says. So she started paying attention, observing her thoughts, feelings, and muscle movements. “I’d been always seeking higher awareness,” she says, “but now I wanted to identify the roadmap that would free me from a behavioral prison.”

She notes that the kids who get BFRBs are sensitive and smart. “Do you want to drug that away? No. What you want to do is say, ‘Hey, how do I create the psychological trellis for this being to evolve and be of service to the world?’”

Around this time, the psychologist Charles Mansueto had been seeing BFRB clients and developed the Comprehensive Model for Behavioral Treatment (ComB). This model recognizes that a variety of triggers may cause someone to want to pick or pull: thoughts, emotions, sensory experiences, specific body movements (such as stroking one’s hair), and environment. Today, Mansueto and his colleagues are in the process of running a randomized controlled trial to test the approach.

“We may seem like we have it together now, but we haven’t always,” says Bridget Perez. She and her 19-year-old daughter Gessie are leading a conference session titled “Parent/Child Journey: Building a Relationship and Finding Acceptance.” They’re both wearing T-shirts that Gessie designed that say trichster on the front. The room is packed.

Bridget recalls one morning when Gessie was 14 and sitting at the table eating breakfast. “I’m standing over her, and I go, ‘Oh my God!’, because there was a huge bald spot in the back of her head.” Gessie had always had very long curly hair. But over the ensuing years, she went from a “gorgeous long-curly-haired girl to having bald spots, to hiding the bald spots, to the hair thinning out and just kind of hanging.”

“I screamed, I cried. I yelled. I mourned the loss of her hair,” says Bridget. Like many parents, her first response was to want to fix the problem.

Unlike an earlier generation of parents, Bridget knew the word trichotillomania and was able to use the internet to find out information. They attended their first TLC conference several years ago, says Bridget. She realized: “It’s not about the hair. It’s about being there for your children. Supporting them, loving them, no matter what they look like.”

Gessie agrees the first conference was life-changing. Living with trich had been hard. Even today, she has no eyebrows and keeps her hair short, but she considers herself in recovery “because trich doesn’t control my life anymore.” The pulling comes and goes, but she doesn’t focus on stopping.

“For me, cutting my hair, shaving my head, realizing that I’m not defined by my appearance was ... ”

“Was pivotal,” offers her mother.

They both agree that trich has made them stronger, individually and together.

Gessie says that after the first conference, she used social media to share her story. People from all over the world have reached out to ask her questions and offer their support.

“I can honestly say that I am thankful for this journey,” she says. “These friends are so much better than having hair.”

For all the obvious good that the TLC conference does, it’s important to note that it isn’t necessarily easy to attend, especially for first-timers. One mother I spoke with described her first conference as overwhelming. “I cried a lot,” she says. “You think you’re going to come and fix it, and then you realize that you’re in it for the long haul.”

And that long haul is not clearly mapped. After all, when children are sick, you take them to a doctor. But when your child is performing an unusual yet soothing behavior that lacks a simple cure, the choice of how to move forward is not clear-cut. Parents may feel torn about how much financial and emotional energy to invest in treatment compared to accepting the condition and supporting their child in other ways.

These tensions can play out in adults, too.

For example, many people with BFRBs say that complete abstinence from picking or pulling is an unhelpful goal that may magnify self-criticism and frustration. Yet, one woman spoke positively about her experiences in Hair-Pullers Anonymous, based on Alcoholics Anonymous. “We celebrate abstinence. Just think of any AA program,” she says. They use the same literature and spiritual tools. She joined the support group in January and says in the three months since that, “My hair pulling is down so much—you wouldn’t even believe it.” She has a sponsor she can call if she feels like she wants to pull her hair. And she’s also working on self-care, a big emphasis of TLC. “Maybe that’s why I’m having success,” she speculates, “because I’m hitting all these things.”

At the conference, the last session I go to is “Standing Tall in Our Awesomeness.” It’s led by Christina Pearson, who left TLC in 2013 and founded the Heart and Soul Academy in 2014. Roughly 20 kids are sitting in chairs in a horseshoe shape. I take a seat next to the girl with the Maple Leafs sweatshirt. She’s here, along with the rest of the kids from the charcoal drawing session as well as others up to the age of 14.

Pearson comes in with a pink fascinator atop her head, holding feathery string puppets. “I’m the lady who grew up just like you, and I started TLC,” she says. She greets each child individually.

Then she asks each kid what they liked most about the conference. Among the most common answers: making friends, everything, all of it. To one girl, whom Pearson seems to have spoken with before, she says, “You have a huge heart and a sensitive nervous system.” The girl appears to be holding back tears.

Next, Pearson pulls out a ribbon, gives the end to a child at the front of the horseshoe, then asks her to hold it and pass the rest around.

“Feel the ribbon in your hands. It is connected to each one of you.” I close my eyes. The ribbon is smooth. I’m thinking of the girl in the Maple Leafs sweatshirt, just a bit older than I was when I started pulling. Unexpectedly, I find myself holding back tears.

Pearson leads us up out of our chairs, towards the door: “This is your world,” she says, as we leave the conference room. I’m walking, holding onto the ribbon, surrounded on either side by kids who are three-quarters my height. Surrounded by kids in hats, with bald heads, kids who pick their skin. We walk out through the hotel lobby, past the people dining and reading. And outside the hotel, to a startling view of the San Francisco Bay.

Pearson turns her back to the water to face us. The sun is slowly climbing. Planes are taking off from the nearby airport. She asks us to stand on the Earth. Then she asks us to wiggle our bodies. “Close your eyes. What do you smell?” Then we do a wiggle again: “What do you hear?” We can do this any time, she tells us. Baby steps toward mindfulness.

Once we’re back in the room, Pearson asks the kids to write something that they like about themselves on a triangle of felt. Each goes around and says something.

One says, “Compassion.”

Pearson: “We develop incredibly deep compassion. Why? Because we know what it’s like to suffer. We know what it’s like to be different. And we can see that in other people.”

They start gluing sequins, puffy hearts, strips of ribbon onto their pennants.

Persistent. Wild. Compassionate. Brave.

“Here’s the thing about bravery,” says Pearson. “It doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you do something anyway.”

This post appears courtesy of  Mosaic.

Article source here:The Atlantic