*Latest revision December 2008
Voices from the Past
by Brenda Horner
A Brief History
This Internet site was created in December 2008 and put online in January 2009. Today you have merely to type trichotillomania into a search engine to find lots of information and Internet sites for the same. But it wasn't always that way. There used to be only one message board for trichotillomania, and before that, as far as I know, there was nothing.
So this is a little history for those of you who are interested in such things. Along with a few voices from the past – the very early internet pioneers finding each other for the very first time. Everybody has a history, and so do we. There was a day when trichotillomania was unheard of, and those people who suffered from it truly thought that they were alone. We thought nobody else on the earth did what we did for if they did, wouldn't somebody have heard of it? Wouldn't it have a name? Wouldn't there be help for it? Many people think they are alone to this day – but thankfully, those numbers are getting smaller. Today you can type 'hair pulling' in to the internet and get a name for the disorder. There was a day not very long ago when there was nowhere on line to go for help. And a day not so very long before that when there was no on line at all. The computer age has brought us together in a way that nothing else ever could. We can remain anonymous, yet find others with whom to share at the same time. And finally, that pool of support grew until today where although there are still more questions than answers, at least we can find other people who pull out their hair. And when we get really brave, we can even meet them in person.
Even today, many people suffer in silence. Some still don't know it has a name. Many others know it has a name, but continue to suffer in silence for above all else, trichotillomania is a disorder shrouded by and hidden by secrecy, silence, and shame. Those have been it's most powerful weapons against us. It is time to take our power back. It is time to end the shame. It is time to provide information and support. It is time to ask for and receive help. It is time for the medical community to wake up to what trichotillomania is and to show compassion and offer true help to those of us who suffer from it. For we have suffered in silence, shame and fear for far too long. Far worse than the damage of pulling out our hair is the psychological trauma doing so has caused us. It is time to stop the blame and the shame. It is time to stop the silence.
This web site is one method of helping to end the silence. All of our informational pages and links, other than the message boards themselves, is open to public view. I keep our message boards private so that people can share among themselves what it's like to have trich, to offer support, and to share what helps while remaining out of the public view. And even among those of us who have it, anonymity is a must for many of us. For many of our members it is a very sensitive subject and not one they talk about freely. For their sakes, that portion of this site will remain private to members only.
Before this site came into being, I had a MSN group community, BrendaCsTrichPage. I started that board in July of 2000. I had no idea what I was creating. In fact, I was just using a MSN wizard to start a group and had no idea what it would even be. I thought it would be a personal web page on trich, thus the name 'Brenda C's Trich page. But as the wizard went along I got to select options like message boards and chat rooms and before I knew it, I had a MSN group community.
There was already another message board out there for trichotillomania. Some of the people here will still remember it as the Fairlite bulletin board. It was really the only other bulletin board, or message board, out there for people with trich. It was ran by a person who did not himself have trichotillomania, and had, in fact, started out as a bulletin board for people with OCD. Because so many people posted on that board about pulling out their hair, he eventually opened another board up just for trichotillomania. I offered my board as an alternative and a supplement to that bulletin board. That board was like a small town and with it there were cliques and groups and arguing as well as support, love, and friendships. And as a result, there were times when people would be banned who many of us would agree should not have been. My board was a place for those people to go. For everyone needed and deserved support. My board was the small alternative to that board. But a month after I opened my small MSN community, the Fairlite board closed down abruptly and without warning. The closing of Fairlite is what opened the door for my site to become the next big message board for trichotillomania. By the time it closed in January of 2009, we had over 5,800 members. It may take awhile, if ever, to come close to those numbers again, but the people are still out there. Most simply stopped going to the message boards at all – they got what they needed and they moved on. Others went to other boards, for there are more resources and choices now than there has ever been, and the list is growing. And that is a good thing. For ending the silence is what we all need to join together to do.
Finding Fairlite, November 1999
At 42 years old I had lived with a terrible secret for 30 years. Something I was always afraid people would notice. Something that kept me from keeping eye contact. Something I was ashamed of and couldn't explain. Something that kept me apart from other people, and made me afraid when I met new people. Would they notice? What would I say? Should I tell them? What will they think? It was something I did to myself yet didn't want to do. Something I couldn't stop doing. For I had no eyelashes, and for many years, off and on, I had no eyebrows either. My parents got angry at me for it. My brother laughed at me for it. My sister told on me for it. Some of my friends thought nothing of it. But I thought a lot of it. And I longed to find just one other person who did it. But even when occasionally I would see someone else without eyelashes, I assumed their reason was different than mine. Finally, at about 32 years old, I was sitting in the waiting room of a doctor's office reading magazines and found an article about hair pulling. It had a name! Trichtollomania. And it had an experimental drug treatment involving serotonin inhibitors. I rushed to finally tell my doctor about it. And she had heard of trichotillomania, but required a psychiatric visit to subscribe them to me! So I found another doctor and got my prescription. And it did nothing positive. It had a lot of negative side effects, and my pulling actually got worse. So I went to a hypnotherapist. She wasn't even able to get me to go under. So although I now had a name and had tried treatment, I was left with very little to go on and no support. None, that is, until November 1999 when I typed trichotillomania into a search engine and came up with the Trichotillomania Learning Center, (TLC) and the Fairlite bulletin board.
I checked both links, and found no 'cure' printed there. But I did find a bulletin board. And on it, I saw all sorts of people who like me, pulled out their own hair. I posted my first post and included my full name and asked for help. I scanned the posts looking for a cure and found none, so I posted to ask why. Surely with this many people together and comparing stories, someone had found something that worked! After I posted, I went and read more posts at realized that most everybody was anonymous. And here I was with both my first and last name posted! So I tried to find an address to write to them at and ask them to take my name off. But the people I wrote were not the ones that ran the Fairlite board. I wrote to the Trichotillomania Learning Center, thinking they were one and the same. I got a letter back telling me they weren't, but offering their resources to me. So I became a member of the TLC and waited for my information packet to come in the mail. And I looked for responses to my post on the bulletin board. And then I found the chat link.
I entered a room full of women. They were talking about their kids. They were laughing and having a good time. And finally I got frustrated and blurted out asking why nobody was talking about trich! So then they talked. And they talked. And I cried.
One woman was typing with gloves on her hands to try to help her keep them out of her hair. For she had huge bald patches on her head. Another woman had shaved her head because her pulling was so bad. Another was completely bald. One had no eyelashes or eyebrows. Tears streamed down my face. Not only was I not alone, most these women had suffered a great deal more than I had. And they were offering me their friendship and support. I went to my partner at the time, tears running down my face, and told her I had found other hair pullers and how I wasn't alone after all. She seemed supportive at first, but come to find out, she really didn't understand at all. The people online however, completely understood. Some became very good friends who I have to this day. And this experience was to change my life in more ways than I knew.
Fairlite had an Archives section that you could click on that stored all of the old posts. Posts from the very beginning. Posts going back all the way to July of 1995. It started out very small, then started to grow. In the very early days, nobody ever left their email address or any type of contact information. On those occasions when people wanted to connect, they would write to the board administrator he would then provide them with the email addresses by mutual consent. People were extremely private.
Today people are much less private than they used to be, and I have to warn minors especially not to give their personal information out on the internet. But you never used to have to warn anybody. People were just naturally cautious. Especially about this deep dark secret of theirs called trich. Today I am trying to bring some of that anonymity back by not having our email addresses automatically display on posts and by giving people control over how much of their personal information is revealed. But overall, people aren't as secretive about trich as they used to be, and that is a good thing. However, this is still the internet and since many of the people who post here are under 18 years of age, I think a little bit of anonymity is good.
Overall the groups of people you saw posting the most continued to change. I would start to recognize names of people who posted a lot and then their posts would slow down and eventually, you would hardly hear from that person again. With very few exceptions, the constant turnovers would bring in whole new groups of people. There are a very few from those old days who are still with us now, even on this board, but the majority of them seemed to just disappear. And I began to wonder why. Where did they go? What did they learn? What did they have to say? And where are they now? I didn't know how many of those questions I could answer, but I did know where to look to find them, and so I started reading the archives from beginning to end. Before I could finish, I found out that Fairlite was closing. We could not longer post to it, and could only view what was there for another week or so. So I skipped a few months in the middle, and read as much as I could. And from those pages I got to 'know' a lot people. People I would never meet and never talk to, yet know just the same through the words they left behind. And I found that many if not all of those words, echo's of the past, sound just the same as the voices we hear today. The same questions. The same insights. And the same trends. You, too, will experience the same thing the longer you stay on this board or any other. People come and people go. They learn what they learn on their journey, and they go on. But what they give and take with them long the way is a gift to us all.
Voices Past
The following are quotes from the old archives. I don't have them dated, but they are from the era between July 1995 and the end of 1996.
"I too have noticed the 'trance' phase. I haven't thought that much about it before, but I think that that phase is a big part of why I am compelled to do it--- to achieve that trance where I am totally and completely disassociated from my life, my feelings, and my very existence. It's like my entire mind is put on hold during that period-- it strikes me as an almost narcotic kind of effect. I think that if I am feeling anger, psychological pain, hurt, stress, fear, whatever, the pulling is an escape from that--this is the release from tension that the compulsion seems to give to me. I am always amazed how the time passes so quickly during this phase'"
"One of the things I have had to become in order to overcome trich is headstrong (pun intended). I used to be very meek and took all the abuse that was hurled my way. Trich only enhanced my feelings of inadequacy."
'I am not very good at expressing my feelings, and for me I feel that is a major part of the problem. I pull when I am feeling emotions that I cannot identify easily and therefore cannot deal with through proper channels. When I manage to get to a point when I feel in control of my life, I can stop pulling with very little problems. Once I feel I can not cope, pulling becomes automatic because I have internalized it as my 'coping mechanism'.
"Those of us with trich tend to be more sensitive and emotional than the general population. I have long believed that we are more compassionate, and caring than most people. When we love, we love completely. As a result, things bother us more than they do others. We are so sensitive that EVERYTHING affects us. Our mechanism for coping is to turn on ourselves. We are too caring to turn on others, so we focus on ourselves. It is the ultimate irony. We have the greatest compassion to love, but believe ourselves unworthy to be loved."
I have not learned to control pulling so much as I have learned to control the things leading up to it. As for being brave and strong, yes I am. We all are. It takes bravery and strength to grow up with trich and survive. We trichsters tend to think of ourselves as weak because of what the pulling does to our self-images, and because we pull. In truth, we are some of the strongest people on the face of the earth. To live with this disease, often in isolation, takes an incredible amount of strength. Just think of all the barriers we have to overcome just to function in the world."
"
I believe that if we could first reduce the 'other' major stressors in our lives (getting help for dealing with, or even getting rid of, bad relationships, real guilt, false guilt, unforgiving and suppressed anger, resentment, etc, and then learning how better to deal with the everyday annoyances by refocusing, exercising, and doing what you can, then accepting your own limits and not worrying about what you can't fix. Then trich would be at a disadvantage. As long as you think trich is your biggest problem, it will have you right where it wants you. If we don't strive for the ideal, we'll never attain anywhere near it."
"Trich is not something one gets cured of, it is something one learns to fight. We can only fight trich when we make it take a back seat in our lives, and all too often pulling 'just one' puts the focus back on trich and lets it hop back into place behind the wheel. Either because we are unable to stop at 'just one' and start pulling for the pleasure of it, or because we get so angry when we ruin a pull free streak and allow ourselves to start thinking we can never learn to control the pulling. Either way, trich becomes the focus again."
'I discovered my 'emotions' or 'moods' when pulling. For me, anxiety, tension, irritability, boredom, fatigue were my major triggers. I started to look at ways to reduce stress and anxiety in my life. Almost every book I read pointed to caffeine, sugar, alcohol, vitamin deficiencies, and lack of exercise as possible links/causes to stress and anxiety. Caffeine was usually sited as being one of the worst.'
"Get mad at trich, not at yourself. Your anger is constructive if focused in the right direction. Humor and feistiness are two of the best weapons I have discovered in battling trich."
"I don't believe there is a cure for trich because I believe trich is a bit like alcoholism. We can only learn to control it and be strong enough not to pull that first hair. Because once we pull that first hair it gets easier to pull another and another...etc. Even when we think we have this trich monster beat, it can rear it's ugly head again at any time. I believe it's a life-long struggle and that we all will be susceptible to it during our life time. I mean, once we've got it/or had it, we need to be aware of it and the sorts of feelings and situations which might trigger it off."
"All too often trich tricks us into thinking we are weak when, in fact, we are some of the toughest people on the face of this earth. Not in spite of, but because of trich. All the little day to day things that we must face and triumph over make us stronger. By interfering in our lives, trich slowly arms us with the very weapons we can use to slay it. Not everyone is ready to come to the battlefield at the same time, however, and not everyone chooses to fight in the same manner."
Where are they from?
From July 1995 through December 1996 I counted people from nearly every state in the United States, as well as 2 from Africa, 9 from Australia, 28 from Canada, 1 from Hong Kong, 1 from Israel, 1 from Mexico, 1 from Newfoundland, 1 from Spain, 1 from New Zealand, 1 from the UK, and 1 from Venezuela. Keep in mind, that this was only in the first year and half of the very first board.. when very few people were posting, and even FEWER were saying where they were from.. or even giving email addresses in a lot of cases. On my previous board, BrendaCsTrichPage, I knew trichsters from Ireland, England, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Israel, and Canada. This is a huge community. Are you alone? No. Not in this world, not in your country, and not even in your home town. Yet it's always felt that way, hasn't it? Why? Because we hide in shame, even from one another.
I truly believe that even the estimates of up to 10 million people in the United States pull their hair don't begin to touch on the real numbers. Because so many of us live in silence and shame. We pull out our own hair.. and we don't know why.. so we don't tell. In the last days of the board, it was said that there were 5000 posters/lurkers a month. To compare that with how small that site started out as, here are the numbers of new posters that I hand counted for those first early years. Between July 1995 and the end of that year, 75 'new trichsters' discovered the Fairlite bulletin board. By the end of 1996, 435 new trichsters had discovered the board. By comparison, within the first year of BrendaCsTrichPage, we had over 850 members. It opened in July of 2000 and closed in January of 2009. By the time it closed, we had almost 6000 members.
Where Did They Go?
Over the years I've learned that coming and going into online support groups for trich is as common as asking 'How Do I Stop?' But there was a time when the answer to that question really bugged me. All these members – why don't they post any more? Where did they go? So I asked the question in the form of a survey on my old BrendaCsTrichPage. I asked the lurkers why they don't post any more. And I sent emails out to some of the old posters from Fairlite. Where did they go? And why? Here are some of the responses.
"I know for me, it has been difficult to write to the board since overcoming the monster. People are in difference stages in the fight, and having overcome it, one wants desperately to help everyone else to reach the same point. It is a rather frustrating position to be in. Due to trich, we all tend to be very analytic and introspective of ourselves and what makes us tick. It is sometimes difficult not to project our own thoughts and not to think of others in the same terms with which we view ourselves. If trich is a symptom of different causes what may clear the symptoms of one sufferer may not have the same effect on another. Bit if you find something that clears your 'runny nose', you cannot help but suggest others try it, in the hope that they will find relief as well. One thing that has greatly helped me to continue to overcome the trich monster is something I refer to as a feist. If I am to be honest, feist is really anger. I basically got pissed off and said I am not going to take it anymore. Used constructively, anger can be a great tool, but one must take care to point it in the right direction. It is a very powerful emotion and in using it one must walk a very fine line. As of late, I've seen a lot of anger on the board. This is good, in many ways. It shows people are ready to fight. We need to remember where to direct the emotion. We should be fighting trich, not one another."
'Why did I leave the bb... It's been so long that I don't know if I really "know" anymore, but I think it was a combination of things. I found the bb in its infancy and everyone there was new and learning. It was a nice place to go for support, discovery and knowledge. As time went on it got busier, I got better and the dynamics of the bb changed. It wasn't the cozy supportive place it once was. It got so busy that it would take me too long to read all the posts (never mind respond to any) and I just didn't have the extra time (or energy) to devote to it. '
"I just couldn't be bothered any more - the emotional effort required to keep up with it all, to post and respond and cajole and comfort and share just all got too much. All this came about quite gradually, so I didn't feel the need to post and say anything like "I'm not going to post any more" - anyway, I've always found posters who do that are being overly melodramatic and 9 times out of 10 they come back and post again anyway. These days I am happy just skimming and reading a bit. It is quite nice be able to take part without becoming absolutely embroiled in it all ... I have a sneaking suspicion there are a LOT of lurkers just like me."
'It was to a point where I was spending nearly all my time responding to people and giving encouragement. I tried to avoid straying into topics I was not informed of so as not to mislead anyone in any way. If I saw a post about drug treatments, for example, I would not respond, because it is an area I am not familiar with. I think that happens a lot with people who frequent this forum. Most of us are aware that trich is often accompanied by very sensitive egos, and we would prefer not to respond at all, rather than respond in a way that someone might misunderstand and interpret as criticism. This is why I eventually decided to stop spending so much time on the board and writing to people here.'
'I doubt I would be where I am today if I had never discovered fairlite and had contact with other trichsters. It enlightened me (who ever said ignorance was bliss). I may no longer need the constant contact with other trichsters on the bb but they certainly helped me at the time....I used to be somewhat "obsessed" with the fairlite bb but at one point it became more toxic than helpful to me. I recognized that and didn't really want to be entangled in it any longer.'
'hi, I'm another 'oldie' on the bb. I discovered this bb over a year ago and wrote almost every day for about 6 months. It was very therapeutic for me and enabled me to get closer to myself, trich, etc. As I got better and some of the regulars I knew on the bb left, I didn't feel at home here anymore. I'm not one to read and not respond, and when I wrote and didn't get any response, I felt lonely. I knew it was time to move on.'
“I know I've said this a million times before but I look at trich as a type of addiction and I find some people trade off one addiction for another or sometimes just end up have multiples addictions. I think some people have addictive or obsessive personalities. At one point when I was really involved with the bb my obsession with it was almost worse than my pulling. I know many would argue with me but I don't think trich is all that different than any other vice or compulsion. I think when we numb or self-medicate ourselves with some type of vice to escape our emotions, boredom, etc. it becomes similar to an addiction whether it's compulsive eating, drinking, smoking, anger, control, nail biting, gambling, sex, starving themselves, pulling, picking, etc. etc. I think that's why its so important (for me anyway) to know, understand and accept myself....my WHOLE self....not just trich because trich is just a small part of who I am and I truly think that I pull based on emotion. I have had numerous doctors tell me I need to eliminate stress in my life....well I did that and I still had the menstrual problems and the pulling problems. I realized it wasn't the external stresses that caused my problems, it was internal...the way "I" dealt and coped with things. Avoidance is a big issue for me. I will avoid a situation but end up internalizing it....pushing away any uncomfortable feelings but they end up gnawing at me and I end up pulling because of them. The more I know, accept and understand myself the less I pull.
accept and understand myself the less I pull.”
Conclusion
One of the strongest tools we have in our battle against trichtillomania is support. Without it we can feel isolated, misunderstood, confused, and frustrated. Talking to others who share this disorder can help us feel 'normal' again. For me, it was the beginning of changes that were to change how I felt inside about myself and in turn how I allowed others to treat me. Eventually, I did enough self analysis to find out just who I was and how I got to be where I was. Trich wasn't even the focus anymore. Self discovery was. And with self discovery came changes. I stopped using drugs. I got out of an emotionally abusive relationship. I found out who Brenda was, and started living a life of my own, rather than of somebody else's making. I started out just another lash puller finding others for the very first time. And I started a journey that lead to self acceptance and awareness. I do not measure my success in how much I pull or whether or not I pull. I've gotten to a point in my life that whether or not I have eyelashes no longer matters to me as much as it once did. But I am now in my fifties. When I was younger, my lashless eyes had a major impact on my life. On how I viewed myself and on how comfortable I was with others. I had a lot of negative self talk because of it. I had a lot of insecurities because of it. I am to this day still learning how to overcome some of those negative effects.
Where ever your journey takes you, discovering that you are not alone is a big step in the right direction. Where you take it from there is completely up to you. The power is in your hands.
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