Carmel was nine when she began pulling out her eyelashes

By Evelyn Lewin July 18, 2021 â€" 5.02am

When Carmel was nine years old, she began pulling out her eyelashes because she found it relaxing. By the age of 14, she says the habit had “really set in”.

Carmel’s home life was “volatile”, and she turned to the habit to “soothe” her when she was stressed. While Carmel found the act relaxing, she hated its effect on her appearance, and felt deep shame and embarrassment about her inability to stop.

Trichotillomania, a “repetitive compulsion” to pull out hair, affects 2 to 3 per cent of the population.Credit:Stocksy

It wasn’t until she was 23 that Carmel first heard there was a name for her condition. Lying on her bed, feeling depressed, she flicked on the radio and happened to tune in to a segment about obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). At the end of it, trichotillomania was mentioned. “And that was the very first time I’d heard of it,” says Carmel.

Dr Imogen Rehm, a clinical psychologist at SANE Australia who conducts research into trichotillomania, says it’s a mental health condition in which people have a “repetitive compulsion” to pull out their own hair. Some feel compelled to pull out the hair on their head, while others are drawn to their lashes and eyebrows, but she says it can affect any body part.

While Carmel hadn’t heard of trichotillomania until she was in her 20s, Dr Rehm says it’s “far more common than we think”, affecting 2 to 3 per cent of the population. It affects men and women equally, but women are more likely to seek help.

And people with the condition might be experiencing a worsening of symptoms during the pandemic. American research from December 2020 found a 67.2 per cent increase in symptoms in people with “body focused repetitive behaviour” (BFRB), such as trichotillomania and skin picking.

The condition can be extremely distressing but Dr Rehm says there is help available. The first line of treatment is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which helps build awareness of the behaviour as well as identifying and modifying triggers.

Therapy can be very effective, Dr Rehm says, with research finding that between 65 and 85 per cent of people respond “really well” to CBT. She says it takes an average of 10 sessions to see an improvement and that peer support groups and medication can also be of value.

However, she says the definition of “recovery” varies. “For some people, recovery involves never again pulling out a hair and living life free of trichotillomania. But for others, recovery means learning to live with hair pulling at a reduced severity or intensity, while focusing on other things that make life enjoyable or meaningful.”

Carmel, now 53, is in a “much better place” when it comes to her condition. She says that it took years of seeing a psychologist, as well as attending “trauma-informed and emotion-focused therapy”, to get to this point.

Joining peer-support groups also helped â€" for years Carmel thought she was “the only person in the world” who felt compelled to pull out her own hair and was soothed to find she was far from alone. “When you’re in a room full of people with trichotillomania, you kind of go, ‘Wow, we couldn’t have thought this up on our own.’ ”

Carmel occasionally has a niggling desire to pull out her lashes or eyebrows. But she no longer feels compelled to succumb to the urges.

“I can manage it,” she says. “It doesn’t impact my life in a detrimental way like it did when I was younger.”

This article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age on sale July 18. To read more from Sunday Life, visit The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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