[ mh / tmi / mute / cw: skin things ] i think i've developed or circled back to a stim and hmmm i don't love it

why this i dunno it's helpful to get thoughts out of my brain ??

anyway methinks perhaps it is time for honesty hours and be like
maybe you have a not good skin picking / ocd wrt skin thing so i can deal with it because it's becoming actually annoying lol

first it was my cuticles i get fixated on my cuticles because they feel dry and hard and uncomfortable to me all the time and i dunno how to remedy this exactly beyond using a scrub everyday + moisturiser

then i got a cut on my face and it scabbed like in the crease between my nose and the rest of my face and there's like a hard scratchy scab there and i have not been able to resist messing with it for days

and the same thing happens to my ears because my ears will get itchy because of my allergies and then i will like hallucinate that feeling and pick and by the act of picking at it create the problem i imagined and etc etc this goes on and it sucks

Ahh, dermatillomania

oh is that what it's called

yeah i have the same issue and it sucks, i tried wearing gloves so at least if i kept going at my face it wouldn't do so much damage but then i can't. use my computer

IDK if it qualifies as a stim or an OCD or if it just depends who you are or what the motivation is. I am a cuticle picker because I hate the lack of smoothness, and the only way around that is to use Burt’s Bees cuticle cream several times a day and bandage any cuticles that get really torn up.

ooh i'll have to try that

and yeah i saw the gloves suggestion and also to clip my nails but i'm like lol i use my nails for other things too I'D RATHER NOT

YEAH my nails grow super quickly anyway so it wouldn't work so well for me

i do find moisturiser tends to work for areas where it's more about flakiness or something, i have kind of a rough patch on my chest because i run my nails there when i'm anxious sometimes and moisturising that has made it less noticeable and made me less likely to damage it more than just the habit does

i know that's what makes me fixate on my fingernails for sure and i try to do like... regular preventative type manicures but i haven't found whatever my magic ah hah fix for that is

Definitely the Burt’s Bees cuticle cream, also possibly a good lotion like O’Keefe’s Working Hands or some kind of Shea hand cream.

I get these Band-Aid sport bandages that stick a little better than the regular kind and are made of thin soft foam, and I use that with an antibacterial ointment (not cream, because I want it to be like a cuticle balm)... if they’re getting scabby or bleeding.

You can also hit up r/calmhands-- it’s a sub for this and for nail biting.

ohhh

(Join meeeee)

i appreciate that thanks!

Glass files will be recced a lot and I just saw someone also rec a glass cuticle pusher.

those seem like they'd be a lot more gentle than the metal

Oh, yeah, metal isn’t very good. Glass maintains its grain, and you can use the cuticle pushers to gently sand rough edges. (I also gently sand off some dry skin with the glass file sometimes if I need to.)

I also have cuticle nippers, but it’s best not to keep those too handy.

Use them to keep hangnails from being tuggable or getting worse. Don’t use them to try to clean up too much. They can become picking implements if you’re not careful.

i've had a pair of those for awhile but i've pinched myself too many times to overuse because there is a direct and immediate punishment for that lmao