EMMA FAITH O’HEERON: When you pick, you feel ashamed of what you have done and you
have to look at the redness on your skin and the blood off your fingertips and you have
to acknowledge that you did that to yourself.
EMMA FAITH O’HEERON: I have Dermatillomania. It is a compulsive skin picking disorder.
Skin picking becomes a disorder when it affects your day-to-day life, it takes hours out of
your day, it takes months off of your life. Dermatillomania isn’t self-harm. It isn’t
a bad habit. It’s related to OCD. It’s a body focused repetitive behaviour.
EMMA FAITH O’HEERON: I remember symptoms from when I was a child and I was in my bed,
sleeping and I remember just scratching at mosquito bites.
FORREST O’HEERON: As a parent, it made me feel, like, something must be triggering it
as a coping mechanism and was there not something me as a parent like, fail to see or protect
her from. That’s kind of, an ongoing feeling too.
FORREST O’HEERON: And we want to try to fix things but there’s not always things
that can be fixed or easily fixed.
EMMA FAITH O’HEERON: Anyone who has Dermatillomania, probably takes anxiety medication
because we don’t want to go outside. Because whenever our skin is bad we don’t want to go to the
grocery store, we don’t want to see friends, we don’t want to see anyone. This helps
with me having to go to work every day and deal with that. There are some days where
I don’t pick; there are some days where I only pick at like, two things, like two
pimples or whatever. And then there are some days where I will spend two to three hours
in the bathroom. I don’t keep track of how long I have done it. I know the most I have
probably done is maybe, maybe about five hours. But some people pick for eight hours. When
I pick, I am looking for imperfections in my skin, anything that could be a bump, possibly
a pimple. Yeah, I will pick. I will sit on the countertop to get a closer look and I will pick for hours.
EMMA FAITH O’HEERON: When I was 12 years old, I got an infection on my forehead and
I went to the emergency room and this was probably the third time I went to a doctor,
and he said just to stop picking, like the three other doctors had told me before, just
to stop picking. Like it was easy as that, you know, and it isn’t. Every time I get
the urge to pick, I set a timer for thirty minutes. Every time I go to the bathroom,
I set a timer for ten minutes. I try to limit myself. I try to do those things. But there
are some days when I just ignore the timer. I was called the ‘Crater Face’ in high
school because all of, all of the indentions on my forehead, all of the indentions on my skin.
EMMA FAITH O’HEERON: I do speak to different people with the same condition. I have that
support group, Dermatillomania support group on Facebook. They are great. I love talking to them.
EMMA FAITH O’HEERON: My cat stops me from picking sometimes by just distracting me.
She comes up to me on the counter and she will just ask me for attention. She will paw
at me and for me, that’s like the best distraction, that’s the best way to like, wake me up.
It’s a challenge to be comfortable in your own skin, it’s a challenge to look yourself
in the mirror and be okay with what you have done. My scars, I love them and I accept them as a part of myself.