![]() ![]() My scars tend to fade, but over the years, I've avoided sex, swimming, parties, and brightly lit sporting events because I was embarrassed by the damage I'd done to my face. "It's when picking interferes with your life, and results in lesions that make you feel like a pariah, that it becomes a disorder." And the consequences can be serious: Grant says some patients need skin grafts because their mutilated skin can't heal others contract systemic infections after bacteria from under their fingernails get into their bloodstream. Grant, MD, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Chicago and chair of the scientific advisory board of the TLC Foundation for Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors. And at the restaurant where I used to work, I mangled a blemish so badly while on break that I had to cover it with the orange chalk we used to write out the daily specials. Await scab, tear it off to esh skin! Once, I had to wear a bandage on my chin after attempting to lance a pimple with a needle. I can't tell you how many times I've repeated these steps: Squeeze bump. ![]() I figure I've spent 15 minutes every night since then in front of the mirror, which means I've wasted about 2,192 hours of my life on this icky ritual. I started picking my skin when I was around 11. I'll continue to poke and prod at dozens of barely-there flaws until it's time to let my husband in the bathroom to brush his teeth-or I need to get the first aid kit to tend to the gory mess I've made. I'll scan for a blemish or a blocked pore, then attack. Never mind that it's still dark enough for a head lamp-I have to spackle the zit I've picked into scabrous oblivion. It's 5:40 A.M., and I'm applying concealer before a run.
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