Dermatophagia/dermatillomania?
I’m really interested in these disorders and their relationship to OCD. Dermatophagia is compulsively biting the skin, dermatillomania is picking. They come in many forms and are incredibly hard to treat. Current treatment is CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) sometimes combined with SSRIs. They are believed to be a form of OCD and are sometimes classified as body-focused repetitive disorders, or impulse-control disorders.
If you are suffering from one of these yourself, please give me as much info as you’re willing or able. Email is fine if preferred. I’d like to gather as many personal accounts as possible.
Thanks! I know there are lots of people out there who have this problem but don’t have a name for it, or think they’re the only one. I dealt with it in childhood and it reappears when I’m heavily stressed or tired and my hands are unoccupied.
Posted in cognitive treatment
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October 28th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
I am a skin picker from way back. I notice I do this when I am feeling stress, frustrated, angry or hopeless. I find it helpful to keep my hands busy while I am watching TV. If I keep the area of my body covered that I have a tendency to pick, this also helps. I hope you are doing OK. Good Luck.
November 7th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Hi I started biting my fingernails when I was six and easily broke the habit in a year. Another habit replaced it and has been a much bigger problem. I tear at the skin on my fingers. I bite them and pick them. This started when I was seven, and I am now sixteen. I have had absolutely no improvement. Certain months are better than others, but ultimately I am no closer to stopping than when I was seven. When I hav particularly bad days, to avoid further discoloration and scarring, every once in a while I make and extremely concentrated effort to stop. I have needed to spend a full fifteen minutes just staring at my hands to control myself. Then when I realize I still have homework to do and cant stare at my hands all day, I have to focus on homework and often give into the urge again. I am really concerned about why I have this urge. I want to know what is making me different that I cant control myself. If you have any more specific questions please email me and I will be happy to answer. Maybe we can both get the answers we are looking for.
November 9th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Hi, I can remember that I started to bite the skin around my nails when I was in Junior school, so I must have been around the age of 8 or 9. For the past 10 years or so I have been picking scabs on my head. At the moment, I have two scabs on my head about the size of a 5p, I have picked these scabs so much that the skin is indented. I have tried to stop doing this many times, but keep getting overwhelming urges to pick them. This is done every morning once they have healed, and throughout the day, they are really painful. I also admit that I pick any other scabs on my body as well, for months on end. Eventually I can let them heal but the scabs leave purple scars. I want to stop doing this awful habit, I feel so embarresed when I go to the hairdressers, and my partner wants me to stop. I am now 30.
December 6th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
About 10 years ago I noticed that I had calluses on most of the knuckles of my left hand (except thumb) and on the thumb and forefinger of my right hand.
I thought I was “cooking” my fingers with heat while holding hot dishes taken out of our new micro-wave oven. After a while I noticed that some of the calluses were in between my fingers - they would never touch a hot dish.
Eventually I noticed that I was chewing my fingers absentmindedly - and all the calluses lined up with my teeth, even the ones between my fingers. I had been nervously chewing my fingers and totally unaware of it. But the calluses showed that this was a frequent habit.
Sometimes I put a skin cream of some kind on my fingers to put myself off chewing them. But the next time I wash my hands, the skin-cream taste disappears and I would start chewing them again.
My fingers look a little unsightly, but I can’t say that they have ever been a disability. I would describe my dermatophagia as more of a “quirk” than a disorder. It may be related to OCD, but it is a “sub-clinical” variety: not important enough to require professional help.
I used to chew my fingernails when I was a child too. I am now in my 50s.
February 12th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
hi, im 16 and i have both dermatillomania and dermatophagia. I have had these as long as i can remember but since i started at Secondary school they have gotten much worse. the skin around my fingers is sore and shredded, much like the pictures on wikipedia. At times it is too painful to write.
When i pick my fingers it is similar to a trance i guess, i am not sure what is happening, i get entirely fixated upon the finger or fingers in question and zone out. If i dont pick or bite then my mind starts getting crowded and frantic, everything seems loud and my mind jumps around like its on hot coals.
Sometimes i scratch my arms and the back of my knees, and at times i have scratched deep gashes into my arm without realising it.I am currrently having to wear long sleeves to cover my latest scars so that i dont have to answer any questions, but my usual reply is that i burnt it on an ovenor something similar.
I have tried wearing gloves and kicking the habit, but i start feeling frantic and panicky and i get severely depressed until i pick again. I have tried all kinds of substitution methods so i stop picking, but none of them work, nor does simple determination. I think i either need therapy or something a little stronger but i dont think Mum can afford a therapist, and Dad wouldnt understand so i wont even bother asking him. I guess im going to be like this until after Uni and i get a job or something. I know it huhrts, and i dont want to be like this, but when im scratching or picking its like all my troubles melt away into nothing. I dont feel happy, but its like being able to close the door on all the bad stuf for just a little while longer.
I hope this helps you.
March 6th, 2010 at 11:18 am
hello , yes i have been biting the skin on my fingers since i had teeth. it is stress caused. and sometimes out of sheer bordom
March 10th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
i’ve not thought about getting help or researching before in the 30 years i have done it. diff parts of my fingers and mainly thumbs have been permanent scabs, between 20 and 50% of skin area - chew til they bleed, the trance. i have been in a permanent state of stopping and failing since the age my daughter, who has started doing it, 10. i have stopped for months at a time then gone gone back. i have hardly done it for 3 days now, took the huge plasters off my thumbs and right index finger yesterday - i wear them to heal the wounds and to stop the habit - i took to carrying them a while ago to put on when i started to slip, damage limitation. god i just pulled a dandruff scab off my head - i havent been to a hairdressers for 30 years cos of that habit, i cut my own hair. i feel,
in my experience, this needs to be managed perhaps by a group lifetime thing for some, like aa? i’m a father of three, an artist and, in as much as sufferers want it brought to attention, i want to get the thing helped. i suspect that the right psychology, combined with the various tips people are posting then who knows? after being clean for several months there comes a moment in me when i suddenly bite again as helpless as ever as if i had never stopped. when all the psychological mechanisms; awareness of impulse etc have faded i find myself as vulnerable as ever to that moment.
April 2nd, 2010 at 3:38 am
Well, I’m 12. I’ve been picking the skin around my nails and eating it since year 4. I’m in year eight now and it’s been 5 long years that I’ve been biting and eating them. It’s really embarrassing but not painful. It’s sort of a way of self-harming discreetly, but at least it has a name - Dermatophagia. I was seriously overjoyed that I’d found out I wasn’t the only sufferer in the UK. I really want to stop. Even my Mum says that it’s bad for me, but she suffers from dermatillomania (she picks at her scalp until there are red sores), but it isn’t really embarassing since it can be hidden by her hair. I try to stop, but it’s hard for me to survive without my condition! Any help?
April 7th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
I only just discovered the term Dermatophagia. My housemate picks out all her eyelashes and I really didn’t understand - I thought it was a bit mad that she couldn’t just STOP, but then I realised I suffer from exacty the same thing, just manifested differently!
I pick and bite at my lips and fingers constantly, until they bleed. I do it much more during periods of stress, but it’s generally when I’m sitting at my desk at work, reading, or watching TV. Once I completely peeled three finger tips right down to the creases - that was REALLY painful, and I had to tape them up (didn’t work because the dead skin under the plasters looked too tasty!!). I think I started doing it after I managed to give up biting my nails when I was 13 - it was like the biting got transfered from the nails to the skin around the nails/cuticles/fingertips.
People have always thought I’m batty for doing it, but until a few days ago I honestly thought nothing of it - just that it was a ‘bad habit’; and I wasn’t particularly concerned about how my fingers look. Once I learned that it was an actual condition, I became conscious of it, and realised I am literally doing it ALL THE TIME. If I deliberately stop myself picking my fingers, my hand automatically moves to my lips, to pick at them instead! (It kind of looks like I have coldsores a lot of the time) And if I do deliberately stop myself, I feel really agitated and frustrated.
Incidentally, in the past I have also suffered from some mildly obsessive behaviour, and periods of lowmood/depression. Maybe it’s all related. I dunno. But I actually wish I hadn’t discovered this word ‘Dermatophagia’ because now it is driving me insane!!
July 16th, 2010 at 7:59 pm
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August 22nd, 2010 at 4:34 pm
I cannot remember when I started biting my skin but it is bad. I eat it and think it tastes good. I am completely embarrassed about this, but I am constantly stressed and this is the only thing that relieves it. Lately I have been getting acrylic nails but they only last so long and they make my nails paper thin, not to mention the cost! Anyway, my mother has this same habit and has for most of her life. My mom is 54 years old and I think she will never be able to stop. This is very discouraging to me… If she can’t stop, how will I be able to? If anyone has any helpful suggestions I would appreciate it. I hope some day I am strong enough to stop. I really don’t want to have this habit when I have kids because I might pass it to them like my mother did. Good luck fellow biters!
August 23rd, 2010 at 8:34 pm
Hi,
I have been biting and picking the skin on my hands for as long as I can remember - as well as biting my nails, picking the skin on my face and also my gums. My hands look disgusting - my knuckles often look abnormally large because they have been bitten so often that they are all swollen with hard skin. I also often bite or pick until I bleed. I cannot seem to control this, I have tried several times to stop, but have never been successful as yet and doubt I ever will.
The feeling I get is a feeling of pain, but it is a ‘nice’ pain that I enjoy - it is soothing to me. Any time I have a scab - such as a spot on my face, I will pick at it as much as I possibly can. There has been times where I have picked at the skin on top of my nose so much that I cannot face anyone until the scab disappears - it’s very unsightly.
I bite the edges of my hands, the tips of my fingers, the edges of my fingers and my knuckles - and when i’m not biting i’m picking and pulling at my skin.
My mother says that I have done this since before I even had teeth, so I am not sure why I do it. I am now 29.
September 6th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Hi
I only just found out that there was a name for this and that I’m not the only one…
I’ve been biting the skin around my fingers since I was very young, I think I started doing it in year 3, I’m now year 10 and it has just got worse. It is particularly bad in my thumbs as I started biting the skin on the thumb joint and it just looks horrible and I’m always worried about how my fingers look especially when they’re wet.
Also, I have a habit of biting the skin on the inside of my mouth and lips. I am not sure it that is related to biting the skin on my fingers, but I think it is because it seems like a similar thing
xox
September 20th, 2010 at 11:43 am
I am reassured that this is a recognised condition. I have beaten myself up for years (physically and then mentally from the guilt and sense of being out of control). I had a happy childhood and loving parents. I can remember the doctor telling my parents when I was about 5 years old that I was going to get impetigo if I carried on picking my scabs, and since then it has got better and occassionally worse. I used a lot of recreational drugs while I was in my teens / 20s; I consider now that I was in part self medicating for my high levels of anxiety. Since I stopped taking recreational drugs and drinking heavily I think the dermatillomania has got worse. It only occurred to me to look online for this recently, and it has helped me to know I’m not alone. My partner of 4 years picks me up on it constantly, at least 6 - 10 times daily, but I still continue, often in secret. I am slightly overweight, but have always had a self image as being grossly overweight. Looking at the advice I have now seen online, I intend to seek help from a qualified cognative behavioural therapist, specifically around habit reversal training.