Stress caused by the day-to-day issues of home life and work can bring people to their breaking point. Many people struggle with the feeling of wanting to pull out their hair. Problems arise however when you reach the point where you actually do pull your hair out. The actual scientific word for hair pulling is trichotillomania. French dermatologist Hallopeau created the term in 1989 when he saw the results of hair pulling in his patients. The Trichotillomania Learning Center estimates that there are between 6 and 8 million Americans struggle with trichotillomania.

How To Know That You Suffer From Trichotillomania

So, if you have pulled your hair out in the past, how do you know for sure whether or not you have trichotillomania? DSM-IV, or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, offers five different symptoms of the disease.

The first is pulling out your hair repeatedly, leading to "noticeable" hair loss.

The next is a feeling of tension right before pulling out your hair or when in you "attempt to resist the behavior".

Third is a feeling of pleasure, or relief. The next two can be summed up in the following: the "disturbance" is not "better accounted for" by either a medical condition, such as a dermatological condition or another "mental disorder", and in addition the "disturbance causes impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning".

What You Should Know

There are several things that you need to know if you are struggling with this disorder. The first is that as mentioned above there are at least six to eight million other people going through the same thing. You are not alone. In addition, you need to understand trichotillomania. The Mayo Clinic offers that trichotillomania is not something that you choose to do. The hair pulling urge that you often feel, is very hard to overcome, so do not judge yourself for these feelings. Beware of how you approach your trichotillomania. Many people fall into a depression because of their trichotillomania. This with the combined physical traumas that your body goes through creates a problem that needs to be corrected.

How Does Hypnosis Work?

If you are dealing with trichotillomania, you need to get help. Hypnosis should definitely be considered. So how does it work? Contrary to popular belief, hypnosis does not equate to your eyes spinning in your head as a result or being put into a numb state by a dark figure. Instead, it is a process of tapping into your subconscious. What is your subconscious? It is the section of your brain that deals with the automatic actions you do throughout the day. Starting your car or taking a shower, for instance, have become immediate parts of us that do not require conscious thought.

In the normal day to day, you exist in your conscious brain, thinking through problems as they arise. When you sleep, your subconscious is allowed to reign. The process relaxes and subdues the conscious portion of your brain, allowing your subconscious portion to come forward.

While counseling may change behavior on a conscious level, hypnosis works to change the subconscious level. With a hypnotist, you will work to equate hair pulling with something negative, like nausea and when you feel the urge to pull out your hair, the negative will help you avoid it.

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