Does anyone else do this?

memories...yes, i used to yank out my eye lashes --- the lashes, not the brows... i did it when i was a kid. i'd forgotten all about it. i don't think it's self harm.....

Want to just put one last time, im not trying to imply you can just easily shrug on and off stims, my gaurdians didnt just say, ”oh you shouldnt do that dear” and i just stopped and started hair pulling instead. My home life was very....volatile for years so it was necessary for my well being to try and mask and hide things as much as possible, and I definitely was far from an expert masker, plenty of slip ups, melt downs and shame but i felt like ...not literally life or death but pretty close, so hair pulling was one major adjustment i made to try and help make family life smoother and possible for me. And it definitely took me time to stop too.

UPDATE: when writing the original post in this discussion, i had not at all started seeking an asd diagnosis, I had joined this website to read and interact because i had suspicions i had asd but wanted to learn more, 

i looked into everyones advise, did more research into what i had intially heard about this being a form of stimming and how other people with autism stim and i learned a lot.

this is how i stopped pulling my hair and this might be long ... but considering how detrimental this stim was to my confidence, well being and even causing  soreness and inflammation and irritation, even bleeding in the sights i started pulling, if i can help even one person learn to shift this behavior, who wants to stop, then i will write even if its a 150 page dissertation’s length.

1、I started at first by continuing to play with my tangle jr fidget. Even though i did not use it to replace hair pulling at first, i figured i’d build up the habit of using it regularly so that it felt like a more comfortable action for me to take rather than “forced” use of the tangle.

2、I researched stimming more. I went on youtube and listened to other people describe their stim’s and what stimming was and how it helped them. I started to really connect with what they said though i hadnt been expressing my stim of hair pulling the same ways they stimmed. I also researched “stim management”, though the world shouldnt need people to hide behaviors that are natural to them, there is still advice on how, so i did read into it to see if it was even possible to redirect these behaviors in any capacity. I did not want to make myself a different person, i just did not want to actually cause myself the physical pain and harm i was causing.

3. I reflected on why  this behavior started becoming so prominent when it did. It was a long time ago but based on the questions I asked adults who raised me and based on what i could remember it seems, that while i always masked well, i always had exhbitied behaviors that seem to be different  form of stims, that while tolerated when i was a really little, by the time is was in first grade (6/7 years old) the adults in my life where starting to be more strict in punishing my “unruly, odd behavior” because i was getting to old to be so weird. So i think that in an effort to mask those behaviors, without realizing i replaced it with this more subtle repetitive behavior

4. as i got used to using my tangle jr, i started making active use of it when i felt anxious, which is when my hair pulling was more severe. Again people tend to stim more when they are getting overwhelming input/emotion as i read, so i worked to identify those times and start to replace it with the tangle jr. I also read someone’s comment to mimick the hair pulling action (pinching and pulling) on something that wasn’t me and that also helped.

5、 finally i started trying to “re-enact” the behaviors i was told i did when i was really little and also started trying the stims other people mentioned, to look for one that gave me the same feeling that handled my internal feeling. Obviously you cant just perform any stim, as a stim is something your body will naturally find helps it, so not the same thing for every person. most stims i’d heard of didnt do anything for me at all, they were not natural for me, but one that i had done when i was really little and also heard worked for other people, was shaking out my hands and moving my fingers. I also found someone mention tapping their chest repeatedly which was not a behavior i had had before but i also felt helpful sometimes. I also have been shamed in my family for using my voice but in private I allowed myself to use my voice when i felt like it. That was hard to get used to as i had been taught so much how i shouldn't but that was also super helpful for me.

6. Between identifying my feelings actively, and slowly making the habit to include fidget toys and other stims that helped me, i was eventually able to stop pulling out my hair. It’s been a month and in that month I have only pulled out 5 strands of hair, when i used to pull out at least 50 strands a day, every single  day without fail.

It was not an easy process but i learned about my natural self and am so grateful i did.

Oh yeah, that is called dermatillomania, it falls into the same category as trichotillomania, BFRB - body focused repetitive behaviors. When not a selfharm behavior it can be linked to autism, adhd, and/or ocd

i actually have been doing the pulling threads out of fabric thing lately and it helped a lot! So thank you ~

Yeah I pull my eyelashes out a bit, but it's not much. What is a problem for me is picking at the skin on my arms and legs. I think I sometimes do it to stim, sometimes to feel pain, but mostly to try to 'fix' it when my skin feels bumpy from previous scabs or scars (very bad idea!).

My best advice would be to make sure you have a variety of different stimming things always available in your pocket/around the house. Rubber bands or silly putty might satisfy the pulling urge better than your twisty toy. Or you could find something that you can destroy. Maybe pulling threads out of a piece of fabric would feel similar to pulling your eyelashes out?

I go through my hair if that makes sense sometimes pulling out (without intent of doing so) but not eye lashes. I noticed I do it either when stressed or bored but more recently i found fidget spinners/ Rubik’s cube/ the tangle helpful and haven’t done it much. I didn’t know this might be stimming? I didn’t think I did stimming. I recommend maybe trying one of the fidget toys I suggested. They were helpful to me

this may be a useful read on trichotillomania and autism

www.trichstop.com/trichotillomania-and-autism

there is a test at the bottom that measures how severe your hair pulling is 

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/trichotillomania/pages/introduction.aspx

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mMLSFVuZQE

This guy does it - he is the best surfer on the planet who noone has heard of :)

Thanks! Her name is Nayeon from twice. She is one of my favourites from her group so i figured who better to represent me :) 

nice icon/image  

Oh gosh, good thing that you stopped then! Not judging, just that people with trichotillomania have had to have surgery before for hair blockages in their intestines. If you hadn't stopped you could have had such a health issue so it's good that you did not face such a thing

I also used to bite my hair.

I have no idea how much I must have swallowed.

It's good to know you can grow out of it. I'm about to be out of my teens in a few months but even if it takes me a bit longer, I've feared in the past that I'd be stuck like this forever...or until I was bald at least. So certainly reassuring to hear.

I will definitely try that! thank you for the suggestion

u are getting feedback from the pain so u need to go down the self harm pain path to investigate for solutions. I did a small amount ofself harm and to be honest a small amount is not a big issue.  

one great solution is to have comfortable snug elastic bands around each wrist u can use to pull and ping your wrist and create a sting like pain. So when u get the urge to pull your hair try the elastic bands and see if you can substitute then into place 

Well, this brings back memories.  I used to pull my hair out from very early childhood.  I never knew why.  Now that you mention it as a form of stimming, it makes sense.  I think it was a form of stress relief because I couldn't communicate in conventional ways.

I don't remember when I stopped.  I think I just grew out of it while in my teens.

Now I just pull out my  eyelashes occasionally  with tweezers, while looking for white hairs in the mirror.