Trust

Last week taught me that I need to listen to and TRUST my body. The human body is an amazing thing. Not listening to it gets us in all sorts of trouble. Not trusting it leads to issues like picking, I think. What does picking have to do with trust? Well, when I pick what I'm doing is exhibiting aggression towards my bumps, blemishes, and scabs. They have a purpose, though. They don't come out of nowhere, and if left alone, they will undergo a transformation. I get super impatient. But what has my impatience and interference ever brought me when it comes to my skin but misery? I've got to trust my skin to do its job, and support it in doing so, by eating right, resting, exercising, and covering it up and/or moisturizing it when it's called for, rather than attacking it in a misguided attempt to "fix" it. My skin is doing just what it needs to. It's time for me to get out of its way.

Appreciating Yourself

How does it feel to fail so often, in such a visible way? Sometimes it sucks. But looking back I do appreciate my persistence. I must've picked hundreds, if not thousands of times in my life. Let's say I've been picking for 20 years, an average of once a week. That's over a thousand times. Talk about an ingrained habit. Don't get me started on scars. But after all that time, I still haven't given up on a) being able to stop, and b) having functional, protective, if not beautiful skin. And I don't think I ever will. I pick my skin, but I do not just pick my skin - I work every day on not picking my skin.
"Finding your own true nature is one continuous mistake, and rather than that being a reason for depression or discouragement, it's actually the motivation." - Pema Chodron paraphrasing Suzuki Rossi in The Wisdom of No Escape

How to Not Pick

It's taken me years to realize that the only solution to not picking is to love what your skin does for you more than its imperfections. In order to love what your skin does for you you have to love yourself. You have to believe your life is worth protecting and worth living. It sounds very simple but it's actually not. You may have been raised by very critical people, who were not only very hard on themselves but who were hard on you too. You may have surrounded yourself with friends who were similar. Most likely, you tried to stop picking by forcing yourself to be "better" - by telling yourself that there was something wrong with you that you needed to fix. This is completely self-defeating. That attitude is exactly what leads to picking in the first place - my skin has imperfections and I need it to be perfect -> I have imperfections and I need to be perfect. Do you see where I'm going with this? The attitude you need to cultivate is actually: I am a good, worthwhile person. I deserve to treat myself well, and I deserve to be treated well. Now, I am not talking about self-indulgence. I am talking about making choices that support your health, which again goes back to your life being of value. Like it or not, we live our lives in this body; therefore, when we care about our lives, we take care of our bodies. Unfortunately, this is something no one else can tell you to do. When you are down on yourself and your life, someone else telling you to love yourself and to take care of yourself can sound like criticism, too.

Doing fine

I'm doing fine, these days. I am picking less and less. I don't like where my mind goes when I pick. It's not possible for me to pick and to feel at peace. Picking puts me into a scrunched up, stressed out, aggressive kind of mind frame. I don't want anything to do with that. And better, when I don't pick, I see my skin heal, and it's nice. I want to have clear, smooth skin. I want to be healthy. Health starts from the inside out. Mind first, body next. Then environment, including people. Get your mind right and keep it right. That's important.

Being Kind to Yourself

Self-improvement never ends but it's best not to be too aggressive about it. It can become an obsession and a source of beating up on yourself just like anything else. I pick my skin less, now, but I still do pick, sometimes. I'd like not to, but I'd like not to in a way that's kind to me. Honestly, what I believe has helped me the most with picking less over the years is just that - trying to be kinder to myself. I never understood what it meant to love yourself before. It sounded stupid. I don't like it when people talk about what they "deserve," for instance. However, I think there are things that we do that make us feel good, and things we do that don't, and I'd rather feel good, if I have the choice. Recently I've been paying more attention to my feelings and giving myself permission to make decisions that protect my well-being. I've realized I am actually extremely sensitive to external stimuli, including people. It has been tough for me to let myself remove myself from situations and people that and who don't have a positive influence on me. I have it ingrained in me - be tough, life is struggle, sacrifice your own needs and feelings for the sake of other's. If you can't deal with a situation or a particular person - it's your fault. Figure it out. I've realized though that me approaching things in this way has had little benefit. I'm just not that kind of warrior. My battles are not outside; they are within. I've made a good deal of progress in the past several years in becoming more patient and calm. However, I'm still a LONG way from being able to stay or insert myself in an adverse situation and to be unaffected. And you know what? That's okay. I am who I am, and I can strive to be better and to do better, but today, this is where I'm at. Today, I am a person who, after a stressful day, with lots on her mind, sometimes ends up picking at the blackheads on her forehead and her nose and chin. Sometimes I even end up picking at bumps on my arms or my legs, though that is increasingly rare. It's okay. Doing these things does not make me a bad person, and though I may not have the self-control I wish I had with regards to this, I have self-control in other areas. Perhaps my self-control is being exhausted on other things! Perhaps what I really need is just to relax, to do things I enjoy. I am always learning. My skin may be deteriorating, my body may be getting old, but I'm learning.

Momentum

There's no stopping progress. Once your skin starts healing it feels and looks so good compared to how it used to that there's no way to go back. Trust me. I have made peace with my skin as it is. Thank God I'm still relatively young so my skin regenerates at a decent rate. Not like it did when I was a teenager, but it's fine. I do not want to waste a single additional moment of my life stressing out about my skin or the way I treat it. Letting this go is sweet freedom.

Good news, I'm over it

Well yes, basically the title says it all. It's been a few days now since I said - Ok, that's it - I'm done! And I really am done. My skin is healing. Face faster than limbs, but it's all a matter of time. I may have scars forever. I don't care. Scars, freckles, wrinkles, blackheads, pimples. I do not care. Skin is not perfect, not if you're alive, but take care of it and it'll do its job. I'll try to write another update in some days or weeks. Time to relax...

Who You Really Are

So, I say that if you're picking you're out of alignment with who you are. You are resisting or avoiding something. The key is to find out what. It may be many things! Over the past three years I've changed dramatically. I've been through experiences that have each highlighted aspects of my personality that were no longer serving me. Lacking self-confidence. Feeling conflicted about my spirituality. Needing external validation. Trying to meet other people's standards. Giving myself too much of a hard time. Not trusting my intuition. Being overly critical and argumentative. Avoiding conflict. Feeling uncomfortable in my body. My goodness. Coming to grips with all of these things has been exhausting! And I still have further to go; this process is ongoing. However, every day, with every realization I have and every change that I go through - I feel more and more like who I really am. It's like layers and layers of junk are getting cleared away. Whereas before I felt at peace sometimes, rarely, now it's more often, and soon I'm positive it will become my default mode.

Do It for Yourself

This is a hard post, because I feel we've almost been programmed to want to make other people happy. It's like our parents were so scared of us becoming selfish and self-absorbed that they pushed us too far to the other extreme. Of course the irony is that if you consciously neglect the self, it will assert its needs subconsciously, which can play out in all sorts of messed up ways, including manipulation. It is much, much better to be aware of your wants and to be open about them than to find yourself trying to get them in roundabout ways. Anyway, I digress. When I first wanted to stop picking, I thought it would be most effective to do it for someone else. A number of people I've known and have cared about have wanted me to stop. Trying to stop for any of them didn't work, though. The thing is, I believe the essential problem - the root of picking, what sustains the habit over years - is a lack of self-love. The only person you can and should do it for is yourself. Because it's what you want and need and because it's good for you - you'll stop. The benefits for anyone else are only secondary. Do it for you.

I Would Rather Be...

When I feel myself getting pulled towards picking, I say to myself: "I would rather be..." Reading. Cooking. Showering. Going for a walk.  (Fill in the blank). Hurting myself is pretty much the last thing I feel like doing. And that's the now. I can apply it to tomorrow, also. I would rather be well-rested and to be one day further along in the healing process, than to be dead-tired and to have to starting over from Day Zero (again).

What Is vs. What Could Be

Have you ever had a horrible moment of realization when you see how you actually look, as a result of picking? A lot of times I see past the scabs and bumps and scars. Call it selective vision, if you will. But then sometimes, I let myself see, or I just can't avoid it. I took a photo of myself smiling, and I looked at it and saw the scabs on my forehead. I look down at my forearms, near my wrists, where my sleeves don't quite reach, and I see the dozens of tiny round scars - in various stages of healing - red and purple and lighter than skin tone. It can be pretty overwhelming and sometimes quite hopeless. However, I am a fighter, and I can also see how I could look, if I managed to stop. I can imagine my skin healing. I can imagine an end to the pain that I've learned to ignore for the most part but that every now and then I feel. This is what I want. To be healthy and free and more fully myself. I feel like I'm at a fraction of my potential and I'm so tired of being stuck there.

Stop Immediately.

I read an article this morning that explains what I've suspected for a long time - picking may cause depression. Picking causes inflammation in the body, and inflammation may be a source of depression. Talk about a vicious cycle. http://gu.com/p/44gj5/sbl

Other things! (You are more than this)

I hate a lot of things about picking. One of the worst things is the guilt associated with it. How heavy it becomes. How picking can come to define you. How you let it consume you. Whether you're in the middle of it, or you're not doing it at the moment. I am tired of thinking about picking. I'm tired of worrying about picking. I want to think about other things. I want to spend my energy on other things. I started a whole blog about overcoming picking. That shows how important it is to me - how much it's troubling me. I hate that. Never mind my poor skin - I want my mind and my energy back. And how, now? Now I will focus on doing what I want to do, rather than on not doing what I don't want to do. Doesn't that sound better?

Start Again

Start again, as many times as you need to. This is a new moment, this is a new moment, this is a new moment. Every moment is a moment you can start again. Your skin may be torn, red, bleeding, scabbed, scarred. Whatever stage it's in - it will get better. It can only get better. Let it do so. Resolve not to tear it open again. Resolve to let it stay closed, to let it take care of itself as it will. Support it in doing so. Eat healthy, sleep enough, don't fret over what you can't control. Take care of yourself, a little better every day, until it's a habit, until you don't have to think about it. Start again. Start now.

Incremental Change

Do not beat yourself up for not changing as fast as you'd like or as fast as others expect. Do not beat yourself up for repeating the things you never wanted to. Only you can judge how much progress you've made, and how much further you have to go. Congratulate yourself for small victories. Do not give up.

Or... Be Busy

I do not like being busy, but my job has become so demanding that I do not have a choice. My priority in my free time is feeding myself and trying to shift back, after focusing really intensely on something, to seeing - to being in - the environment I'm in (because being here as myself now is important but also so that I don't get a headache and actually feel relaxed enough to fall asleep at night). There's just no space for picking in my life right now, not even really to think about it. I'm committed to not picking when, inevitably, I find myself with some do-nothing time. I don't recommend keeping busy as a way to deal with problems - you're not really dealing with them by doing so, you're just avoiding them - however, I've said before that if the issue is that you have to obsess about something, it may as well be something productive. I felt like I was going in circles, getting nowhere. I was stuck! It's time now to move slowly but surely (or maybe incredibly quickly!) forward. Let's see what will happen, what life will bring.

No Other Way

I realized a few days ago that until I stop picking at my skin, my life is never going to go the way I'd like it to. I have to stop, or I'm stuck. It's that simple.
So far, telling myself, "I don't do that anymore," is working nicely. Picking is incongruent with who I've become, and my subsconscious seems receptive to this message.
I don't want to be stuck. I want to move on.

I Don't Do That Anymore

That picking thing?
"I don't do that anymore." - this is my new self-talk.

 

You Are Not a Victim

Life doesn't happen to you - you create your life.
Cast off your burdens, all that oppresses you - let what you do not want go. Do not destroy yourself.
What you choose to engage with, do so willingly, calmly, and patiently. Remember - it is a choice.
Everything changes - know what's inevitable. Don't convince yourself that what seems insurmountable is inevitable. Neither pretend that what's inevitable isn't - we all will die some day, sooner or later.
Enjoy life by really being in it - not by using recreation or busy-ness as a distraction from what you would rather not face, from what you need to accept and take on, or release.
Your time here is limited - use it well. If you knew you only had another year to live, what would you do with it? What really matters to you - what do you care about?