100 Changemakers for 100 days of BFRB Awareness
I wrote a play about trich. I spent the global pandemic devising a solo show about my most shameful secret, and since the fall of 2021, I’ve been performing it for live audiences around the country. Yeah, I’m surprised, too.
Hi, my name is Becca, and I’ve been living with trichotillomania – plus an (un)healthy dash of skin-picking and a sizable side of nail-biting – since I was thirteen years old. It started with tweezing my eyebrows when I was thirteen. What began as basic shaping became needing to remove every out-of-place hair until suddenly, there were none left. When I started pulling from my scalp at fifteen, I didn't even connect the two behaviors. I jokingly told a friend that I was so stressed with school that I was pulling my hair out. Little did I know how quickly things would spiral. In eight months, my long, thick, curly hair was gone. All of it. Surrounding my desk chair in the basement, carpeting the floors, filling up the bathroom trash, and tucked between the side of my bed and the wall. My biggest secret. My deepest shame. It followed me everywhere, and I couldn't stop.
I was pumped with medication, passed from psychiatrist to psychiatrist. I used every trick (heh) in the book trying to hide what I was doing. I convinced myself I was pulling it off, too (heh, I really can’t help myself). I was not. I look back at photos, and it’s the first thing I see. A skinny girl with very little hair, head covered in a bandana permanently stained with brown make-up. But I spoke to no one about it, and no one spoke to me. I would rather have crawled into a hole than talk about what was happening. I’ve never felt as small, helpless, and completely out of control as I did in those years. I’m still actively working through it in therapy.
Today, I’m a 40-year-old actor and producer living in New York City and talking about trich to journalists and with podcast hosts and on stage. In front of people. Whom I’ve invited. It still boggles my mind.
But even in my worst state, this was something I wanted to do. At seventeen, I thought to myself, “I should make this into a play. People should know about this disorder and what it’s like to live with it.” A story about hair-pulling, bad therapists, setbacks, shame, isolation, hope, self-hate, self-forgiveness, and ultimately finding a path to recovery.
It took twenty years to properly begin writing (with my two ingenious collaborators Jenn Haltman and Casey Pfeifer), and twenty months later, we had something ready to share. Since then, we’ve debuted at the United Solo Theatre Festival in NYC and won some awards. We’ve had three productions in the last eight months in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida. And hopefully, this is just the beginning.
And the best part? Talking to audience members afterward. Anytime I start to doubt the play or myself (and trust me, it happens constantly), I remember the beautiful, intimate interactions I've had with people. Those who simply ask for a hug. Those who tell me how this is going to change how they talk to people about mental health going forward. And those who take a breath and ask if they can tell me their secret.
Young Becca would never believe this is how I’m now spending my time. I used to think she’d be absolutely horrified – mortified really – that I was doing this by choice. But as I continue in my own recovery and how I relate to this “dreaded” not-so-secret secret of mine today, I’d like to think it would give her hope. Maybe she’d even be proud of me.
I’m proud of her.
Support BFRB Changemakers
BFRB Changemakers supports BFRB healing through community. Our mission is 3-fold:
- raise awareness of debilitating conditions of Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs) such as compulsive hair pulling (trichtotillomania), nail biting (onychophagia), and skin picking (dermatillomania),
- increase and improve access to care, and
- advance community recovery.
Through the BFRB Changemakers Training Academy we strive to increase access to care by offering Continuing Education training to new and seasoned mental health treatment professionals.
BFRB Changemakers is a 501c3 non-profit (EIN #93-1544492). Please make a donation to support these efforts!
