ROADS TO RECOVERY: DO SOMETHING… ANYTHING…

People Know - Nervous Energy

While at the poetry reading yesterday, I noticed how almost all of the women around me, and one of the men, were "leaking energy" by wiggling their foot or moving their hands/fingers in some way. But I was sitting there STILL. One of the women wiggling her foot (actually swinging her leg from the knee down) has a Ph.D. in psychology! It showed me that a person can have all the knowledge about self-awareness and yet not be centered themselves. So much energy wasted on non-purposeful activity! I wonder what message our brain is sending to our wiggling foot or picking fingers to fire the activity. In the Emotional Intelligence tapes, the author says that every emotion is an impulse to act. What emotion precedes the impulse to pick?

As I was sitting at my job one day towards the beginning of my recovery, I was feeling exceptionally fidgety. I knew I could not pick at myself in front of my co-workers, nor did I want to. But I had this thought of - what if I never pick again…what am I going to do with my hands?

My first and best advice to you if you are having problems with your skin in any way is to STOP EVERYTHING you are doing to heal it! When you focus attention your attention on something, you magnify it and encourage its growth. Normally this is something that has a positive effect, such as focusing on meeting a goal on the job, paying really close attention to how you decorate that cake, or lavishing attention on your garden. But with habitual picking it has the opposite effect. I have found from personal experience that the more you think about your face, your hands, or picking, the more of a problem it becomes. Attention on the skin becomes self defeating - The more you obsess, the more you fret.

After I stopped picking I started to realize just how much ‘loose’ energy I was putting into the habit. The first few weeks were the hardest, because I literally had to retrain myself to ‘do’ something else. But in going through that process, miraculously my skin started to look better. Yes, I still got breakouts, but they didn’t have the same look anymore, There weren’t scabs on my face, just embarrassing pimples. And I eventually even got over being embarrassed by them. And my cuticles healed all by themselves. I actually did not cleanse my face on a daily basis. I washed it in the shower when I washed the rest of my body and hair ever 2 to 3 days or so. And that was it!

No nightly ritual, no toner, no moisturizer, no nothing. I gave my skin the message that I was giving up and letting it do its job again. And as I said within days I started noticing a difference. My partner remarked on how healthy my skin was looking.

Although I was not picking at my face any more, I found myself drawn to picking at my cuticles. That nervous energy had to go somewhere and it went to my hands. I would catch myself starting to pull on a loose cuticle end, only to admonish myself and stop. I knew I needed to do something with my energy. I needed to start some new habits.

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