CAUSES: HOLISTIC CAUSES
The Critical Mother and Father
Brought Us Up To Be Perfectionists
Body Syndromes
There was a point in my life when I broke up with my first love. I was about 22-23 in college and single. I was living at home with my parents and was also having really serious problems with them. So it was a very bad period of my life. I had a huge painful zit on my chin. It was pretty late at night and my car was in the shop and I remember pleading with my father if I could borrow his car to go to an all night pharmacy to get some ‘boil ease’ cream. And he was really cruel and would not let me borrow his car, even though I was crying and begging.
I know I had started ‘working’ on my skin by that point. It started becoming an issue and a problem then, and something I had to start covering up.
The issue of the obsessive picker is twofold, there is the physical level – the actual breakouts – and then there is the desire to do something about them.
So many times we feel a need into display a perfect façade to the world. The media advertises a way of life where happiness depends on having the perfect body, the perfect family, the perfect home, the perfect life. How our parents teach us to deal with life’s imperfections is pivotal for how we respond to them when they happen.
As I began to uncover my own tendencies to pick I found that my head needed to understand what my skin is doing. My head didn’t believe my skin knew how to take care of itself… so thus I began my own intervention. My proof was that it broke out in the first place. What I couldn’t see towards the beginning of my obsession was that the problem was way more than skin deep.
I started to create my own vicious cycle. As I began to look more and more closely for the imperfections of my skin and try to ‘fix’ them, I created more and more problematic skin.
Body Syndromes – Metaphysical Causes
Metaphysical healers look to underlying emotional issues to help cure physical disturbances created by the negative emotions. There are several different emotional levels that may play into the picker’s emotional constitution.
Many metaphysicians believe that illness that involves the hands doing something is called a “fighting syndrome.” Where one feels un-empowered or angry about something, we do things with our hands to overcome our feelings of being out of control.
Some metaphysicians believe that acne is about not accepting the self or disliking the self. Self inflicted wounds whether pulling at cuticles or picking at scabs or pimples may be attempts to atone for sin of anger, love, and sexuality among other things. There can be is an incredible sense of psychic purification and accomplishment after a session of picking.
Many people who hurt themselves, such as cutters, do so in a private hidden area. When self inflicted wounds are done in a prominent area such as the face, it clearly sends a message out to the world. It may mean that they literally can’t face the world. Or it could be they subconsciously wish to expose their pain in a very public way.
Many people have parents who only displayed love or empathy when they were sick or injured. Thus they create a situation within the body that tells the world that they are seeking care or empathy or nurturing.
Body Syndromes – Control
Janet Jackson said it best, “I wanna be the one in control.”
I never considered myself a victim in the commonly accepted sense of the word. Although later in my life I eventually uncovered latent areas where I allowed myself to be victimized. But essentially I think of myself a reasonably assertive go getter. I worked myself through a good college, volunteer in my community and work my behind off to do the best job possible for my clients.
Many of the people I interviewed for this book were of the same nature. My conclusion… habitual picker often equals overachiever.
Some of the basic issues for skin pickers are control and trust: a need to exert control over our bodies and a lack of trust in the self’s ability to heal itself. You end up feeling a need to control the body through action.
As I have mentioned earlier in this book, one of the most effective ways to gain control over something is to have knowledge and understanding of it.
So if you are a control freak or even a closet control freak, the way to heal the obsession of face picking through metaphysics is to uncover the emotional roots of the problem and then begin the process of turning negative thoughts into positive actions. Knowledge will put you in the driver’s seat, not picking.
