A Call to Freedom
by Trich Whisperer
Reprinted from the TLC Newsletter, InTouch, #60 © 2011
© Trichotillomania Learning Center, Inc. 2011. All Rights Reserved
I really don’t remember the first time I met my nameless, faceless friend. He was remarkably unexceptional, simply offering relief when my eyes became unbearably itchy from allergies. From him, I learned that the best reprieve was found in pulling out my eyelashes. I think we must have become acquainted in third grade during allergy season because by the time I entered fourth grade, I had no eyelashes. That year, my classmates nicknamed me “Snake Eyes." The nickname and almost daily teasing lasted for several years and I quickly discovered that my friend offered relief from more than just itchy eyes.
My mysterious friend became my worst enemy on semester exam day in eighth grade. It was the winter of 1981. I had just completed my science exam in white-haired, red-faced Mr. Conley’s class. I was sitting at the shellacked brown wooden table staring intently out the window and worrying about next period’s Ohio history exam – the last exam of the day but the one for which I was least prepared. My fingers traced across the texture of the carvings on the table left by students past. Some carvings were shallow, like scratches left by absentminded doodlers. Others were deep, intentional, created by angry artists lacking a canvas. At some point, my hand drifted from exploring the texture of the carvings to exploring the texture of my hair. And I started to pull.
The bell rang, I went on to Ohio history, and started the exam. I continued pulling my hair, smitten by the new comfort my friend brought me. The final bell rang, and as we filed out of the classroom to the buses, my classmate “Vicky” behind me observed matter-of-factly: “Tina, do you know you have a bald spot?” A sickness settled in the pit of my stomach as my nameless, faceless friend stepped aside just long enough to allow Shame to link us together with binding chains.
I hated my shadowy friend, but I “knew” I needed him like an abused woman “knows” she needs her abuser. Perhaps I learned this belief – this enslavement to destruction —from being raised in a home with brutal abuse. In our home, violence coexisted with love and earnest attempts to love. My mother would secretly braid my hair for me before school to cover my baldness. It was “our secret." One morning, during an argument with my father, she called him into the bathroom where we were, took down my hair that she had braided and exclaimed “Do you see what you’re doing to our daughter?” At the next extended family get-together, my father attempted to “help” me stop by teasing me about my baldness in front of everyone. The urge to pull was my nameless friend’s silent call to quiet safety, away from my world where nothing was quiet or safe.
I graduated high school a year ahead of everyone my age and immediately moved away from home. Four years later, I married right back into what I left and remained in a mutually physically and verbally violent marriage for seven years. My husband knew about my pulling, which had worsened through the course of our turbulent marriage, which included the birth of two children. After our divorce, I returned full-time to the workforce and eventually obtained a prominent leadership position within the community. He and his wife used their knowledge of my pulling behavior to slander me. I feared they were right – that I was “crazy” – and I pulled even more, eventually requiring a hairpiece to cover my baldness. If any of my colleagues ever heard the rumors, it was never discussed, but I always feared they knew.
I didn’t tell another man about my disorder, and I never let another man see the “bald” me. Instead, I initiated sex in my post-divorce relationships so that I could feel loved and accepted. The illusion always dissipated, eventually leaving me lonelier and emptier than before. Ironically, I ended every relationship because I felt unloved and unaccepted.
After more than 20 years of pulling… and braiding…and strategically combing…and hairspraying…and covering…and hiding…I entered counseling and learned I wasn’t the only one who pulled. I learned my nameless, faceless Significant Other had a name. His name was Trichotillomania – and “Trich” was betrothed to millions of others in the dark dungeon of secrecy, isolation, and Shame.
I determined to kill Trich – the One I hated to love and loved to hate -- more times than I determined to live, I think. I tried everything I could fathom to end our relationship. I researched him and analyzed him. I drugged him legally and, when that didn’t work, illegally. I tried “exorcising” my “demon” through prayer and scripture memorization. I tried “breaking up” with him through goodbye letters. Nothing worked, and I fell deeper into isolation and Shame every time I tried and failed. As much as I was afraid of Trich and wanted to be rid of him for good, he had been a part of my life for 30 years. I knew him and he knew, really knew, me. This One-I hated-to-love-and-loved-to-hate and I were lovers, comfortably at war.
It was 2007 when I decided to give medication a try. Dr. Flueckiger -- the kind, gentle man who was my psychiatrist -- reminded me one day of the truth I already knew but had not faced: that there was no known cure for Trichotillomania and that I may struggle with the urge to pull for the rest of my life. He then suggested the horrific notion that perhaps I first needed to accept myself with Trichotillomania, to see that my worth was not defined by the disorder. I wept bitter tears sitting in front of him, angry at the thought of never being rid of Trich but mainly because I knew his words were Truth that I longed to but could not yet embrace.
I left his office that day and continued to fight Trich my way. I lost every time. Even the times I didn’t pull, I still lost because I knew it was just a matter of time before the ever-present urge to pull would wear me down and I would pull again. I was lost - lost in the dungeon of Shame, hiding the truth about myself from others and from myself. As for my faith, how was I to place my confidence in a God who claimed to be both Sovereign and Perfect Love but who appeared to be either powerless or without compassion? If He were love, then maybe He didn’t have the power to set me free. If He were all-powerful, then maybe I had wandered too far and He had turned His face from me. I vacillated between confused anger toward God and faithless sorrow over what I couldn’t understand. But I kept fighting and searching in the dark.
Dawn broke suddenly on March 4, 2010. My coworkers were raving at the office about my new “hair”, which was actually a wig. Suddenly exhausted by The Lie, I blurted out my ugly truth. To my amazement, they responded with love and acceptance. The chains of Shame that had bound me for 31 years in that moment fell away. One of them said to me: “Tina, I have always thought you were beautiful, but your courage has made you even more beautiful to me.” A miracle happened that day; I could believe her. I could almost hear the click of shackles as they opened and the heavy, cold clinking of thick chains as they fell around my feet. In that single moment, I knew I was free.
Dr. Flueckiger’s words about the importance of learning the truth about my worth apart from Trich before entering the battle against it came flooding back to me. Exhilarated by the fresh air of freedom, I wanted every other person bound in Shame by Trichotillomania to have what I had just been given. I decided I’d start with those in my world. I would start a support group in Indiana.
But how would I find the others? Statistically, 4 out of every 100 people have Trichotillomania. US Census data provided Indiana’s population, which meant there were up to 200,000 others in Indiana suffering with Trichotillomania. I knew they were all around me – in Walmart, in church, on my Facebook page -- but how would we know each other? Shame’s dungeon is silent and too dark to see anyone else’s face.
I learned that the Trichotillomania Learning Center (TLC) was holding a national conference in Dallas, Texas, only several weeks away. I needed to go. I needed to learn, to gather information and tools, and I needed to experience meeting someone else – anyone else – who shared my struggle. Being a single parent on a single income, I simply didn’t have the budget to go. In the supply closet at work, I cried out to God for help. It was the first time since I could remember asking Him for anything and having any hope He would answer.
I emailed two letters that night requesting financial support to attend the conference. One went to my counselor. The other went to the owner of the salon from which I had just purchased my first wig. I explained what my vision was for reaching others in Indiana with Trichotillomania and invited them to partner with me in starting Indiana’s first support group. Scott Makin, the director of Wabash Friends Counseling Center, replied with an offer to provide their center as the host location for the support group. Carolyn Jones, owner of CJ’s Hair Technologies, (on the left in the adjacent photo) wrote me a check for the entire amount of my journey: the conference fee, the hotel, the flight, and even money for meals. My employer, Chambers Property Services Group, gave me money for “extras," which paid my unexpected luggage fee and for the materials I brought back for the support group.
I went to the TLC conference expecting to meet fellow sufferers; I met fellow victors. I went a beggar; I left royalty. I arrived only dressed in hope; I left equipped with new knowledge, strategies, tools, hope, and – perhaps most importantly – the love and support of some of the strongest, most courageous, most beautiful people I had met in my life.
A year ago, I had only a handful of people whom I had told about this disorder with a name that’s hard to say and even harder to spell. Today, I am free from that Shame that forces secrets. With the love and support of my counselor, my salon’s owner, my church, my employer, my family, my friends, and those at TLC, Central Indiana’s Learning2Live Pull Free Network launched September 16, 2010. The group has steady attendance and continues to slowly grow (tha'ts me in the photo above, with Emily, another memebr of our group). Ages of attendees range from 16 years old to 50-something, including one parent who hopes her teenager will soon come with her. Our group is small but filled with joy and gratitude that we have found each other. One member wrote me just upon finding out about the group that it was an answer to many years and “thousands” of prayers. We share practical strategies for living pull-free, celebrate each other’s successes, and encourage each other as we learn from our falls.
Perhaps the most beautiful thing about our group is how finding each other has given us the courage to look beyond ourselves to find and carry the message of hope to others. In November, several donors sponsored our group and CJ’s Hair Technologies to share an information table and host a presentation of the DVD “Bad Hair Life” at the annual Day of Healing Conference in Wabash, Indiana. Over 1,000 people attended the conference that day, many of whom came by our group’s table and gathered information about the disorder, TLC, and the support group. We are currently making ornamental pens to sell in order to raise postage money to spread the word about our group to TLC members in our area. The pens are adorned with variously textured decorations, a therapeutic process for us while we make them, as well as a public symbol of the varied beauty and texture of each person who has Trichotillomania.
I see now that I have never once, not even for a second, been alone in my battle against my nameless, faceless childhood friend. God heard my cries all along. He was there with me in my dungeon, silently working and weaving everything together for this time….and “Trich” -- the enemy that I hated to love and loved to hate – has become the bugle which sounds the Call to Freedom.
Trich Whisperer can be reached via email at beautifulwith.trich @ yahoo.com.