110: 4 Most Powerful Growth Areas For Skin Picking & Hair Pulling

Are you serious about addressing the root cause of chronic picking, pulling, and/or biting?

Are you willing to set aside instant gratification for depth and long-term gain?

Then let's talk about the 4 most powerful growth areas!

In my 15 years of healing and the 3 years I have spent coaching others, like you, to heal as well, I've observed that the greatest change happens when we stop obsessing over how to control and stop this ONE behaviour and start looking at ourselves as a whole, unique human being.

We'll explore community, your relationship with self, how you are with self-care, what your purpose is and how you can find it (it's not as overwhelming as you might think. You've probably already been accessing it!)

There is so much more to you than picking, pulling, and biting.

There is so much more you have to gain than just not engaging in this behaviour anymore.

Let's explore all of you. The depths of you. And see what treasure this episode uncovers.

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🙋‍♀️Send me a message here

My name is Raffaela Marie. I'm a holistic BFRB coach who has healed from 15 years of chronic skin picking myself and dedicated my life to helping driven women do the same. Through my podcast, free resources, and programs, I teach strategies to overcome urges, build emotional safety, and expand into authenticity. My approach goes beyond quick fixes, focusing on root causes and long-term recovery.

Transcript

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I have healed from 15 years of chronic skin picking. And over the past three years, I've been helping others like you to do the same: to learn how to love themselves better, live better, thrive, and to become the versions of themselves that they were born to be. This is what healing from the root cause looks like. And from my personal and professional experience, there are four areas of growth based in science that allow us to heal. These are the things that I've seen in myself. When you grow in these areas, the length, severity, and frequency of picking sessions and pulling sessions and biting sessions reduces. So in this episode, I want to share with you what those are, what those four powerful areas of growth are, and how you can start to grow in these areas too for yourself so that you can so that you can lead yourself in your healing and start to see real change. Not only that, but I'm going to ask you to rate yourself on a scale of one to ten where you think you stand in each of these areas. Ten being I am nailing that, I'm thriving in that area. One being, wow, I'm really lacking in that area. Because wherever you are lacking the most, that will be your current greatest area for growth. As you listen to this episode, I encourage you to notice what shows up for you, what calls to you, because that is where you can start. You are listening to episode 110 of Beyond Skin Picking and Hair Pulling. It is amazing to have you here. Thank you for taking the time to listen into this podcast and to learn how to address the root cause of why you pick, pull, and bite at your body so that you can experience long-term sustainable change. My name is Rafaela Marie. I'm your host. As you already know, I heal from 15 years of chronic skin peaking. I'm now a coach who helps others to do the same. And in this podcast, I share absolutely everything I know with you so that you can start to move forward. And there's something really special I would love to share with you. I would love to hear your story. If there's one thing that so many of us are lacking in this community, is we are lacking feeling deeply seen and understood in this struggle. And we're lacking the right guidance and support in what the hell we can do to actually heal. In fact, I've had three calls with people this week. I've heard their stories, I've shared with them my insights into what the root cause of why they pick, pull, or bite is, and I've also given them tangible steps on what they can do next in healing. If you want to have this opportunity as well, go to the link in the show notes and book in a free BFPA road mapping session with me. I'm so looking forward to meeting you. The four most powerful areas of growth in healing from skin picking, hair pulling, and nail biting are community, your relationship with yourself, self-care and purpose. When you grow in these four areas and work through roadblocks and limitations and the wounds that we carry around these different things, incredible things happen. This is addressing the root cause. And I encourage you to listen to the end because there is so much here that I truly believe is going to speak to your soul, is going to speak to the part of you that knows that you are capable of living a life of more connection, more love, more compassion, more ease, more joy, more abundance, more lightness. These are the tangible steps we can take to create more of that for ourselves. The first place we're going to start is with community. Community is essentially meaningful connection to other people. You have shared experiences, you have shared values and beliefs, you share a common purpose, you share common interests and activities. But most importantly, there is a sense of belonging and there is a sense of acceptance within that community. Now, interestingly, while this world is becoming more and more connected with the development of technology, we are becoming more and more disconnected. There is a loneliness epidemic right now. And there is a lot of research of studies done by the World Health Organization, Harvard Graduate School of Education. There's also a campaign to end loneliness as well. Loneliness is essentially the result of disconnection, the result of a lack of community where we feel like we belong and we're accepted, where we feel seen by other people. And this is drawing from a study done by the World Health Organization. Loneliness is described as the painful feeling that arises from a gap between desired and actual social connections. I've also taken some statistics from the Campaign to End Loneliness and Harvard Graduate School of Education. Those who experience loneliness or disconnection from community are at a greater risk of poorer mental health. So anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, addiction, loss of confidence, self-harm. Loneliness is also associated with physical health issues like elevated blood pressure, acute stress, poor sleep, greater inflammation in the body. And over time, these things build up and can lead to severe health problems. One in six people worldwide are affected by loneliness. They don't have a solid sense of belonging. They don't have a solid feeling of being seen, of being accepted. Loneliness is linked to an estimated 100 deaths every hour. That is 871,000 deaths every year. Connection is the source of our capacity to thrive. True connection, the connection that gives you that sense of belonging and acceptance and allows you to be seen. We are social creatures. We cannot live this life alone. We cannot do this life. We can't thrive in life alone. I mean, even look at orcas. Orcas are also very social creatures. And look at how they suffer in places like Dream World. They struggle with their mental health, they struggle with their physical health, and they also die much earlier than orcas in the wild because of the isolation. Loneliness is a big deal. Disconnection is a big deal. Community is a big deal. It's so important. And what do we do when we pig pull, bite at our body, and we feel ashamed? We isolate. We get really busy so we don't have time for other people. Maybe you grew up in an unstable home and you'd never really had a great sense of belonging within your own family. And now you struggle to create that for yourself as an adult. Maybe you didn't really learn how to connect emotionally with other people, how to be vulnerable and open. And so you can be in a room full of people and still feel like you're alone. There was a survey done by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. And in that survey, over 50% of people said the greatest cause of loneliness was tech, technology, insufficient time with family, overworked or too busy. I think that's something we can all relate to. Living in a too individualistic society. I found that really interesting because the pros, the positives of living in an individualistic society is that you're able to step outside of society's expectations and lead a life that is fulfilling for yourself. In saying that, it can make us incredibly self-absorbed and self-focused, where we struggle to put others' needs before our own, and we struggle to prioritize other people in a healthy way, not in a self-sacrificing way. Other people said it was a lack of religion or spiritual life, and others said it was too much focus on one's own feelings and the changing nature of work. Of course, many of us are starting to work more from home rather than in an office interacting with people on a daily basis. What I found really interesting is the too much focus on one's own feelings. And this is so true. When we spend too much time alone, we get in our head, we get stuck in our head thinking about our feelings and feel feeling stuck in our feelings and thinking about how can I fix this feeling and then feeling stuck in it more and getting frustrated, going in this loop, and it just sucks. But have you ever had the experience of having a bit of a shit day, not feeling great, and then you spend time with friends and you forget about those things. You forget about the shit day, you forget about the things that you're stressed about, and you're just in the moment with them existing, you're out of your head. You're not focusing on yourself so much. We need that respite from our own minds. Community lowers inflammation in the body, reduces emotional distress, helps us to relax, and helps us to live longer. I'm gonna say it again. We cannot live this life alone. We cannot heal and grow and thrive alone. We must learn how to lean on other people. And so the key to community is vulnerability. And that doesn't mean you need to become an open book and trauma dump or let every single person know who you want to be close with, all the things that you're struggling with. I would even advise against that because we want to know who we can open up to and who we maybe don't open up to. Not every person or relationship needs that level of depth and vulnerability. And that's not because there's something wrong with you or the other person. It's just simply because sometimes the connection you feel with someone doesn't need you to go deeper. And that's okay. So how else can vulnerability look? If it's not just opening up about the things that you struggle with or sharing really personal details, what else is it? It's asking for help when you need it. It's allowing people to offer you support or do things for you. It's accepting compliments because when we compliment someone, it's actually a bid for connection. And when we shut down that compliment, we're shutting down that connection. I mean, it feels good when you compliment someone and they say, oh my God, thanks. It's as simple as that. And it's uncomfortable, trust me, I get it. But learn to accept compliments is a small step towards building connection with people. And then with those people who you are close to, who you can see you can trust, who you can see you can take that step deeper with them. Allow yourself to be vulnerable in the sense of sharing your struggles. Who do you have, who in your life do you have a feeling they will be really supportive of you? We must be real and imperfect with people to build connection. Not everyone needs to know your deepest, darkest secrets and the things that you struggle with, but some people do, and you need that too. Have shared experiences with people. Do activities together. That's really a strong way to build connection. And it can also help if you experience social anxiety. It can also help to navigate social anxiety if you have an activity to do with people. Now, what if that feels a bit too much, feels a bit overwhelming, and you still don't really know where to start? Because everything that I said just now, if you have some community, those are all things you can do to help yourself to strengthen that community even more, to allow yourself to be seen. Because, like I said, we can be sitting in a room full of people and still feel like we're we're alone. And maybe that's because you're sitting in a room full of shitty people, but it could also be because you have you haven't allowed yourself to be seen. You haven't allowed yourself to be vulnerable and open, to accept compliments, to accept help, to ask for help, to share even just small moments of vulnerability and honesty. Of course, we'll feel lonely in a room full of people if we're hiding constantly. We're hiding in plain sight. So that is a way to continue to build a stronger community. Then, if that feels like it's too much, feels really overwhelming and you don't know where to start, start online. You can join my free WhatsApp support group. This is a support group specifically for those who struggle with chronic skin picking and hair pulling and nail biting. I post in there every week messages of motivation and inspiration. There is also often some really lovely conversations that happen in there and a lot of vulnerability. It is an uplifting and inspiring space to be in, which, in contrast to a lot of the other support groups out there for these kinds of problems, is a nice change. I've been part of other support groups for chronic skin picking and they get heavy because it's a lot of people venting, but everyone feels stuck and they don't know what to do. The difference with this group is that I am there to support you and to inspire and uplift and motivate. And it's just an awesome place to be. So if you want to join, then just send me a message. You can either email me or message me on social media. I would love to have you with us. But online is a great place to start. Joining online communities, gaming as well can be a great place to start to connect with people, but we do also need to then learn how to take that step into our physical life and connect with people in a person-to-person way. So where have you rated yourself on a scale of one to ten with community? For me, I would say I'm around a seven or an eight. It is worlds better than it used to be. I am much more vulnerable and open than I used to be, and I can still see it's not quite where I want it to be. I can see that the experience that I want to have with community is not the is not quite the actual experience that I'm having. Still super grateful for it, still, still absolutely love it, but I can see there's room for growth. Now, community was a big one, and I wanted to spend a lot of time on that one because it is just so incredibly important. Now, the second powerful area of growth is your relationship with yourself. And this is something we talk about a lot, a lot, a lot on this podcast. But essentially, how we can rate ourselves with this, with this is how easily do you bounce back from disappointment or mistakes or unexpected outcomes? How do you handle yourself when you're not your best? In a nutshell, how loud is your inner critic? Because when we're able to bounce back from disappointment, from mistakes, from unexpected outcomes, from sudden changes to plans or disappointment in other people, how we treat ourselves when we're not functioning how we know we should be or we would like to be, if you feel like I'm actually I handle that pretty well, then your inner critic is not too loud and you probably have a decent connection, healthy connection to yourself. Now, if you're listening to all those things and you're thinking, yeah, I'm pretty harsh on myself. I struggle with that a lot. I feel even maybe some shame around that or frustration or anger, or I'm just so exhausted with myself, really critical of myself, then that is a sign that there is potentially quite a bit of disconnection in the relationship to yourself, quite a lot of misunderstanding. And the more of that that we have, the louder our the louder our inner critic will be. Now, you can listen to virtually any of the previous podcast episodes and learn how to start to build a closer relationship to yourself. If you just scroll through the episodes and see what calls to you, probably you'll find something in there that will help you with that. But what I do want to share with you is self-leadership. Because essentially, how we heal our relationship with ourselves and develop a really loving, compassionate relationship with self is through how we lead ourselves. I actually posted this today in my private WhatsApp support group, and I want to read it out to you because it's actually really relevant to what we're talking about right now. But this is what I wrote a sign of a great leader is one who is able to show appreciation and uplift those whom they lead. You are the leader of yourself. Every task you complete, no matter how small, deserves acknowledgement and appreciation. Making the bed, food shopping, preparing meals, washing clothes. Imagine how you'd feel if someone did those things for you from a place of love and support. I know for myself, if someone did that for me, I'd be like, oh my God, you're amazing. This is amazing. You saved my life. This has just made my day. I mean, I love that my husband makes my my side of the bed every morning. We have separate blankets because I'm a furnace and I just overheat if I have too much body contact in the night. Anyway, if someone went food shopping for me and prepared meals, if someone washed my clothes, just did those basic maintenance stuff. Oh my God, that's so cool. I would love that. I also love it when my husband does those things for me, and he also appreciates a lot when I do it for him. But just think of how you respond to someone else. It's a big response. So for the rest of this week, pause after you complete a simple task like making the bed or doing your washing or preparing yourself a bowl of cereal or preparing yourself breakfast and show yourself appreciation for doing that. It might feel weird, but if you want to feel better in yourself on a day-to-day basis, you need to start leading yourself with love. Because if you resonate with the loud inner critic and you feel like that's a big thing of you, and you're maybe scoring yourself a little low on the relationship with self, then most likely you're leading your sh you're leading yourself with criticism and demands and pressure and stress. And of course, we're then going to struggle with things like chronic skin picking and hair pulling and nail biting. That's uh, that's man, that's a lot. Every day, day in, day out. When we lead ourselves with love, we can learn how to relax and feel okay inside ourselves. Life just gets easier. In fact, the past two episodes, How to Rest Without Becoming Lazy and Why You Can't Slow Down, plus a somatic practice show how these are all ways of learning how to connect more closely to ourselves. And we can see how much appreciation changes things just inside the workplace. Maybe if you worked in a place where you didn't really feel appreciated, there was just a lot of negative feedback and pushing harder and you burn out eventually. You lose the passion and the drive for the work that you do. Now, I work weekends in a restaurant to support this business as it's growing, and I don't love hospitality. And working 18 hours on my feet every weekend can sometimes feel like a lot. But my boss at this restaurant is a legend and he shows a lot of appreciation to all the staff. And let me tell you, that has drastically changed how I feel when I go to work. Because I feel like it matters that I'm there. I feel appreciated. I feel like I'm giving something to the team. When there is a lack of appreciation, we feel like a number. We feel like it doesn't matter that we're there. We feel replaceable. We don't feel important. And it fucking sucks. Practice leading yourself with love. And you will start to heal the relationship with yourself and feel a whole lot better in yourself as well. Now, the third powerful area for growth is self-care. And this isn't bubble bars or getting your nails done, although those things are fantastic. This is making sure you eat three proper meals a day, making sure you're getting the sleep that you need, making sure that you're resting when you need rest and moving your body in the way that it needs as well. So, where do you rate yourself on that? Are you pretty good with taking care of this area of your life, these areas of your life, very necessary areas of your life, or do you tend to put yourself on the back burner? You put everyone and everything before you. And you tell yourself, well, when I get this done, then I can eat, then I can prepare myself food, then I can improve on my sleep, and I can improve on rest, then I can relax and slow down, then I can actually start to exercise. There's this sense of exhaustion, and I don't have time for that. I don't feel motivated, I don't feel driven to do any of those things for myself. And the only reason why I do them is because I know that I should, but I don't feel like I want to. And when we experience that, it's because we feel like we aren't deserving. We aren't deserving of that care. And when we have a loud inner critic, like we just talked about, self-care is hard. Most people who I talk to have a really loud inner critic, they struggle with self-care. If you have a loud inner critic, you're not gonna feel like you deserve to be cared for. And the problem with this is that if we don't care for ourselves, we are confirming to ourselves through our own actions that we are not deserving of care or love or consideration or prioritization. And we are confirming the belief that I'm not enough as I am. I am not deserving, which just adds confirmation and fuel to the inner critic, makes it even harder to slow down. It's this, these parts of us just play on each other. Now, the really beautiful thing is we don't have to change how we feel or what we think or what we believe to start to better care for ourselves. Through our actions, we can start to change what we believe. Because the way our brain works is that our beliefs have to match our actions. And so when we consistently continue to change our actions, make sure we eat enough, it means that the belief has to start changing. Now, of course, in this process, there will be moments, there will be periods of time where we fall back into old patterns. When I say consistently, I mean we just consistently keep returning to it every time we fall down. That is consistency. So we can work on it from both sides. We can work on self-leadership and leading ourselves with love, which works on those internal beliefs that we have. And then we can work on it from the outside, which is okay, I'm going to make sure that I eat at least one proper meal every day this week. And that will start to change how you view yourself. This is a powerful combination for healing. And it doesn't require perfection. It just asks us to keep showing up, to keep getting back up when we fall down. And when we feel well cared for, well loved by ourselves, we feel a whole lot better in ourselves. And then the need for behaviors like skin picking and hair-balling and nail biting reduces a lot. The final powerful area for growth is purpose. Now don't freak out. I know purpose can sound like such a big word and can feel really overwhelming of like, I don't know what my purpose is. Am I supposed to figure that out right now while I'm listening to this episode? What the hell? Stick with me for a second. What I mean when I say purpose is just the exploration of who you are outside of your struggles. Beyond, let me use the name. Oh, I love this. Let me use the name of this podcast. Beyond skin picking and hair pulling and nail biting, who are you? What lights you up? You don't need to know your purpose specifically. It changes over time, but you will discover. Your purpose through doing and exploring the things that light you up, what you feel drawn towards. In my early 20s, that was really a time of exploration for me. I spent a lot of time alone. That honestly, that time I had really very little community. But at that time as well, I didn't give a shit. I didn't want to spend time with people on my days off. I just wanted to live for myself. This is what I mean with living in an individualistic society can be excellent because it allows us the space to just be really self-absorbed, which can be a really important part of healing. It just becomes, it just becomes unhealthy when we get stuck in that space and don't then start to grow and start to look outside of us as well. Anyway, as I was saying, in my early 20s, that was a time of a lot of exploration. I didn't know what my purpose was. In fact, I felt kind of lost. And if I thought about what my purpose was or what life meant, I kind of had a bit of a sinking feeling. But that didn't stop me from exploring my life. I spent a lot of time journaling, exploring my own thoughts and my mind. I got a someone gave me a longboard, a skateboard. I started to learn how to longboard. And I would spend my days off listening to music longboarding for hours and exploring the streets around where I lived. I got a surfboard, tried that a couple of times, never again. If you try surfboarding, you need a teacher. I came out of that water black and blue. But I got a kayak and I did kayaking. I went on mini road trips in my car, blasting my music and singing because that's what I felt like I wanted to do. That's what I was being called. That's what, that's what lit me up. I did a dive master course for scuba diving. I'm a dive master. I had all these incredible experiences because I allowed myself to explore. And while yes, I was struggling with myself and I wasn't always very happy. I had these moments that just lit me up. I was getting to know myself, especially because growing up, I didn't really have an opportunity to get to know myself. And some of that exploration came from a place of desperation, of not being able to stay still, not knowing who I am. But it also came from my heart because if something lights you up, it's coming from your heart, your core self. While it may have anxiety or fear or anything else underneath, it can also be an authentic expression of you. Let yourself live. Really, just in the past year, my purpose for this life has started to become more clear to me. And my purpose is that I can feel in my heart is to learn how to live and love as well as possible so I can share that light with other people. And the really incredible thing about purposes is that it's not tied to any one individual thing. This podcast is a conduit for that purpose that I feel. So is social media. The work that I do in this community is a way of expressing that, and it's a way that help, and it's something that amplifies that feeling for me. There are things that will amplify the light that you have inside of you, and there are things that will restrict it. Working in hospitality for me in the beginning definitely allowed me to amplify some aspects of myself. It allowed me to discover parts of myself and explore parts of myself that I'm incredibly grateful for. And we can only discover that through exploration. Instead of saying, I can't enjoy, I can't have fun, I can't relax, I can't try that new thing or explore that thing until I get all this work done. I need to set myself up first. You're here to live. You're not just here to work and get shit done and be organized and be efficient and be effective. You are here to live. And it's through learning how to live and learning how to allow yourself to have those experiences that light you up, that's when you really start to give back to the people in your life. Think of a time that you felt inspired by another person. Another person lit you up in some way or woke something up inside of you. It's because they were accessing an authentic part of themselves that lit them up. And it woke up that light in you as well. I have a friend who absolutely loves cooking. It's a passion. It's a really big part of her family. It was a really big part of her life growing up is food and sharing that food. Whenever I would go to visit her and we'd have a girl's evening, she just created this incredible display of food. Excellent baker. And the passion that she had, you could clearly see that it lit her up to cook food for other people. And the passion and the light that she showed through that also made me become more curious for exploring that part of myself too, which sounds weird because I am a qualified chef. I worked in the hospitality industry for years. I never had passion for food. I got into that industry to escape the life that I had. And it was the fastest way I could see to escape it. Super grateful that I did it, but I was never passionate. The first time I have felt any level of passion is through experiencing that from my friend. And that has been such a beautiful point of light in my life, is discovering that and exploring that for myself. But I wouldn't have found it if I hadn't met this friend and had those experiences. Don't underestimate the power you can have on the people around you just through doing the things that light you up. So where do you rate yourself on a scale of one to ten? How much do you allow yourself to do things that light you up, to access that light that exists inside of you, to get curious and explore? Allow yourself to step out of routine and comfort zone and try something new. And now just reflect on which one of these areas has the lowest number? Which one of these areas of growth do you feel most drawn to? Do you feel most called to? Listen to that. That is your greatest area of healing right now. And that is what will carry you forward in your healing journey from chronic skin picking and hair pulling and nail biting through addressing the root cause, and you may not see automatic results in the behavior itself, in the picking and pulley or biting itself immediately, but there is so much more to you than this behavior. There is so much more for you to gain. Build community, build the connection to yourself. Learn how to love and care for yourself like you deserve. Do things that light you up. You weren't here to just, I believe in you. Whatever you feel drawn to, do something. Take one little step in that direction this week. Do it for yourself because you deserve it. And if you are feeling drawn to share your story and get direct support and feedback from me, then go to the show notes and book that in. Maybe that is the next thing that you feel drawn towards. I'm here for you whenever it's time. Thank you so, so much for hanging out with me. Thank you for believing in yourself and showing up and taking this time for you. You're an awesome human being. And I'm so excited for the life that you are going to build for yourself or that you are already building for yourself. I'll see you next week for the next episode of Beyond Skin Picking and Hair Pulling.