ALIX TUNELL
JANUARY 4, 2017
I'll be honest, talking about my decade-long struggle with skin-picking is getting really fucking old. I've meekly apologized for it to countless facialists, I've referenced it in what feels like a hundred stories, and I've done just about everything to quit it: therapy, journaling, snapping a rubber band, throwing out every tweezer and safety pin in my apartment, anti-depressants... But nothing works for any significant amount of time. I've come to accept that even if I have a few good weeks, even if my skin fully heals, I'm never going to be completely in the clear; I'm always one bump or stray hair away from falling into a three-hour trance in my bathroom that leaves my forehead, bikini line, armpit, chin (pick your part...) bloody, scabbed, and in need of some heavy-duty concealer. It's ugly and exhausting and most of the time, I don't know what to do besides throw up my hands and hope I outgrow it the way I did nail-biting. But one thing I have never tried, and didn't even consider until the opportunity fell into my lap this past fall, was hypnosis. I knew the swinging pocket watch was a myth, but other than that, I had no idea what to expect. A few years ago, I would have written this off as hocus-pocus, but the older I get, the more I connect with things like astrology and crystal healers, so I went into the treatment ready to open up and embrace the weirdness.
