Hello There!

My name is Erica Clayton and I have Trichotillomania. Whew, that was tough. But as cliche as it sounds, admitting it is the first step to recovery, and that's exactly what I plan to do: recover. So let's get the basics out of the way, okay? As of right now, right this very second, I am 21 years old, I am a senior at The Hartt School, a conservatory at the University of Hartford. I'm majoring in Music Management, I play the flute/oboe/english horn/trombone. I play in a band called Hardcore Karaoke Pile-On Extravaganza! (HKPOE!) and I sometimes perform international tours. I'm a Resident Assistant of three years in an upperclassmen area. I'm a registered independent but I'm really just a think-for-yourself-er. Oh, and I have got just the BEST friends in the whole world. Have I mentioned that? I also have a cat named Duke and a 6 year-old niece.

What else do I do? Oh right, I pull out my hair. I have been pulling out my hair since the third grade, I was just 8 years old when I started, and I have not told a soul since. Okay, maybe I mentioned it to one person, but only because she has been the only person I've met to admit that she does the same thing.

I am not a freak. I am not sick. I am not weird. I am not a victim. I do not have a mental disease. I am not crazy. I do not have to take medication. I am not neurotic. I am not sick. I simply have an impulse-control disorder.

I tell myself these things every single day because I cannot allow myself to become consumed with this disorder. I will not be defined by Trichotillomania.

Like many others with the same problem, I have never asked for help. I probably never will ask for help. I am too stubborn, too proud and too embarrassed. But you can be sure that I have spent countless hours researching and discovering new information about it. I've read about people who grew out of it, people who have discovered their triggers and reassigned the emotions to a different activity, and people who can't grab hold of it. I was a person who couldn't grab hold of this situation. When I was in high school, I wanted a quick fix and when all of my research came up empty handed, I would find myself looking in the mirror, digging through my hair to find the strands I wanted and plucking them right out of my head.

Did my parents notice? Of course they did. Did they ask questions? Of course they did. My family is amazing. My mother, in particular, never let me forget that she was noticing. But she knew me well enough to know I would never, ever ask for help. I've been an "I want to do it!" kind of person since the day I learned how to speak. And she didn't bother me or pressure me into talking about something that I did not want to talk about, and I am thankful for that.

Even though I struggled with this throughout my entire youth and into my 20s, I have never felt sorry for myself. Feeling sorry gets you nowhere. There were days where I would be so frustrated with the whole ordeal that I would pull my hair out over pulling my hair out. I've thrown and broken things, torn things apart, screamed until I was horse... but I never cried. I couldn't. I wasn't allowed to. According to my own rules, nobody could ever, ever see my weakness.

Over the past 13 years I have tried so hard to keep this secret. But today I am finished. It's no longer a secret. My name is Erica Clayton and I have Trichotillomania. And this is my story: from the day I decided to stop allowing my disorder to control my life and started recovering on my own terms.