Hey all, just want to make a quick post requesting support and encouragement from people who really understand what I’m going through.

For a little background: I’m a 16 yo M, and I’ve picked at the area around my cuticles and scabs to the point of infection and inflammation for as long as I can remember. My earliest memory of it is being 7 and mocked for my bug bite bandaids and ‘disgusting’ cuticles by my peers at school. I can’t remember a time where it didn’t hurt to press on buttons or where I was able to maintain a nail length beyond the shortest I could get it to go. My mom and step dad have tried everything in their power to get me to stop besides getting me treated for it - gloves, sitting on my hands, smacking my hands, yelling at me - and I’m starting to worry that they’re beginning to give up on me. I know this is an irrational way of thinking, but it’s the first place my brain goes whenever I see them sigh to themselves after catching me pick again.

They always insist that I can control it or implicate that I’m choosing to do it when, in fact, it mostly happens subconsciously. It’s seriously frustrating and makes me feel isolated from my family members. To my fellow people who experience this: what is a way you would explain it to someone who doesn’t? I’ve tried to explain that I can’t stop it but they don’t believe me.

I do see a psychiatrist. Do you think my psychiatrist could talk to them about it? Is there a treatment for this compulsion, a medicine I could take?

I guess I just needed to get that out there. Thanks for reading this far; let me know what you think.