While many beauty lovers may consider themselves great at the art of preening (tweezing their brows, perfecting the crease of a smokey eye, crisply lining a red lip) others take grooming themselves to the next level. Have you ever found yourself inspecting your pores under a magnified mirror (a la Charlotte in “Sex and the City”) or even though it’s a bit gross, picking at that scab until it’s gone forever? Apparently, the next edition of American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders will include a section on pathological grooming habits – nail biting, hair pulling and scab picking – filed under the broader category of obsessive compulsive disorder.
The broadening of OCD will thus lead to more people seeking help for these behaviors (which are more common in women than men). Trichotillomania, or hair pulling, is a disorder that typically strikes women (80 to 90 percent of the sufferers are female) and can occur more often when stressed – Olivia Munn is one of the more well-known sufferers, who admitted to pulling out her eyelashes when anxious.
Obviously, there is a line between simply preening yourself and going to extremes where you are pulling out your lashes and eyebrows or biting your nails all the way down to your cuticles – but at least now it’s something that doctors will be aware of when considering other OCD-like tendencies.
[Allure/ Image via Istock]
I was actually diagnosed recently with OCD due to my excessive skin-picking and eyebrow-pulling.
When I saw that they were adding this to OCD, I emailed my ex boyfriend – he excessively pulled his eyebrows too. Hopefully now they’ll be able to come up with ways to help!