If you’d have tuned in on Friday to Channel 4’s documentary “Girls on the Pull” expecting to see a group of girls out on the town being subjected to cheesy chat up lines by a bunch of lads you’d have been sorely disappointed. Instead you would have been greeted by three women talking very bravely and honestly about their compulsion to pull out their hair.
Trichotillomania or TTM is a compulsive disorder defined as "hair loss from a patient's repetitive self-pulling of hair" affecting around 2% of the population and with most sufferers being women. The documentary followed the three women, with varying severities of the condition, as they learnt to cope, live with and ultimately curb their compulsion.
The effects of pulling can vary from un-noticeable to complete hair-loss, the disorder can also affect self-esteem and lifestyle. Some people eat part or all of the hair, stroke, count, store or fiddle with the hair after pulling. A large percentage of the population still do not understand what trichotillomania is; the difficulties which the condition presents or how best to help. TTM is not always an obvious disorder; it is often hidden and so as a result, people with TTM have to overcome numerous barriers to get treatment and support.
Being a sufferer myself means that I understand how debilitating it can be. It’s often something that sufferers feel unable to talk about both with friends or their GP and so it largely goes unnoticed as depending on the severity it can easily be hidden by wearing hats or just clever hair styling. Many sufferers like myself will have become masters at hiding the severity of their hair loss for fear of ridicule.
The media presents to us images of women with beautiful, long, flowing, healthy hair which is seen as a symbol of femininity, health, sexuality and youth. Having hair loss, whether self inflicted or not, has a devastating effect. Embarrassment and shame play a large part in sufferers of TTM being unable to talk about the condition. Many are scared of being labelled a ‘self-harmer’ when in fact TTM is more of way of self-calming.
Many moons ago now I suffered from depression caused by my TTM. I was at the lowest point in my life and couldn’t see a way out so I made stupid decisions and pretended to be a different person from the scared, broken person I was until eventually my year of being reckless and hedonistic meant I crashed and burned so low that I ended up in hospital. My self esteem and confidence was at an all time low and I had let my TTM and the fear of others not accepting me consume my everyday being.
There was a stigma around depression and there still is now so I kept it to myself and never spoke of how low I actually felt; how I could not find my way in life, how I felt so out of sorts, how I knew that there was a purpose for me but I couldn’t find my way to the right path that would lead me there. How I basically felt like a complete failure and a freak. I mean what sort of person pulls their own hair out? People bite their nails when nervous to calm them but they are not met with the some distain or looks of disguist, neither are they called self harmers.
Help is available out there though. Lucinda Ellery has herself suffered with hair loss and now runs a specialist hair salon helping women, and men, with hair loss with a special emphasis on hair loss through TTM with the level of comfort and understanding that only someone who has been though hair loss themselves would. As well as offering revolutionary hair loss management programmes her salon also offers support and advice and a save haven for sufferers to feel at ease whilst having their hair styled or loss covered.
I could never write about my experience in a way that would do it justice, or would explain how I felt and how I feel about it now. I’m not ashamed to admit that I have been there and come back. I am no longer that person but like anything that saps away your sense of reality it has defined me and it’s always there in the background but I now know that if I tell that impending feeling of doom to fuck off that it will. I will not let it ever consume me again and now I can see a low day for what it is... just another low day in a spectrum of happy colourful days.
Perspective is a wonderful thing and if I have learnt anything from the three women who so bravely opened their souls, and their hair loss, to the world on the documentary it is that our appearance should not define us and perhaps if we open our souls a little and stop being ashamed of who we are, others may begin to understand the condition and the stigma surrounding it may slowly begin to disappear.
To watch the documentary ‘Girls on the Pull’ visit Channel 4.
For More Information on the hair loss management prgrammes please visit The Lucinda Ellery Hair Loss Clinic