The Trich Prof

22/12/2025

Celebrating another great year of BFRB research, education and advocacy with peacock nails!

I had badly bitten nails all of my life - I just could never resist urges to bite the nails and the skin around the edges. I started having gel nails professionally done by around 18 months ago. They're hard, and Beth takes time to make sure they're super smooth, which quietens the urges. They also make it harder for me to pull hair. I usually have them as natural looking as possible, but decided to 'TrichProf' them this time.

Yes, it's an expense (I think of it as a BFRB tax), and yes there are some downsides in terms of nail health, but compared to having permanently painful, infected, embarrassing nails, it's worth it for me.

13/12/2025

It may seem pretty obvious, but.... we're not all the same!

This post was motivated by the people in the yellow segment. I've now had quite a lot of conversations with people who were moderately distressed by their BFRBs, but the next time I see them they tell me they feel a lot better. Because of the stigma around BFRBs, people often have a history of negative interactions and/or have developed negative self-talk. A single good conversation can make a massive difference.

The majority of pickers, pullers and biters are not significantly distressed. These people do not have a problem, and do not need to be 'pathologised' for their perfectly normal behaviour. However, it's important to point out that this group can sometimes be dismissive to those who are distressed - e.g. 'it doesn't bother me so it shouldn't bother you'. By all means celebrate your freedom from distress, but please don't use it to belittle the very real experience of others.

Those in the orange segment have significant unmet needs, and are the focus of the research, education and advocacy work from me and many others. The orange folk are also not all the same, so we will need a portfolio of ways to offer tailored support. We're on it!

05/12/2025

!!!NEW RESEARCH PROJECT!!!

We are looking for young people who pick their skin, pull their hair or bite their nails to complete an online questionnaire study about their experiences of BFRBs.

Please share with anyone who may be interested.

03/12/2025

Beauty and the BFRBeast!

"I am ugly" was one of my loudest dementors of shame. It is neither ubiquitous or unique to BFRBs, but for those that have it, it can be intense and difficult to live with.

This is also a post I have procrastinated over, and edited several times, because I'm still in a process of learning how to feel differently about the face and body I was born with.

I'm sharing because I've found that embracing hair & beauty (products and professionals) is an important part of my de-shaming journey. Another way to slay those dementors.

Have you found a hair&beauty professional that makes you feel better? They're definitely out there!

01/12/2025

Christmas came early!!

I'm so excited to share... we successfully applied for a research network grant to the LEO Foundation (https://leo-foundation.org/en/).

I know lots of you will all want to know the date, venue, and other details, and all of that will be coming soon.

For now we are celebrating that this grant means we can put on a conference that will be bigger and better than the first one.

Excitingly, the focus of this event will be the interaction between skin/hair science, neuroscience, and psychology/psychiatry. This is an area known as psychodermatology, and this grant, from a skin-disease focused organisation, is a recognition of the growing understanding of the role of skin/hair science in understanding BFRBs.

And if that all sounds a bit too science-y, don't worry. .uk.ireland will once again be leading the community component of the event, and anyone who came to the first conference or attends support groups knows what an amazing job they do in creating a safe and supportive environment - both in person and online - for everyone who lives with or cares for someone with a BFRB.

26/11/2025

I'm sometimes asked 'how can neuroscience help people with BFRBs?', which is a good question, so I thought I'd devote a post to giving an answer.

Neuroscience is the study of the animal nervous system, and there are lots of quite different types of neuroscientist, who study different aspect of the central (brain) and peripheral (rest of body) nervous system, and we need all of them to understand something as complicated as behaviour.

In this post I describe how neuroscience, alongside other areas of science, are needed if we want to understand both the initiation and maintenance of BFRBs. I think this is important both for reducing the stigma, blame and shame around BFRBs, and for developing new ways to help people.

I'd love to know your thoughts!

20/11/2025

14/11/2025

Great to see this getting some attention...

NEW: Researchers found that shame partly explained the link between hair-pulling and depression, and fully explained the link between hair-pulling and anxiety.

Hair-pulling, or trichotillomania, often starts in early adolescence – yet most research has focused on adults.

The study of 128 young people aged 13-18 found that shame plays a major role in the link between hair-pulling, anxiety and depression. Those who pull their hair reported high levels of shame, depression and anxiety.

Researchers also found that 88% of participants entered a trance-like state during hair-pulling, and many didn’t realise they were doing it.

The study highlights the urgent need to better understand and support young people with BFRBs.

Find out more ⬇️
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-11-11-research-finds-shame-significant-factor-hairpulling-young-people

13/11/2025

Check out the story here:

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-11-11-research-finds-shame-significant-factor-hairpulling-young-people

12/11/2025

I only managed to sn**ch this one quick photo yesterday while I watched the brilliant present her masters project, which was co-supervised by me and the wonderful . It took some effort to hold it together...

Laura did a qualitative research project in which she conducted interviews with 12 young people who experience problematic hair-pulling. She did a 'thematic analysis', which means extracting lots of statements from the transcript of each interview and identifying the common themes that emerge.

What she found is POWERFUL, and you'll have to wait another week or two for us to share the results (it's being submitted in the next few days).

But this moment yesterday was special. I got to sit in the audience, while a brilliant young scientist talked with passion and conviction about the stigma and shame surrounding BFRBs to a room full of future clinical psychologists and researchers.

Thank you for your (prize winning!) project, and for a brilliant presentation.

It still feels surreal that my secret shame is now on the curriculum at

04/11/2025

I really enjoyed this chat about nail biting and other BFRBs - and why they're things we just don't talk about. Thanks Oxford Sparks for helping to raise awareness and bust stigma!

04/11/2025

I was delighted to be invited to contribute to this podcast on BFRBs for the American Psychological Association. It's brilliant that the APA are using their huge platform to help raise awareness!