The Trich Prof

17/02/2026

BFRBs are no longer a thing no-one talks about at the University of Oxford - this is starting to look and feel like a proper research group!

It all started with a conversation with my wonderful colleague (& now friend!) , and before I knew it we were supervising our first BFRB masters student .fay to conduct a survey in young people with BFRBs. followed up Talia's participants, and did a powerful qualitative study of the experience of shame in young hair-pullers (see previous posts). Then came Daisy and , who are continuing the work of properly conceptualising and capturing the experience of young people with BFRBs.

We welcomed the wonderful to visit last week. Bridget brings years of research and advocacy for people with BFRBs (.uk.ireland), and enriches our psychologist/neuroscientist way of thinking with her anthropologist's perspective. Interdisciplinary research is absolutely what is needed, and is SO enjoyable.

And our brilliant Daisy just secured funding for a DPhil to build all of these insights into new therapeutic approaches for people with BFRBs. I couldn't be more delighted and proud!

GO TEAM BFRB!

13/02/2026

Flights are booked and I'm looking forward to joining the incredible at the first ever ! It's the culmination of 10 years of work, and Lauren has a great lineup taking shape. I'm so excited to hang out with some BFRB legends, and meet lots of new ones!

It will also be the first opportunity for people in the US to get their hands on a physical copy of my book! (for some reason there is a lag between the UK launch date and the US one, which is something like July).

Who's coming?

08/02/2026

For those who like longer-form content, I put a work talk that I gave a couple of weeks ago on youtube.

I don't love it (I talked too fast!), so thought I would just quietly park it there in case anyone was interested, but it's already had a few views so I thought I should let you know!

https://youtu.be/IYXne3PNN2w?si=IKdLTWfXErnkHjv5

04/02/2026

Pinch me - this can't be real!

I've just finished reading the audiobook version of my upcoming book: Keep Your Hair On: Understanding Urges to Pick, Pull and Bite.

So grateful to Rich and Debs for a great experience - including a lovely hug when I got emotional! It turns out that reading some bits of my story aloud is more intense and emotional than writing or reading it.

I can't wait to share it with you, and it's just 2 more months to wait now. You can be first to get it by preordering: https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/titles/clare-mackay/keep-your-hair-on/9781472149930/

02/02/2026

I get asked 'how can I help my child stop picking/pulling/biting?' a lot.

And I know that those asking love their children, want the best for them, and have genuine, legitimate concerns about the impact of BFRBs.

Importantly, I'm not a treatment professional; my advice comes from my own experience (both as someone who was parented and as a parent myself) and from our research.

The bottom line is that it is much worse for a child to acquire chronic shame than to have bald patches or lesions. Our research has shown that shame mediates the relationship between hair-pulling and depression/anxiety AND that parents can inadvertently exacerbate feelings of shame - despite that being the last thing they want to do. I think shame also fuels BFRBs by keeping us in distress and maintaining the need for self-soothing.

I suggest considering an alternative question: 'How do I protect my child from chronic shame?'.

Please please please don't worry if reading this makes you reflect on how you've been parenting so far. The fact that you're here, getting informed and looking for answers means you're one of the good ones! We can't teach what we don't know, and it's not your fault that there is so little good information about BFRBs available.

As always please drop a comment or DM if you disagree or have anything to add. I like hearing from you!

25/01/2026

Lots of new followers this week, so I thought it was time to re-introduce myself and describe the content I create and share.

Thanks to everyone for being here!

Book pre-order: https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/titles/clare-mackay/keep-your-hair-on/9781472149930/

21/01/2026

15/01/2026

Very grateful to for giving me a chance to talk at length about BFRBs, and for asking such good questions!

You can find it here or wherever you get your podcasts: https://shows.acast.com/conversations-with-annalisa-barbieri/episodes/clare-mackay-bfrbs

12/01/2026

I'm excited to share the results of our second research project.

This was a qualitative study of how young people who struggle with hair pulling experience shame. Similar studies have been done in adults, but this is the first to focus on adolescence, close to the typical onset of BFRBs. The study has been submitted for publication and is available as a pre-print: https://osf.io/9cfwq_v1

We identified one overarching theme, and 5 sub themes of the ways in which young people experience shame. They feel: stigmatised, flawed, scrutinised, misunderstood, isolated, and disempowered. Wow... what a lot of difficult feelings!

Doing the thematic analysis was emotional. I felt heart-broken, angry, and validated in equal measure, and it makes me more determined than ever to do whatever I can do make life better for people with BFRBs.

Some considerations... For this study we focused on hair-pulling. Future work will incororate other BFRBs. We recruited people via the internet, and relied on self-report rather than clinical diagnosis of hair-pulling. This might have resulted in a biased sample (e.g. all female + nonbinary).

Massive thanks to everyone who took part, and to the wonderful team.

09/01/2026

Ever since learning about CT fibres and the importance of pleasant touch I've been experimenting with ways to incorporate good touch into my life. Our BFRB urges could be desribed as a plea for skin/hair stimulation, and if we try to ban ourselves from putting hands to face/skin/mouth etc we might be denying our body what it needs. I'm interested in exploring ways to reclaim and reframe, and try lots of things as experiments.

As I've mentioned before, my hairdresser Mary Handy Hair and Beauty is one of my BFRB collaborators, so when I learned she had been training in giving scalp massage treatments it was a no brainer!

Oh. My. God. does this feel good!

31/12/2025

Wishing you all a very happy new year!!!

It's been another amazing year of building up BFRB research, education and advocacy, and there is much more to come in 2026.

With love to the BFRB community and all who support us!

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.