Acceptance of Compulsive Picking
Fixing the problem of obsessive, compulsive and impulsive behavior is the normal focus of most treatment plans — whether natural, psychological, or pharmaceutical. What you don’t hear a lot about is accepting the problem when its too hard to fix it.
Why you may choose acceptance of compulsive picking instead of change
You may not want to change. As strange as it seems, its possible that deep down you may not care enough about your fingers or others’ perceptions of your picking to want to change your behavior. A mental health professional can help you be certain that this is not just a cop out.
How acceptance can help cure compulsive picking
As we have seen from examining the many reasons why people pick their fingers, intense emotions like shame, guilt, and even depression can result from an uncontrollable impulse to pick. The terrible thing about these emotions is that they can form a “feedback loop” of sorts:
- Bad feelings — like shame and guilt — arise about the physical side-effects of picking (such as disease)
- This in turn causes a defeated attitude to manifest
- A defeated attitude then causes you to pick more since “there’s no use”. (This itself is a sign of perfectionism).
Finding a way to accept yourself as you are — and affirm your worth even though you pick — will help you break this vicious circle of self-injury.