Mia, 19

Honestly I think it started around fifteen, so during GCSEs. I had spots like most people do, and I just started picking at them. But then it didn't stop when the spots cleared. I'd find things to pick that weren't even really there - tiny rough patches, the edge of a pore, something that looked uneven in a certain light. At the time I thought it was just a bad habit I had with my skin. I didn't think it was unusual, just annoying.

That period was stressful in general. My parents had split up the year before. I was doing mock exams. I think it was probably doing something for me emotionally but I had no framework for that at the time. I just knew I was spending a lot of time in the bathroom and my face was worse for it.

The thing that surprised me when I started actually paying attention to it is how little I notice the beginning. I'll be studying, or brushing my teeth before bed, or sometimes just walking past a mirror in a corridor, and I'll touch my face sort of without deciding to. Then I'm looking more closely. Then I'm picking at something.

There's no big moment of choice. It just happens, and then I'm in it, and then I sort of come back into myself and realise I've been standing in the bathroom for twenty minutes and my face looks worse than when I started. The aftermath is this horrible mix of shame and also a weird flat calm. Like the tension that was there before is gone, but the cost of getting rid of it is this thing I've done to my face.

I've started noticing that it's worst late at night, when I'm tired and there's nothing else demanding my attention. The bathroom mirror at midnight is basically a picking trap for me.

That it's not about vanity. People assume if you pick your face you're obsessed with how you look in this surface, shallow way. But it's sort of the opposite. It feels more like I'm trying to fix something, not admire something. And the fixing makes it worse. Which is part of why it's so hard to stop - the impulse feels like it's solving a problem even though it's creating one.

I haven't told anyone at university. My flatmates know I spend a lot of time in the bathroom, I think, but nobody's said anything. My mum knows I pick my face but she thinks it's a teenage thing I'll grow out of. I haven't had the conversation with her where I explain it's something bigger than that. I'm not sure I'm ready to yet.

Yes, definitely. I sit at the back of lecture theatres on bad skin days, which is daft because I can't actually see the slides as well from there. I've had weeks where I've just worn a lot more makeup than usual and felt like I was hiding. And there've been a few times I've not gone to something, a flat party, a group thing, because my face was bad and I couldn't face it.

The avoiding is something I'm trying to push back on. I've been reading about how avoidance makes anxiety worse in the long run, and I think the same is probably true here. When I stay home because of my skin I'm telling myself the story that my skin is something to be ashamed of. Whereas if I go anyway, even if I feel self-conscious, I at least get evidence that most people aren't staring at my face.

Finding the word. That was it, honestly. I searched something like "why do I keep picking my face even though I don't want to" and ended up on a Reddit thread where someone mentioned dermatillomania. I read the description and felt this very weird combination of relief and horror. Relief because there was a name for it. Horror because it's a clinical disorder and not just a bad habit.

Then I found more things - communities, articles, people talking about it like it was a real experience. And that helped more than I expected. Not because it fixed anything, but because I stopped feeling like I was uniquely broken. Other people had this. Lots of other people, apparently. People who were functioning and smart and going about their lives. It changed the internal conversation from "why can't I just stop doing this disgusting thing" to something slightly more compassionate.

It's very early days. I only really understood what this was a couple of months ago. What I've done so far is remove the magnifying mirror from my bathroom, which sounds small but has genuinely made a difference - I can't do the close-inspection thing that triggers the worst episodes. And I've been trying to put something on my hands when I'm studying at night, like a cup of tea to hold, which gives them something to do.

I'm not in therapy or anything formal yet. I'm reading about it. I'm being a bit more honest with myself when I notice an urge. Trying to observe it instead of just acting on it automatically, or at least catching myself partway through and choosing to stop. That's probably where I am - I'm a beginner at this. I'm still picking. But I'm picking a bit less, and I'm much less horrible to myself about it when it happens, which feels like progress.

Look it up properly. Read about it. Not to diagnose yourself in a stressful way, but because knowing that it's a real thing with a name and a community makes such a difference to how you feel about yourself. You're not gross. You're not uniquely weak-willed. This is a thing that happens to a lot of people and there are reasons it happens and there are ways to get better at managing it.

And don't make "stopping completely" the first goal. I think that's too big and it just makes you feel like a failure every time you pick. Start with being a bit less horrible to yourself about it. That turned out to be harder than I expected, and also more useful. The shame was doing a lot of damage that had nothing to do with the picking itself.