Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors: What is this condition?

What is Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRB) or also known as the body damaging disorder?

BODY-FOCUSED REPETITIVE BEHAVIORS – Things to know about Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors and how to manage this disorder.

Hair pulling, skin picking, and nail-biting all falls under Body-focused repetitive behavior (BFRB) and a portion of population has this. These are not just merely out of a bad habit but a complex disorders that actually damages the person physically.

Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors
Photo lifted from Shape Magazine

The common BFRBs are the following

  • Hair-Pulling Disorder (Trichotillomania) 
  • Skin Picking Disorder (Excoriation)
  • Nail-biting Disorder (Onychophagia)
  • Nail Picking (Onychotillomania)
  • Hair Eating (Trichophagia)
  • Skin Eating (Dermatophagia)
  • Lip Biting (Lip Bite Keratosis)
  • Cheek Biting (Cheek Keratosis)
  • Tongue Chewing
  • Hair Cutting (Trichotemnomania)

Most people tend to do one of these but only to a certain degree. When a person already starts to behave in some way, feeling out of control, body damaging actions, and causing social impact, one must seek help already from an expert. It’s more than just a bad habit and a doctor’s help about these recurrent body-damaging disorders is one way to manage this.

BFRB has the same symptoms as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) but these two conditions are different from each other. BFRB is also not similar to self-harming rituals such as cutting.

As per Self.com post, here are some tips to manage this:

  • There’s an existing app where you can actually track your progress.
  • If triggered, try to control your thoughts and be not overly focused on stopping yourself from doing it.
  • “Keep your hands busy” to other things that are more productive.
  • Do some calming techniques like acupressure.
  • Find the support system from people who are in the same situation as yours.
  • List down your urges and triggers to assess these.

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