Hi. I'm very new to this website. I know this is nearly 10 years old, but I hope someone sees this, as the community seems very sparse. I am a teen guy who is just recently realizing I have the worst kind of dermatillomania; dermatillophagia. I remember from a very young age, I would "bite my nails" all the time except even when I was so young, I knew deep inside it wasn't just "biting nails" and it was actually biting my skin on my nails and eating it. Even though I was still young, I accepted the "nail biting" because I knew it was far less embarrassing than calling it "eating your finger skin." Fast forward many many many years, and now I've adopted more skin picking and eating. I still do the fingers, but now since I'm a lot older, I actually realized I developed keratosis pilaris on my arms and legs (inherited from my dad) and have been since picking and eating the bumps. (Eww, so disgusting to actually phrase it...) I also run my fingers through my head and pick at the bumps and eat those. (Ugh...) There's actually a really big scab on there that I pick often. This leads me to my main question/fear: bringing it up to my partner. I have a boyfriend who I recently started dating a few months ago and it's going great but I have a very niche concern: him running his fingers through my hair and possibly finding the scab. I dread the thought of this so badly all the time it's genuinely insane. Like, what if he's just trying to be lovey to me and all of a sudden he's disgusted by my disgusting scabs all over my head? Sometimes I look at my hairline (another place I pick a ton) and it looks so gross. Anyways, the main point is I'm afraid because I've never talked about it to anyone. Also, recently my baby cousin (mind you, she's 8 years old so she's still not got a very good filter) asked me why my arms looked infected. I had to explain to her it was my skin condition (the keratosis) but the more I look, the more I realize it genuinely looks infected. I'm so ashamed of it. It's disgusting. Please help.
TLDR:
HOW DO I TALK TO LOVED ONES ABOUT MY SKIN PICKING WITHOUT FEELING EMBARRASSED AND/OR ASHAMED?