Teen spends three hours pulling out chunks of her hair every day.

A teenager who spends three hours a day pulling out chunks of her own hair started ripping out her eyelashes at just eight-years-old. Megan Prosser, 19, suffers from trichotillomania, also known as trich, a mental disorder where sufferers experience an irresistible urge to pull out their hair. During one of her 'pulling attacks', as she refers to them, the teen can easily create a bald patch the size of her hand. Megan, from Long Island, New York, has tried to regain control by shaving her head but has admitted that she'll never really be able to stop.
The pet store worker said: “It consumes every single second of my day. I spend maybe three hours-a-day pulling out my hair but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more.“I am hopeful I’ll get it under control but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to totally stop.”When she began pulling out her lashes like a child, Megan thought of them as ‘wishes’ she was collecting.“When an eyelash falls on your cheek and you blow it away, you are supposed to make a wish,” Megan said.“I thought I would have unlimited wishes if I kept pulling them out. I didn’t realise that I couldn’t stop.”Megan’s mother Tania Prosser, 47, a teaching assistant, was shocked when she noticed her daughter’s lashes were all gone.“My mother gasped and said: ‘What are you doing?’” Megan recalled.“She tried to help me stop. We went to the doctor and I was diagnosed with trichotillomania. I went to therapy but it didn’t work.
“I kept pulling out my lashes, it was a way for me to control my body.”Tania added: "I had never heard of trichotillomania before and I was shocked and curious about it."All along I thought it was going to be a temporary thing, I didn't realise it was going to last for a long time."When she turned 12, Megan started ripping out the hair on her head.“My friend straightened my hair and I noticed some small curly strands around my parting,” she said.“I started pulling them out and I couldn’t stop that either. I was pulling out a significant amount of hair, multiple strands at a time.”Soon Megan’s head was covered in bald patches which led to her getting nasty comments at school. She said: “At school people would say I looked like an alien, pointed out my bald spots and gave me weird stares.“But once I explained the situation to them, they would stop being mean. Most of the time people are curious and just ask questions.”Eventually, Tania took her daughter to a salon to have a weave fitted which halted the condition.
“The weave covered my entire head so I wasn’t able to pull out my hair,” Megan said.“Later I wore the weave as a wig with a bandanna on top so I couldn’t pull out my hair.”But as Megan prepared to leave high school at 18 and worried about her future, the disorder returned and soon she was pulling out more hair than ever before. She said: “I started pulling out viciously.“I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, my boyfriend had joined the army, my friends went to college and I was home alone, going to community college.“I felt like everyone was moving on and I was left here. I was pulling out too much to count, I went like crazy.“In the trich community, we call moments like that a ‘pull attack’.
“I pulled out my eyebrow hair too.“I tried to switch to pulling my hair out on my arms and legs as it is so much less noticeable but it doesn’t work for me, I don’t get the same urges to pull out that hair.“Sometimes I pulled out handfuls of hair and flushed it down the toilet because I didn't want people to see it in the trash.”She hid her hair loss by painting her bald patches with a powder designed for women concealing grey hairs. She wore fake eyelashes to disguise her lash-less eyes. While trichotillomania is considered by some medical professionals to be a form of self-harm, Megan compared her urge to the desire to scratch an itch. She said: “It’s almost like a really bad itch that I have to scratch.“It’s a strange kind of sensation, it feels like it won’t go away unless I pull out all the hair of that area.
“For me, it’s not self-harm, it’s a lack of control. I feel relief afterwards and, although it’s sometimes uncomfortable, it never hurts.”In January, she shaved her head in an attempt to force herself to stop pulling.“I’ve been wanting to shave my head since high school but I was worried what my classmates would say,” she said. But Megan still pulls out her hair daily and worries that she will never stop.“I hope that I will eventually stop but I don’t know how likely that is,” she said.“I don’t know if I’ll ever actually stop.”Megan, who shares her experiences with trichotillomania on YouTube, decided to speak out about her disorder to encourage other sufferers to confide in friends and family.“A lot of people who have it are really scared to tell other people about their hair pulling,” she said. My family knew about my trichotillomania but keeping it a secret from my friends made it feel worse.“Once I told people about it, I wanted to stop so those people could see that I was progressing.“It helps you to tell people about it, it encourages you to stop.
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