The Trich Prof

02/02/2026

I get asked 'how can I help my child stop picking/pulling/biting?' a lot.

And I know that those asking love their children, want the best for them, and have genuine, legitimate concerns about the impact of BFRBs.

Importantly, I'm not a treatment professional; my advice comes from my own experience (both as someone who was parented and as a parent myself) and from our research.

The bottom line is that it is much worse for a child to acquire chronic shame than to have bald patches or lesions. Our research has shown that shame mediates the relationship between hair-pulling and depression/anxiety AND that parents can inadvertently exacerbate feelings of shame - despite that being the last thing they want to do. I think shame also fuels BFRBs by keeping us in distress and maintaining the need for self-soothing.

I suggest considering an alternative question: 'How do I protect my child from chronic shame?'.

Please please please don't worry if reading this makes you reflect on how you've been parenting so far. The fact that you're here, getting informed and looking for answers means you're one of the good ones! We can't teach what we don't know, and it's not your fault that there is so little good information about BFRBs available.

As always please drop a comment or DM if you disagree or have anything to add. I like hearing from you!

25/01/2026

Lots of new followers this week, so I thought it was time to re-introduce myself and describe the content I create and share.

Thanks to everyone for being here!

Book pre-order: https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/titles/clare-mackay/keep-your-hair-on/9781472149930/

21/01/2026

15/01/2026

Very grateful to for giving me a chance to talk at length about BFRBs, and for asking such good questions!

You can find it here or wherever you get your podcasts: https://shows.acast.com/conversations-with-annalisa-barbieri/episodes/clare-mackay-bfrbs

12/01/2026

I'm excited to share the results of our second research project.

This was a qualitative study of how young people who struggle with hair pulling experience shame. Similar studies have been done in adults, but this is the first to focus on adolescence, close to the typical onset of BFRBs. The study has been submitted for publication and is available as a pre-print: https://osf.io/9cfwq_v1

We identified one overarching theme, and 5 sub themes of the ways in which young people experience shame. They feel: stigmatised, flawed, scrutinised, misunderstood, isolated, and disempowered. Wow... what a lot of difficult feelings!

Doing the thematic analysis was emotional. I felt heart-broken, angry, and validated in equal measure, and it makes me more determined than ever to do whatever I can do make life better for people with BFRBs.

Some considerations... For this study we focused on hair-pulling. Future work will incororate other BFRBs. We recruited people via the internet, and relied on self-report rather than clinical diagnosis of hair-pulling. This might have resulted in a biased sample (e.g. all female + nonbinary).

Massive thanks to everyone who took part, and to the wonderful team.

09/01/2026

Ever since learning about CT fibres and the importance of pleasant touch I've been experimenting with ways to incorporate good touch into my life. Our BFRB urges could be desribed as a plea for skin/hair stimulation, and if we try to ban ourselves from putting hands to face/skin/mouth etc we might be denying our body what it needs. I'm interested in exploring ways to reclaim and reframe, and try lots of things as experiments.

As I've mentioned before, my hairdresser Mary Handy Hair and Beauty is one of my BFRB collaborators, so when I learned she had been training in giving scalp massage treatments it was a no brainer!

Oh. My. God. does this feel good!

31/12/2025

Wishing you all a very happy new year!!!

It's been another amazing year of building up BFRB research, education and advocacy, and there is much more to come in 2026.

With love to the BFRB community and all who support us!

22/12/2025

Celebrating another great year of BFRB research, education and advocacy with peacock nails!

I had badly bitten nails all of my life - I just could never resist urges to bite the nails and the skin around the edges. I started having gel nails professionally done by around 18 months ago. They're hard, and Beth takes time to make sure they're super smooth, which quietens the urges. They also make it harder for me to pull hair. I usually have them as natural looking as possible, but decided to 'TrichProf' them this time.

Yes, it's an expense (I think of it as a BFRB tax), and yes there are some downsides in terms of nail health, but compared to having permanently painful, infected, embarrassing nails, it's worth it for me.

13/12/2025

It may seem pretty obvious, but.... we're not all the same!

This post was motivated by the people in the yellow segment. I've now had quite a lot of conversations with people who were moderately distressed by their BFRBs, but the next time I see them they tell me they feel a lot better. Because of the stigma around BFRBs, people often have a history of negative interactions and/or have developed negative self-talk. A single good conversation can make a massive difference.

The majority of pickers, pullers and biters are not significantly distressed. These people do not have a problem, and do not need to be 'pathologised' for their perfectly normal behaviour. However, it's important to point out that this group can sometimes be dismissive to those who are distressed - e.g. 'it doesn't bother me so it shouldn't bother you'. By all means celebrate your freedom from distress, but please don't use it to belittle the very real experience of others.

Those in the orange segment have significant unmet needs, and are the focus of the research, education and advocacy work from me and many others. The orange folk are also not all the same, so we will need a portfolio of ways to offer tailored support. We're on it!

05/12/2025

!!!NEW RESEARCH PROJECT!!!

We are looking for young people who pick their skin, pull their hair or bite their nails to complete an online questionnaire study about their experiences of BFRBs.

Please share with anyone who may be interested.

03/12/2025

Beauty and the BFRBeast!

"I am ugly" was one of my loudest dementors of shame. It is neither ubiquitous or unique to BFRBs, but for those that have it, it can be intense and difficult to live with.

This is also a post I have procrastinated over, and edited several times, because I'm still in a process of learning how to feel differently about the face and body I was born with.

I'm sharing because I've found that embracing hair & beauty (products and professionals) is an important part of my de-shaming journey. Another way to slay those dementors.

Have you found a hair&beauty professional that makes you feel better? They're definitely out there!

02/12/2025

Christmas came early!!

I'm so excited to share... we successfully applied for a research network grant to the LEO Foundation (https://leo-foundation.org/en/).

I know lots of you will all want to know the date, venue, and other details, and all of that will be coming soon.

For now we are celebrating that this grant means we can put on a conference that will be bigger and better than the first one.

Excitingly, the focus of this event will be the interaction between skin/hair science, neuroscience, and psychology/psychiatry. This is an area known as psychodermatology, and this grant, from a skin-disease focused organisation, is a recognition of the growing understanding of the role of skin/hair science in understanding BFRBs.

And if that all sounds a bit too science-y, don't worry. .uk.ireland will once again be leading the community component of the event, and anyone who came to the first conference or attends support groups knows what an amazing job they do in creating a safe and supportive environment - both in person and online - for everyone who lives with or cares for someone with a BFRB.