I tried doing tally marks on my mirror every night that I didn’t pick my face, but after day 7 I went back to my old habits. I guess I should be proud that I was able to go 7 days without picking my face, but it’s so frustrating. I hate that I can’t just make myself stop screwing up my face. What a stupid brain I must have if I can’t even stop doing something I hate doing to myself. It makes it even worse that I’m in a high school all day teaching and the students get to see my face up close. I feel like they’re constantly looking at my make-up covered pick marks. I wish I could set up a slapping machine in my bathroom that would just slap my silly every time I went to pick. lol.

This week has been really stressful. Every once in a great while I experience sleep paralysis, something completely unrelated to my dermatillomania, but it’s horrifying. It happens when I’m falling asleep, and it’s not that I can’t move my body or anything, it’s just a terrifying feeling that overcomes me. I feel like there’s either an intruder in my house, or a ghost, or some other malevolent personage coming to attack me. It feels like I’m trying to pull myself out of sleep, but I’m too sleepy to do it, and I have this great fear that builds up because I can’t wake myself up and I "know" that someone is coming for me. It’s so scary. So that happened the other night, and then I couldn’t get back to sleep because I was afraid it would happen again if I fell asleep too soon afterwards. Do any of you experience sleep paralysis at all?

On a good note, I finally connected with one of my students today that usually gives me a hard time. I found out that he’s interested in joining the track team, so I had a very positive conversation with him about it. That made my day a lot better.