I had opened up some deeper points in terms of what I am actually losing through picking, and things started to ‘become real’ in a way – more real because I saw how I was losing something I didn’t know I had until I became aware I was losing it. I think it’s because as I was moving through all the negative associations (in my previous blogs), I still felt this distance and separation with my skin wherein I see it as foreign, dry and infected for example. But when I started looking at how I view it also as youthful, pretty and desire, I all of a sudden feel closer to it. I mean, I do deeply want to love and accept my skin. In a way, this desire directly or indirectly feeds the disorder, because as I pick at the skin with such focus and precision, I am doing so within the false belief that I am doing something ‘good’ and ‘beneficial’ for my skin.

          It’s true that at times I am destructive and harsh within dermatillomania, but generally it is more of a precise and careful play-out. It’s because I do care about my skin, which is sometimes hard for me to believe. But what I realized existed is this deep care that is something I unknowingly touched on in my last blog, and in touching on it and stirring it thus becoming more aware of it, it turned out to be a force that I have and that I am, within and as which I am able to move myself, such as stopping my sessions in  a way I had never been able to do before, within these little ‘breaks’ in the trance where I am able to feel  this breeze of awareness, like swift opportunities breezing by as little opening into which I can come through as the self-directive principle of myself and really tell myself to stop.