Dermatillomania (Skin Picking Disorder)

Skin Picking and Other Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors:

If you or your child suffer from skin picking then Habit Reversal Training as well as neurofeedback can help by offering you alternative, non-destructive ways to reduce and release tension. By reducing your overall stress levels and helping you keep your mind in a more constant state of calm, you will be better placed to learn new patterns of behavior and better ways of dealing with stress when it does occur.

Brain biofeedback training of this kind is, in essence, is a relaxation technique and will be used to assist in reducing anxiety in addition to Habit Reversal Training and Cognitive Behavior Therapy. At Upper Montclair Psychological Associates, LLC we will help you or your child using brain biofeedback by helping you to self regulate your brain activity. From this point of understanding, you can start learning how to manage your thoughts and maintain more constant levels of calm, helping to prevent the onset of hair pulling or picking behavior and manage the urge to pull or pick.

Usually anxiety results from one’s response to stress. The stress can be psychological physical, dietary and/or environmental challenges, like loud noises. Once a person gets locked into a pattern of anxiety, it can be hard to break. Learning how to modulate or turn off chronic stress responses is life changing.

At Upper Montclair Psychological Associates, we help our clients learn to change past anxiety-producing responses to stress. We help them develop the skills they need to reduce or eliminate anxiety in their lives.

There are various forms. Sometimes anxiety includes excessive worrying, a nagging sense of fear, restlessness, overly emotional responses, negative thinking, catastrophizing, awfullizing, and defensiveness. Anxiety is involved in addiction, perfectionism, being overly controlling, and behavioral issues.

Anxiety suffers are often overwhelmed, exhausted and stressed out. Some can’t concentrate due to their intense internal focus. Others obsess about specific things. Anxiety is easily detected if someone appears outwardly nervous. At other times, anxious people can appear calm but their brain seems to never quiet. These people can’t stop thinking; they can’t shut their brain down. The constant internal chatter can get so bad that it interrupts their sleeping and steals their quality of life. They don’t live in the present, they constantly worry about the future or live in the past.

Helping people learn to calm or quiet themselves is by far the best and most effective solution for anxiety. Learning to decrease anxiety gives suffers hope as they take control of their lives. Cognitive Behavior therapy as well as Biofeedback and EEG neurofeedback are three of the quickest and fastest ways we teach people to learn to help themselves and it’s easy to learn. These technologies have been used for many years with solid proven results. It’s true, one can learn how to decrease anxiety and remain calmer with neurofeedback. Learning this life-long skill decreases the need for dependence upon medications.

Anxiety patients are regularly prescribed medications. But, medications can’t teach you to quiet your mind. Although there may be one or more area(s) in the brain causing anxiety, it’s normally not the entire brain. Brain training identifies and targets the problematic areas of the brain, medications generally affect the entire brain. This is why some medication may people feel tired or sluggish.

Medications only work when you are taking them, so patients become dependent upon them to decrease anxiety. Neurofeedback strengthens the brain to learn self regulation. When you stop medications it is likely the anxiety will remain. If the anti-anxiety medication is addictive, which many are, improper weaning can produce tremendous stress. If the medication(s) stops working or side effects occur, physicians often switch patients’ medication(s). This can cause agitation and confusion while a client gets use to the newest drug.