Understandably, the scars that we create through chronic skin picking, hair pulling and nail biting are not something that we feel good about.

The bald patches, thinning, hyperpigmentation, and dwindling nail beds can trigger feelings of shame, self-judgment, or even unlovability.

The problem is, these are also the same emotions that fuel picking, pulling, and biting! It becomes a self-sustaining cycle.

When we learn how to move through these emotions, we are actively helping ourselves reduce the need for them while unburdening ourselves of their emotional weight.

But how do you navigate this in a way that allows you to move through and release rather than feel stuck? Is that even possible as long as the scars and damage remain?

It is, and I'm going to share with you how.

🚩Fair warning, though, this episode contains no fluffy, toxic positivity. This is about embracing the truth and grounding yourself into reality. Which can sometimes, initially, be an unpleasant experience.

🙏It's an odd thing to say because it will probably drive some people away from listening to this episode. If that's the case, those people are most likely not ready to listen to what's inside.

Rest assured, if you listen, I'll be with you every step of the way 💛.

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Journaling Prompts:
Make sure you listen to this episode before answering these Qs.
🌟What do you not want to accept?
🌟What do you feel the scars are costing you?
🌟What do you feel you can't have because of them?
🌟From what you've written, what do you suspect might not be the full truth?
🌟What might you be able to allow yourself to grieve that you haven't yet?

If you need more support, reach out to your therapist, psychologist or coach. You can also reach out to me. I'm here for you!

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💌Share your story - Book your FREE BFPA* Support Call with me

🌟Download your FREE Guide to Stop Skin Picking Using Somatics

📝FREE Holistic Skin Picking & Hair Pulling Assessment - Join the waitlist

🎯Join the 7-Day Skin Picking Recovery Challenge

🙋‍♀️Send me a message here

My name is Raffaela Marie. I'm a holistic BFRB coach who has healed from 15 years of chronic skin picking myself and dedicated my life to helping driven women do the same. Through my podcast, free resources, and programs, I teach strategies to overcome urges, build emotional safety, and expand into authenticity. My approach goes beyond quick fixes, focusing on root causes and long-term recovery.

The version of you that is free from chronic skin picking, hair pulling, or nail biting is one that feels confident, creative, compassionate, and calm.

These are not just pretty words; this is who you are at your core (as research has discovered)!

Now the question is, how do we connect more to this part of ourselves?
And how does picking, pulling, and biting both hold you back and help you get there?

This is where we turn our greatest struggle into our greatest teacher, and we don't do it through guesswork but through using well-researched therapeutic models (that actually help).

Listen in to learn:

• A powerful therapeutic model for chronic picking, pulling and biting that isn't CBT or HRT.
• How to turn picking/pulling/biting into a tool for healing
• Who you are at your core (as research has discovered)
• How to connect to these incredible core qualities in a tangible and practical way

Resources:

No Bad Parts by Richard Schwarz (book)

Clarity: Focusing on the 8C's of Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy

IFS Website

💌Share your story - Book your FREE BFPA* Support Call with me

🌟Download your FREE Guide to Stop Skin Picking Using Somatics

📝FREE Holistic Skin Picking & Hair Pulling Assessment - Join the waitlist

🎯Join the 7-Day Skin Picking Recovery Challenge

🙋‍♀️Send me a message here

My name is Raffaela Marie. I'm a holistic BFRB coach who has healed from 15 years of chronic skin picking myself and dedicated my life to helping driven women do the same. Through my podcast, free resources, and programs, I teach strategies to overcome urges, build emotional safety, and expand into authenticity. My approach goes beyond quick fixes, focusing on root causes and long-term recovery.

Did you know there is a specific brain function that is largely responsible for your chronic picking, pulling, and biting?

That's right, you're not broken. You never were. It's your brain over-functioning.

In fact, it's a really common struggle in this modern, overstimulated world.

Look at all the people who are overworking, overeating, overgiving, overexercising, overthinking, overgrooming.

We're all chronically overwhelmed and addicted to it.

And it's because of something called intermittent reinforcement.

In this episode, I share with you how this particular brain function is one of the key drivers behind your BFPA* + tangible steps to rewiring your brain.

These steps don't require force, are backed by science, and will pull on your heartstrings. Not to mention, they will actually help you to move forward towards freedom.

Journaling prompts from the episode

"Needs" list. Which one calls to you?

• Relief
• Escape
• Comfort
• Stimulation
• Certainty
• Control
• Numbing
• Achievement
• Connection

Whatever stood out to you in the list above, ask yourself these Qs:

1. Why is that need so important to you right now?
2. What would it give you to make the space to meet that need for yourself?
3. How might this impact those around you?
4. What will it cost you to not make the space to meet that need?
5. What are 3 tangibles things you can do to meet that need in your life right now?

References & Resources

• Determinants of Addiction: Neurobiological, Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sociocultural Factors
https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/monograph/9780323905787/determinants-of-addiction

• Intermittent Reinforcement: Why Toxic Relationships Feel Addictive
https://reachlink.com/advice/relations/intermittent-reinforcement/

• Engineered Highs: Reward Variability and Frequency as Potential Prerequisites of Behavioural Addiction
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306460323000217

• Wired for Want: How Dopamine Drives the New Epidemic of Everyday Addictions
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Zoe-Wyatt/publication/391756047_Wired_for_Want_How_Dopamine_Drives_the_New_Epidemic_of_Everyday_Addictions

• Stuck in a Toxic Cycle? This Psychological Pattern Might Be Why
https://www.catharticspacecounseling.com/blog/stuck-in-a-toxic-cycle-this-psychological-pattern-might-be-why

💌Share your story - Book your FREE BFPA* Support Call with me

🌟Download your FREE Guide to Stop Skin Picking Using Somatics

📝FREE Holistic Skin Picking & Hair Pulling Assessment - Join the waitlist

🎯Join the 7-Day Skin Picking Recovery Challenge

🙋‍♀️Send me a message here

My name is Raffaela Marie. I'm a holistic BFRB coach who has healed from 15 years of chronic skin picking myself and dedicated my life to helping driven women do the same. Through my podcast, free resources, and programs, I teach strategies to overcome urges, build emotional safety, and expand into authenticity. My approach goes beyond quick fixes, focusing on root causes and long-term recovery.

After this, if you want a guided meditation on how to drop into your body, listen to episode 108: Why You Can't Slow Down + Somatic Practice to Show You How.

To truly regulate your emotions, you need to get out of your head and into your body.

The frustrating thing is that even if we understand this concept on a logical level, we can still be left feeling lost about how to implement it effectively and consistently.

This is because emotional regulation is a felt experience, not a thought process.

You've got to stop thinking about how to feel and instead allow yourself to experience it.

Like jumping out of a plane and floating to the ground far below. You can't truly appreciate the full experience unless you do it. Anything else is just living in our imagination rather than reality.

So let's take that leap together and learn:

• The brain system that keeps you trapped in your head
• How the purpose of this system can be rooted in trauma
• What your inner child has to do with it all
• The steps to getting out of your head and into your body

💌Share your story - Book your FREE BFPA* Support Call with me

🌟Download your FREE Guide to Stop Skin Picking Using Somatics

📝FREE Holistic Skin Picking & Hair Pulling Assessment - Join the waitlist

🎯Join the 7-Day Skin Picking Recovery Challenge

🙋‍♀️Send me a message here

My name is Raffaela Marie. I'm a holistic BFRB coach who has healed from 15 years of chronic skin picking myself and dedicated my life to helping driven women do the same. Through my podcast, free resources, and programs, I teach strategies to overcome urges, build emotional safety, and expand into authenticity. My approach goes beyond quick fixes, focusing on root causes and long-term recovery.

This is why the typical treatments for OCD - CBT and habit reversal - just don't seem to work.

You've been falling through the cracks of ill-fitted treatment and blaming yourself for being a hopelessly broken human being.

It's not your fault.

You've just been misinformed and going about healing the wrong way.

If this resonates, then odds are you'll find hope and a path forward in this episode.

You'll learn:

🌟How a behaviour can become an addiction
🌟Where addiction comes from
🌟How you can heal the root cause + the three core components that facilitate this

Resources:

Intermittent Reinforcement - article
https://www.catharticspacecounseling.com/blog/stuck-in-a-toxic-cycle-this-psychological-pattern-might-be-why

In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Mate - book
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/617702.In_the_Realm_of_Hungry_Ghosts

Behavioral Addictions: Signs, Symptoms, and Treatment Options - article
https://americanaddictioncenters.org/behavioral-addictions

Introduction to Behavioral Addictions - study
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3164585/

The Difference Between an Addiction and a Compulsion - article
https://www.verywellmind.com/the-difference-between-an-addiction-and-a-compulsion-22240

💌Share your story - Book your FREE BFPA* Support Call with me

🌟Download your FREE Guide to Stop Skin Picking Using Somatics

📝FREE Holistic Skin Picking & Hair Pulling Assessment - Join the waitlist

🎯Join the 7-Day Skin Picking Recovery Challenge

🙋‍♀️Send me a message here

My name is Raffaela Marie. I'm a holistic BFRB coach who has healed from 15 years of chronic skin picking myself and dedicated my life to helping driven women do the same. Through my podcast, free resources, and programs, I teach strategies to overcome urges, build emotional safety, and expand into authenticity. My approach goes beyond quick fixes, focusing on root causes and long-term recovery.

It's because of your inner critic.

But it's not enough to know this one small fact. In fact, maybe reading this leaves you feeling more lost than before.

This is because our mind needs to understand the WHY behind new information to make sense of it and organise it in our brain in a way that is helpful.

It's like you're on a long hike and someone adds a new, sparkly tool to your backpack. You get the sense it's important, but you don't know what it's for or how to use it, so it just becomes a burden.

This is what it's like when we hoard information without learning how to apply it.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- Why you procrastinate the things you know are good for you and end up picking/pulling/biting at your body instead

- The profound part your inner critic plays in this frustrating pattern

- Practical tools and questions to apply this knowledge to help you reduce procrastination, feel more regulated, and create more meaningful moments in your life

💌Share your story - Book your FREE BFPA* Support Call with me

🌟Download your FREE Guide to Stop Skin Picking Using Somatics

📝FREE Holistic Skin Picking & Hair Pulling Assessment - Join the waitlist

🎯Join the 7-Day Skin Picking Recovery Challenge

🙋‍♀️Send me a message here

My name is Raffaela Marie. I'm a holistic BFRB coach who has healed from 15 years of chronic skin picking myself and dedicated my life to helping driven women do the same. Through my podcast, free resources, and programs, I teach strategies to overcome urges, build emotional safety, and expand into authenticity. My approach goes beyond quick fixes, focusing on root causes and long-term recovery.

You're not a freak.

I used to feel like there was something deeply wrong with me because of the thoughts that would barge their way into my head at the most random, inappropriate moments.

But judging yourself and trying to force the intrusive thoughts away has much the same effect as when we do the same with skin picking, hair pulling, and nail biting - it just makes things worse. Sometimes destructively worse.

I hear you. I see you.

Let's work on this together.

What you'll learn:
🌟Where your intrusive thoughts are coming from
🌟The unexpected connection to chronic picking, pulling, or biting
🌟3 questions to generate a powerful perspective shift and deep healing

Here are the 3 questions from this episode. Save them in your phone for future reference:
How does it make me feel?
What does that feeling make me want to do?
What is this behaviour protecting me from?

💌Share your story - Book your FREE BFPA* Support Call with me

🌟Download your FREE Guide to Stop Skin Picking Using Somatics

📝FREE Holistic Skin Picking & Hair Pulling Assessment - Join the waitlist

🎯Join the 7-Day Skin Picking Recovery Challenge

🙋‍♀️Send me a message here

My name is Raffaela Marie. I'm a holistic BFRB coach who has healed from 15 years of chronic skin picking myself and dedicated my life to helping driven women do the same. Through my podcast, free resources, and programs, I teach strategies to overcome urges, build emotional safety, and expand into authenticity. My approach goes beyond quick fixes, focusing on root causes and long-term recovery.

Yes, hormonal changes are the obvious answer.

But let's not forget the medical gaslighting most women have experienced on this topic, AND the unconscious gaslighting we do to ourselves.

What is it about all this that makes you want to pick, pull, and bite at your body with a whole new vigour every single month?

I think you can feel it. There's something there that isn't being taken seriously that really deserves to be.

It's time to understand what that is for you so that you can better care for yourself at every phase of your cycle.

Honour your mind. Honour your body. This is how you can reduce picking, pulling, and biting.

💌Share your story - Book your FREE BFPA* Support Call with me

🌟Download your FREE Guide to Stop Skin Picking Using Somatics

📝FREE Holistic Skin Picking & Hair Pulling Assessment - Join the waitlist

🎯Join the 7-Day Skin Picking Recovery Challenge

🙋‍♀️Send me a message here

My name is Raffaela Marie. I'm a holistic BFRB coach who has healed from 15 years of chronic skin picking myself and dedicated my life to helping driven women do the same. Through my podcast, free resources, and programs, I teach strategies to overcome urges, build emotional safety, and expand into authenticity. My approach goes beyond quick fixes, focusing on root causes and long-term recovery.