Relationships between trichsters and family/spouses

(another great post by Mike Grant)

In these past years as a member of the ttm community, the one thing that
causes me the most concern is the effect of this disorder on the relationships
of the sufferer with family and significant others in their lives. For many
adults who have dealt with their ttm since childhood, the troubled
relationship with their parents over their pulling, particularly during
adolescence, has left emotional scar that were carried into adulthood,
sometimes having a significant impact thorough the remainder of their lives.

As I have said many times, trichotillomania is not something that only
involves the family member or friend that pulls. The emotions involved with
ttm, as well as its impact on a person's life, is far beyond what can be
successfully contained within the person who pulls without sometimes dire
consequences to their emotional and mental health. For this reason, I believe
it is imperative to positively involve the significant others in the person's
life in their struggle with this disorder. Left to follow its own course, ttm
tends to isolate the individual who has it and after the vital lines of
emotional support we all depend on to sustain us is severely damaged or
destroyed, the disorder proceeds unabated to extract its cost.

Ironic as it may seem, the trouble within a relationship between the
puller and his or her significant others oftentimes, if not invariably, begins
with misdirected good intentions. The good intentions come from mutual
caring, both on the part of the puller and those who are emotionally engaged
with the puller. This is understandable. The misdirection comes from two
principal sources. One being a misunderstanding of trichotillomania and the
other being what I call faulty mindreading. Trichotillomania is not well
understood by the best and brightest researchers who study it, so it is not a
reason proposition that the average parent, spouse, or even the puller
intuitively knows everything they need about the condition. The puller has a
small advantage in that he or she knows from an experiential perspective what
it is like to have the disorder, something I have found few try to share with
the significant others in their lives. With very little information to
proceed upon, the significant other(s) in the pullers life, aroused to concern
out of caring, resort to their own devices to direct their good intentions.
The most oftentimes used device is mindreading, that is, the ability to know
what is going within the puller's mind. With apologies to those who believe
in clairvoyance, this isn't really possible. What the person does is analyzes
the information their are presented with through their own experiences and
preconceptions to arrive at some speculation as to what the puller is feeling.
Oftentimes their conclusions are wrong, arrived at through faulty reasoning
because they lack the experience of being a puller. That's why many times a
complete stranger with ttm can do so more emotionally for the puller than the
significant others in his or her life with whom they otherwise have very deep
and meaningful emotional bonds. This faulty mindreading misdirects the
underlying good intentions all to frequently results in friction between the
puller and the significant others in his or her life as actions, which are
misinterpreted by the puller, don't bring about the results expected by loved
one.

This is where communication and sharing between the puller and the
significant others in his or her life is essential. It's a two-way street
that isn't easy in the beginning for either the puller or the loved one.
Sometimes it requires outside intervention, such as a facilitator for adult
pullers or a combination of a mentor and peer advisor when a parent and child
relationship is involved. A facilitator can be a professional counselor or
other mental health professional or even someone from the ttm community with
suitable experience. A child and adolescent counselor may play the role of
intermediary between the parent and child, opening the necessary lines of
communication and fostering mutual understanding. Although there are a few
former pullers who have gone to become professional counselors (and great
ones, by the way), most mentors are carefully selected members of ttm
community. The mentor provides an understanding outlet for the child's
feelings as well a friend. At the same time, the mentor provides a bridge to
the adult world of the parents to help the child better understand the parents
and their actions in regard to the ttm. The peer advisor to parents, who is
also a parent of a puller, works with the parents to provide a better
understand their child's disorder and explore more rewarding alternative ways
of dealing with it. The peer advisor to the parents and mentor to the child
who pulls work with one another to bring the parents and child together in
regards to the child's ttm. Ultimately, the parent and child form a highly
cohesive team to work together in effectively overcoming the challenges which
ttm present to both the child who pulls and his or her parents. The role of
the parent peer advisor and child's mentor evolve into simply being friends of
family as a whole and continue in that capacity as sources of advice and
counsel. The same is true of the professional counselor or ttm facilitator
when it comes to bringing adults together. The idea is to form a team
between the person who pulls, be it adult or child, and the significant others
in their lives to effective deal with the life challenges brought about by
trichotillomania.