Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Beginning stage of beard

Here are pictures of where I begin.  I highlighted areas of damage in Photoshop.  Some people may consider me an idiot, but I'm not that big of an idiot to do it on my actual face.




The blue areas are completely bald spots where all of the hair has been pulled out.  Some is growing back in the form of whiskers at just about any given time, and when they get any longer they somehow get yanked.  These are areas I can reach with my teeth by basically pushing my face into my mouth with my hand, so they see the most abuse.  This action looks similar to nail biting, by the way, and can be done in public without humiliation. 

The green represents thinned areas.  The upper sides of my mustache are again done with my teeth mostly, but sometimes my fingers pull them out.  The connectors can sometimes grow pretty well, but when my beard gets long like it is now, I start to pull them out with my fingers pretty heavily.  It takes weeks for those areas to grow full, and I can pull out ten in an hour if I'm anxious or have a lack of distractions in my environment, such as watching a movie, driving alone or if my wife falls asleep in the car.  

I found out a year or two ago that trimming my mustache hairs often creates less of a difference between the full areas and the thinned areas.  I learned this after seeing pictures of myself or occasionally catching a glimpse when I first wake up (maybe I forget what to expect?).  Sometimes I pull so many hairs out of my mustache that a full third is missing from one side, and I have to then trim it down to one day whiskers or even shave it off to keep it looking uniform.  In this picture, my mustache is above average, but still needs trimming to look more even.  


My First Post - Synopsis of my problem


This is where I begin.  Here's a quick orientation to my beard issues---or better put---lack-of-beard issues.  

The biggest problem areas for pulling out hairs are:

1.) mustache
2.) connectors (in between mustache and beard) 
3.) soul patch (centered directly under my bottom lip).  

I likely pull hair out in all places of my beard, but these areas that have open edges surrounding my mouth tend to be the hardest hit and the easiest to visually change.  

There are two interesting things to understand when looking at the posted pictures of my face. First, I haven't trimmed the edge of my mustache against my lip in years. I somehow bite it in a very straight line. Second, I think I may actually have enough potential connectors to join my mustache to my beard, but I have never given them a chance to shine ever since they started coming in back before I was even 20.  I came very close to this in anticipation of our wedding for the pictures, but still didn't keep them all in.  

After pulling out a hair (different than breaking or cutting hair) it takes about 3 weeks for a hair to reform in the follicle and poke itself out of the skin as a new hair. Given the amount of hair I pull out, there are constantly new ones coming in here and there, but hairs in the the high risk areas don't make it very long in the outside world.