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Growing Up with Trichotillomania
Episode 18
Growing Up with Trichotillomania
This week, I’m bringing back the amazing story of Heather Brooke, a beauty pageant winner, licensed counselor, and author of the children’s book, “Where Is My Hair? A Trichotillomania Story for Children”. Heather grew up with trichotillomania and now she treats patients who are dealing with this disorder. In this episode from the vault, Heather talks about how she came down with this condition, how it impacted her throughout her life, and how she learned to cope with it.
Understanding Trichotillomania: A Lesser-Known Cause of Hair Loss
Hair loss is a common issue that many people face, but not all hair loss is the same. Trichotillomania is a lesser-known disorder that causes individuals to compulsively pull out their own hair, often as a coping mechanism to deal with trauma or extreme stress. Unlike other forms of hair loss that may be due to medical conditions, hormonal changes, or genetics, trichotillomania is sometimes rooted in psychological distress. Heather, a beauty pageant competitor and therapist, shares her personal journey with trichotillomania stemming from childhood trauma.
Finding a Solution: Heather’s Journey to Recovery
For those dealing with trichotillomania, finding an effective solution can be a long and complicated process. Heather describes her journey through different types of treatment and medication, none of which provided a complete solution for her. Her preferred approach covers her bald spots, which also helps keep her from pulling her hair out in those spots as well so they have the opportunity to heal. This option not only concealed the effects of her trichotillomania but also instilled a newfound sense of confidence in Heather. She shares that seeing a full head of hair again was a transformative experience for her.
Coping with Hair Loss: A Message of Hope
Heather’s story is a beacon of hope for others dealing with hair loss, whether due to trichotillomania or other reasons. She emphasizes that no one is alone in this struggle and encourages people to seek out solutions that work for them. As Heather has shown, solutions like hers can significantly improve one’s quality of life by restoring both hair and confidence. Her journey underscores the importance of seeking help and exploring all available options. For those feeling lost and overwhelmed, Heather’s message is clear: there is hope, and effective solutions are within reach.
Episode.18 Transcript
Heather Brooke [00:00:05]:
When I was a kid, I was probably about five years old when I started competing in pageants. But when I was around nine or ten years old, I was sexually abused by an older cousin. And it wasn’t long after that I started developing a disorder called trichotillomania. So the person who has the disorder actually pulls out their own hair. And the best way that I can describe it is as a coping mechanism for all the trauma that was going through and experiencing.
Kevin Rolston [00:00:53]:
Welcome to Hairpod, the podcast where you get to hear real people talk about their hair journeys. I’m your host, Kevin Rolston. And each week I get to interview people from different walks of life whose lives have been touched by hair loss in some form or fashion. Many of our guests have experienced hair loss themselves and found a way to get their confidence and their hair back. This week, we’re bringing back one of the first episodes we ever released. It’s a story of trauma, triumph and transformation. When we were getting ready to launch hairpod, I got to interview Heather Brooke about trichotillomania, the condition that caused her to pull out her own hair. She is a beauty pageant winner, a counselor, and the author of where is my hair? A childrens book about trichotillomania.
Kevin Rolston [00:01:39]:
Were going to cover all that and more today. But before we do, I just want to let you know that Heather does briefly mention abuse and trauma in this episode. Its not graphic, and we dont dwell on the subject, but if thats not something that you want to hear about right now, maybe save this episode for another day. Now let’s get into Heather’s story of hope after hair loss.
Kevin Rolston [00:02:06]:
Hello, Heather.
Heather Brooke [00:02:07]:
Hi. How are you?
Kevin Rolston [00:02:09]:
I am doing great. Tell me a little bit about your hair journey, because you’re started in a different place than what most people do. You were doing beauty pageants as a child and you started having hair loss issues. Why was that?
Heather Brooke [00:02:27]:
Yeah. So actually, when I was a kid, I was probably about five years old when I started competing in pageants. But when I was around nine or ten years old, I experienced some trauma. I was sexually abused by an older cousin. And it wasn’t long after that that I started developing a disorder called trichotillomania. So unlike a lot of people with hair issues, hair loss issues, theirs are usually natural or medical or something. Trichotillomania is actually a hair pulling disorder. So the person who has the disorder actually pulls out their own hair.
Heather Brooke [00:03:07]:
And the best way that I can describe it is as a coping mechanism for all the trauma that I was going through. And experiencing.
Kevin Rolston [00:03:15]:
What did that look like? How noticeable was it, and how did your parents deal with this situation?
Heather Brooke [00:03:21]:
Yeah, so my journey, it started out, it wasn’t super noticeable super quick. I could actually remember the first time that I pulled, and my trickatilla mania began with my eyelashes, not from my head. And I was in the hallway at our house, and I had an eyelash that kept poking me in the eye. And I went to a mirror in our hall and was just trying to straighten out the lash. And as I was pulling on it to try to straighten it out, it came out. And when it came out, there was, like, this release. I’m a therapist as well, and so the one thing that I can compare it to is for people who do self harming and cut, there’s that release that people do get when that happens. And that was kind of what that felt like for me when I pulled that lash on accident.
Heather Brooke [00:04:15]:
Like, that wasn’t even intentional, but that sudden, like, release that came, it was like, for a brief moment, all of the stress and anxiety that I had been holding inside was gone. But it almost creates, like, endorphins, like a high, and. But like any high, you have to continue the behavior to continue to get it. And so, for me, that started with my lashes, and it took probably months before anybody ever noticed that. When that became noticeable, I moved to my eyebrows, thinking, oh, if I pull from somewhere else, then maybe I’ll stop pulling from there. That didn’t work. So my parents thought that I was shaving my eyebrows, and it probably wasn’t until three or four years after I actually started pulling that I developed enough bald patches on my head, because at that point, I had started pulling from my head that I had developed enough bald patches that it was noticeable.
Kevin Rolston [00:05:13]:
About what age were you at this time?
Heather Brooke [00:05:16]:
13 or 14.
Kevin Rolston [00:05:18]:
And was it your parents that stepped in and said something? Did you hear anything from kids in your school? How was it that it really kind of first came to light to them?
Heather Brooke [00:05:27]:
Yeah. So my grandmother, I believe, was actually the first person who noticed. I always had really long eyelashes, and I had, like, Brooke shields eyebrows as a kid. And so when my grandmother was, like, looking at me one day and she was like, what happened to your eyelashes? And I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know why I was doing it and why I couldn’t stop. So I was just like, oh, I was trying to curl them with one of those eyelash things. So I, like, lied about what I was doing. And then when my parents, when I moved to my eyebrows, and my parents thought that I was shaving my eyebrows.
Heather Brooke [00:06:01]:
I just allowed that to continue because I didn’t know what I was doing. I felt so weird that I was doing this, and I couldn’t stop, and I didn’t know why. And so it was when I was 13 or 14, I was up really late one night watching a. It was like an infomercial or something that was on television, and it was about wigs. And as I was sitting there watching this infomercial, there was a woman on there who started talking about pulling her hair. And then she started talking about, like, these fake eyelashes and different things. But as she was talking, she said, trichotillomania. And a couple of days after that, my mom noticed a bald patch on my head in the pool.
Heather Brooke [00:06:55]:
We had been swimming, and I wore. At that point, I was wearing. I had always had super thick hair, and I think that’s one of the reasons that, other reasons that it took so long to notice that I’d always had super thick hair. And so I just got to the point where I was always wearing my hair in a ponytail. But this one specific day, she was coming out of the pool behind me, and my ponytail had moved enough that she could see the bald spot. And so when she said something to me about it, I was like, okay, I think I saw this commercial. I think this is what I have. And I told her, and she said, okay.
Heather Brooke [00:07:30]:
And so she scheduled an appointment with me to see the doctor that she worked for. And so I went in. He diagnosed me, and then he made a referral to a psychiatrist and put me on some medications, and that was kind of where the treatment for it started.
Kevin Rolston [00:07:50]:
Even though the trichotillomania was causing some ball patches on Heather’s scalp, she never let that stop her from competing in beauty pageants.
Heather Brooke [00:07:59]:
I competed off and on throughout high school, even with my trichotillomania. I competed some years with a wig, some years with glue in extensions or clip in extensions.
Kevin Rolston [00:08:14]:
In between pageants and trying to be a normal kid, Heather started to receive different treatments for trichotillomania. Trichotillomania isn’t one of those things you treat once and just move on from. It’s a chronic issue that Heather still deals with to this day.
Heather Brooke [00:08:28]:
Yeah, it was a lot. It’s still a lot because it’s still something that I struggle with because there’s so little research done on trichotillomania. So there’s still a lot to be learned about it. And I’ve actually been part of a couple of different studies that are looking at how genetics can be involved, how mental, other mental health issues can play into it, but there’s just so little known about it. So when I was diagnosed, I was put on an antidepressant. That didn’t help, just made me sick. Then there was points where when I was real under really high levels of stress, I would pull more. There would be times where I would pull subconsciously or unconsciously, like I would be pulling and not even be aware until after I had already been doing it, that I had done it.
Heather Brooke [00:09:13]:
Sometimes it was conscious, so there was a mixture of those, but I tried everything that I could to hide it. By the time I was a junior in high school, I was almost completely bald. I had to wear a wig. I’m wearing a wig in my senior pictures. But by the Christmas of my senior year, I was able to let my hair grow out enough that I had this short, cute pixie cut. And it’s been more manageable since that point. I still struggle with it. It’s still something I struggle with on a daily basis, but, and I’ve tried covering it up, like I said, with ponytails, doing ponytails, doing wigs, wearing extensions, all different kinds of things.
Heather Brooke [00:09:54]:
And when I got ready to compete for Miss woman Colorado, United States, I was looking for alternatives to help hide some of the spots that I had at the time. And I found hair club, and hair club was actually one of my sponsors. And so that’s kind of helped a lot with my journey.
Kevin Rolston [00:10:11]:
Oh, wow. That’s so cool. Tell me a little bit about that. Like, how did you exactly find them? Just the name popped up and you decided to go. And how did that all come about?
Heather Brooke [00:10:21]:
Yeah, I was just googling hair salons and that did extensions and looking for sponsors, and hair club popped up. At the time, I’d only heard of hair club for men, so I thought that it was just for men. But I did a little bit of research and found out that women used hair club as well. And so I just emailed them. The manager at the Denver location messaged me back, emailed me back, and we set up an appointment. I went in for a consultation, and then the next thing I knew, I was a hair club client, and they were one of my pageant sponsors. And it was awesome because once I won the pageant, right, I was going to compete for Miss woman Colorado. Whenever I got hair club as a sponsor.
Heather Brooke [00:11:12]:
And when I actually won the title for the state, I jokingly with my stylist, was like, I wish I could take you with me to nationals for you to do my hair at nationals. And so they were like, yeah, we’ll send her out there with you. So they actually sent her to Florida with me for nationals, and she did my hair for the competition.
Kevin Rolston [00:11:40]:
Now, tell me, with the x strands, how does that work with your trichotillomania that you still are trying to recover from? Do you pull out the x strands? Is there a desire to do that?
Heather Brooke [00:11:50]:
Yeah. No, actually, it’s really interesting because I have what I call trigger spots. So there’s specific areas that when I’m stressed or bored or not even paying attention that I pull from. And so what extras does is it covers the areas that are lacking hair, and then my own hair is still used in addition to that. So all of the edges I pull from the sides and the crown of my head, so all of the edges are my. Is my hair, and just the crown and the sides is a system that is glued to my scalp. And so I shave underneath the system so that the system, it fits snug on my scalp. That’s just a personal preference.
Heather Brooke [00:12:36]:
Some people don’t do that, but I choose to do that. But it covers those trigger spots for me, so I don’t typically have the desire to pull anymore.
Kevin Rolston [00:12:47]:
How about that? And tell me, how do you feel with your system on? When you look in the mirror and you see that you’ve got a full head of hair and you don’t have those, you know, bald spots that you had had before, what is that like for you?
Heather Brooke [00:13:01]:
Oh, it’s amazing. Like, I wanted to cry when I saw myself in the mirror for the first time when they did the reveal, because it had been so long since I had seen myself with a full head of hair. Right. So when I look at myself, like, I don’t see the clips from the extensions, and I don’t see, it’s really hard to tell where your hairline is at and where the extras is at. And so it just gives me so much confidence to know that I can do whatever I want to with it. If I want to curl it, I can curl it. If I want to straighten it, I can straighten it. If I want to cut it, dye it, like, whatever I want to do to it.
Heather Brooke [00:13:41]:
I have those options again. And I’m not just stuck with, like, one hairstyle or fixing it just a certain way because I have to worry about hiding the clips or the different things from the extensions. And so it’s just, it really gave me back a lot of my confidence.
Kevin Rolston [00:14:10]:
Listening to Heather today, its hard to imagine her lifelong battle with trichotillomania stemming from childhood trauma. Now, as a licensed professional counselor, Heather commits herself to assisting those grappling with mental health challenges. She’s even authored a children’s book on trichotillomania to help young clients facing the same struggle.
Heather Brooke [00:14:31]:
Yeah, so I wrote where’s my hair? A trichotillomania story for children in 2018. And I actually, I wrote it because where I was living at at the time, people got to know me as a therapist who worked with people with trichotillomania because of my own personal experience. And so I would get a lot of kids. And so I had this girl, young girl, come in. She was 13 or 14, and she was on the autism spectrum, and she was non verbal, and she started pulling her hair, and her stepmom brought her in to me, and she said, her occupational therapist says that she has trichotillomania. And she started giving me all of this information that the OT had given her about trichotillomania. And I looked at her, and I was like, the only thing that’s accurate about any of that is the name of the disorder. And so I use with kids a lot books to help them understand what they’re going through, what they’re experiencing, that they’re not alone.
Heather Brooke [00:15:36]:
And so I went online and started looking for a book that I could share with her in session, and I couldn’t find anything. There was stuff for professionals, there was stuff for adults, there was stuff for parents, but there was nothing specifically for children. So I sat down and wrote my book loosely based off of my own personal experience. And then I sent it to my mom and was like, I’m gonna write a book. I’m writing this children’s book. Here it is. And my mom likes to draw, and so I was like, will you illustrate it for me? So my mom got grabbed some pictures of my oldest daughter and some friends, and she sat down and she. She illustrated the stories for the story for me.
Kevin Rolston [00:16:22]:
Wow, that is so cool. What a great full circle story that you have to share with so many people. What an inspiration. And I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us if you had to talk to any other women out there, for whatever reason, because hair loss, you know, your story is unique. I don’t know how many other people are going to say that they have what you do, but hair loss is something that so many men, and believe it or not, so many women are going through, and it’s hard to probably hear from another woman that’s got hair loss and is open about it. What would you say to them if they just feel kind of lost and they’re listening to this conversation saying, okay, what are my next steps? What do I do? How should I feel about this?
Heather Brooke [00:17:02]:
Yeah, I would definitely say that you are not alone. First of all, we all experience hair loss in some form or fashion and are going to at some point, whether it’s from hormone issues, medical issues, mental health issues, medications, all of these different things that we experience and deal with in life can create hair loss at some point. Doesn’t mean that you won’t get it back, but you know that. But we all struggle with something. And so the first thing would be that you’re not alone. The second thing would be that there is options, you know, and whether that is, you know, a treatment that hair club has that will help your hair regrow or you’re doing something like I am with, like, xtrands. Plus, there are options out there, and you just have to seek them out.
Kevin Rolston [00:18:09]:
We want to thank Heather for appearing on the show. It was great to talk to her about her resilience, despite the struggles she faced and how she transformed a painful past into a commitment to helping kids who are going through their own difficult journeys with mental and emotional health. We find her so inspiring, and we hope you do, too. If you know somebody who is currently dealing with trichotillomania or has a child with this condition and you’d like to pick up a copy of Heather’s book, we have a link to where is my hair? A trichotillomania story for children in our show notes. Thanks for listening to another episode of Hairpot. Check us out at Hair Club on Instagram or search Hairpot on Facebook to continue the conversation. If you know somebody who could benefit from hearing this episode, we would love it if youd share it with them. If youre enjoying the show, consider leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.
Kevin Rolston [00:19:01]:
We also have a website. Check it out by going to podcast dot hairclub.com. were here to build people up and share real stories so people experiencing hair loss feel a little bit less alone. And when you share, review, and subscribe, it helps us do just that. So thank you. Until next time.
Empowering Resources
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