BFRB Hub

🌸 Hiya everyone! <3 I’ve recently found some nice websites, forums, and apps that help with learning and keeping track of emotions, venting anything on your mind, or if you need someone to talk to!! If you know of anymore, let me know and I’ll add them to the list!   🌸

Venting

Vent App- This is an awesome app/social media platform where users can vent out their emotions and meet people with similar interests! It also has a private option for a diary to keep track of your day, and having your profile public is optional. If you just need people to listen and give support, this app is great. Should be available on iOS and android ;v;

Blahtherapy.com- this website is a great place to anonymously vent to a stranger using fruits and other objects as anonymous nicknames. Helps me a ton when I need a direct listener! Random people will be able to chat with you directly, and is once again completely anonymous.

r/OffMyChest- for Reddit users, this subbreddit is dedicated to just saying whatever is on your mind on letting it go. Many of the people in the subbreddit are willing to listen. 

Supportive Amino- for those not familiar with Amino, it’s an app that allows you to find various forums based on interests. In this case, I found this Supportive Amino dedicated to seeking emotional help and venting. There are probably others you can find as well on Amino!

Emotional Support

r/KindVoice- another growing subbreddit that is for users to meet with someone with similar interests and seek company and support. It’s a small but very helpful and supportive group. 

Calm Harm-an app for iOs and Android that is specialized to help provide calming activities to people with suicidal thoughts or are in extreme emotional support. Very adorable app that provides numerous distracting, relaxing, and all kinds of activities depending on what you need to calm and get over the urges.

Booster Buddy- another cute app that helps set schedules and activities to keep track of your mental health. It uses adorable animal characters, and also reminds you to take medications, set self-care routines, and remind you of appointments. Great way to keep track of you mental health journey ;v;

Pacifica- an app to help reduce anxiety and depression through various scheduled therapeutic activities! :) I believe it allows you to connect the app to your therapist for contact purposes! Contains a lot of stuff including podcasts, mood entries, and sooo many other tools to aid you! 

General Self Care

Flo Period and Ovulation Tracker- helpful app for tracking your periods, ovulation, and allows you to have a sort of health diary to keep track of symptoms and other feelings you may have! It also can remind you to take any medications or pills, and gives helpful health insights. It has the ability for you to set a code too to keep it private! 

Plant Nanny-aahhh this app is so cute! It serves as a helpful guide to remind you to drink the healthy amount of water you need by taking care of your own cute plant! Drinking your water also helps take care of your plant. Such a cute app to help! 

Aloe Bud-super adorable app that’s basically your all-in-one self-care guide. It has nice 8-bit pixel pastels, and reminds you to hydrate, breath, socialize, and many other things! I think you need iOs 11 or above to use it, but you can still check it out! <3

I may make this a zine later but for now here’s a list while i’m thinking about it: 1) Accept it happened so you can move on Obsessing over how you picked isn’t going to unpick your skin, but keeping yourself agitated about it might stress you out enough to go back for round two.

2) DON’T EXFOLIATE A WOUND DO NOT use exfoliating face wash within a good 48 hours of picking.  We don’t exfoliate gashes, we shouldn’t exfoliate facial wounds either.

3) Gentle face wash I use Cetaphil daily facial cleanser. Try not to scrub or pull at your face too hard or you might open up your wounds more and delay healing.  Aggressively sanitizing your face usually only does more damage & can hurt the integrity of the rest of your skin (your sheild!), leaving you open to getting painful deep cystic acne from any passing dirt in the air.  If you have an especially deep wound, GENTLY! wash it out.  If it feels kinda zingy like a splinter (like there is something Not Right in there) use an antibiotic cream.  Avoid things like hydrogen peroxide, as tempting as it is, it mostly just bleaches and flakes up your skin and makes things very painful, dry, and difficult to heal.

4) Gentle moisturizer As soon as you pat your face dry, slap some moisturizer on there to keep in that precious healing energy.  Make sure to use an unscented uncolored (?) (unpigmented?) moisturizer that is at least marginally suitable for use on / around wounds.  Again, you don’t want to irritate your skin further.  If nothing else, having itchy, burny skin is going to make you hyper aware of it & that tends to be ermm bad for derma.  (e.g. i learned that even though my snail face cream is really nice on closed scabs, i don’t want to use it within 24 hrs of picking or else it burns) I use an aquaphor (what people use on healing tattoos) knockoff for the really bad wounds & I use neutrogena hydroboost gel-cream for all-over gentle moisture. 5) Leave it alone Slap a bunch of bandaids over it or put on some gloves if you need to.  Distract yourself with something until you no longer feel that vibrational pull to the mirror.  Your skin (mostly) knows what it’s doing.  It can repair itself, but just like with tattoos and piercings, the more you fuss over it, the more you risk it getting messy.  Look out for signs of infection over the next few days & take them seriously. In the meantime, you can try using Distracting techniques like watching a show you like / listening to music / taking a shower / scrolling tumblr to get your brain to Chill.  Whatever works for you.

Substitution 

Substitution is like a replacement, less harmful behaviour that still allows you to feel like you’ve picked. 

Fidget toys- There’s a huge range of other fidget toys out there that you may find is better suited to what helps you keep away urges to pick – I’ll go over a few of them, but if you’re looking for inspiration it’s worth looking into the stimming community since there’s always new wonderful fidget toys that people are discovering there. You never know when you might find the one that suits you best!

If you decide to look into the stimming community for ideas of things that may help, please be aware and mindful that stimming is used by autistic people (like me!) and those with ADHD. It doesn’t traditionally cater to BFRB’s specifically, but there may be methods and fidget toys shared there that you could find useful.

Tangles- I find tangles to be particularly useful. I always have one with me any time that I anticipate being still (in class, queue’s, on the bus) because being idle is a big trigger of mine. Being able to have something that occupies my hands helps to lower the occurrence of getting urges to pick in the first place! 

Chewellery- In short, chewellery is jewellery that can be chewed. Something like this may be useful for biting replacement, especially if the chewellery you’re using is particularly finger-shaped, such as the kryptobite. Chewellery can come in different levels of softness and hardness to suit the type of force that you usually tend to use to bite.

Mochi animals- Small squishy creatures that almost have stretchy, jelly-ish consistency that can be pulled, pinched, and picked at. These can be found online relatively cheaply.

Fidget cubes- Like plain tangles, they can be something that you find useful because it keeps your hands occupied before the urge to pick can occur. There’s a lot of different shapes and designs that these can come in now thanks to the popularity of these tools.

Liquid latex- Often people will recommend putting glue on your fingers, and peeling it off to help deal with an urge, however liquid latex is designed to go around your cuticles to help keep your skin clean when doing nail art, which can also be peeled off. This stuff is meant to go on your fingers so I’d recommend it over glue

Peel masks- Along with liquid latex, gel masks can be put on your face and peeled off to help stimulate the peeling feel

Peeling oranges- I wouldn’t recommend this if you already have some wounds on your fingers (Ouch!) but there’s a lot of satisfaction to be taken in peeling the skin off of fruits.

Nail polish- If nail polish is something that you enjoy wearing, then do! I pick off my nail polish quite a lot. With this one I’d suggest investing in a good nail oil – picking off nail polish isn’t amazing for your nail care, but it might be better than going to town on the rest of your skin.

Avoidance For some, sight is a trigger. Discolourations and irregularities on the skin can be triggering, but for some avoiding those visual triggers entirely may help reduce the potential for a picking episode. Below I’ve noted some common methods that people use to visually avoid triggers.

The types of triggers that people have are unique and individual. If avoidance is a tactic you’re using to try and recover from a BFRB, it’s important to be aware of your personal triggers to effectively avoid them.

Nail Polish - While nail polish can be used as a medium to pick at, it’s also useful as a way to avoid seeing your nails if that’s something you may find triggering.

Mirrors- Avoiding mirrors isn’t always possible, but I’ve found that keeping a clear focus on what I have to do after using a mirror can sometimes help me to avoid getting pulled into a picking episode.