"Hi Open Eyes, what you've said here is really what I would like to find out. I agree that as kids there's coping mechanisms that are already there. What I really want to know is, where along the way did the strategies for coping get messed up for me? If there's a way to return to how I handled the situation when it first started, maybe I wouldn't be so afraid to put myself in an unknown situation. <--I hope that makes sense : quote redbull

Well, I don't really know if we can truely always identify that to be honest. And we don't necessarily have coping mechanisms that are already there. We somehow discover them on our own and parents can help us with that as well by soothing us when we are very small. Some of our coping methods are presented by our search to self sooth in troubling environments as well, for example if an older child is scaring us and a parent is not there to help us or calm us down, that is where I turned to trying to find ways to calming myself down. So there are a lot of variables to consider in the how's and whens.

" I honestly never considered my Tric to be a form of self soothing. But I've never talked to anyone about it, no one even knows I do it..I hide it very well. You've got me thinking about it in a totally different way now." quote redbull.

It is something to think about. If you go to school and really observe other students, you will see all kinds of self soothing methods they display. Some bite nails, some chew pencils, some doodle alot, some shake their leggs, some twittle their hair, some rub their foreheads, some take their fingers and message the tips with their other fingers, some scratch their heads, some rub their chins and hold their chins alot, some pull at their eyebrows and there are probably a lot more if you observe. And much of what we do is a learn as we go and often we don't even consciously think about it unless we are asked to stop doing it.

Yes, if your tric is connected to maybe pulling hair out, that could have been the start of it. We can often do things to distract us from stress and can get a bit obsessive if we are under a lot of stress. We do not like stress and we are driven to find ways to stop stress and yes we can learn to do some very strange things in the name of self soothing sometimes.

Open Eyes