I Have Dermatophagia...

I've been suffering with Dermatohpagia since i can remeber, I'm 18 now and i have been biting and gnawing at the skin around my fingers my whole life i never knew why i did it or what caused it until recently when i learned that it in fact it is a disease and there are others who deal with this. i thought for the longest time i was the only person in the world who would bite the skin around their fingers and peel the skin anytime i got nervous or paranoid or just because i'm bored. If im nervous or having really bad anxiety i'll pick and bite until i bleed and completely destroy my thumb. i will cover up my wounds with bandaids so no one would know but after a while my friends would notice and ask why my thumb still isnt healed and ofcourse i would lie and tell them i burnt my thumb but that was only because i know its friggin crazy to bite your own skin and then if the skin was big enough id eat it to hide the evidence. I figured no one on this planet would understand why I did it, and mostly they would look at me differently but when someone cuts themselves no body looks at them like their nuts they treat them like a patient with a problem, with a disease. Well this too is a disease and i think its time i start telling my friends exactly why my hands are always cut up and bandaged. I had no idea it was an OCD until i looked it up, now that i know im not as scared as i was before, i know a few ppl with OCD and this is no different. i can't help what i do, its a compulsion that i have no control over and i even know its messed up believe me i'd like to stop but when i try too somehow i will unconsiously do it and then once i notice im already bleeding. And yes it does hurt but it brings me this undescriblable relief that whatever im doing is helping me in some weird way. Maybe its cause i can control how much or little i want to rip at my skin or how deep i want to bite. When you feel like you've lost control most people will do something to gain control, weither its shopping or driving or even drinking. well my way of gaining control is bitting, and i hope that one day i will stop but right now i dont see that happening i guess the best thing to do is to get professional help, i think that'll be the only way i can stop and stop for good. i mean how else do you get rid of an addiction?