You’re an incredible, brave, talented woman.

You’ve worked so hard to get to where you are and so often in those battles you’ve faced huge challenges, but you’ve always managed to find the strength of character to stay with your vision of what you’ve wanted for your life. Now you have those hard-won achievements behind you and can feel the respect of your colleagues and friends. Maybe you’re allowing yourself to sense an even more amazing future waiting for you, beckoning you to step up, go even further. You start to feel that tingle of excitement you always get when you set a fresh goal, that heady moment when you let yourself feel into the possibilities of what might be.

You see what you’ve managed to achieve so far, you know you’re strong, talented and so determined, you’re sure you can do it …but then there’s this thing that comes up, just like it always does, causing you to suddenly crumble and lose sight of all that you are.

You struggle with a body focused repetitive behaviour and it sabotages you.

Perhaps you pick at your skin, pull your hair, bite your nails or the insides of your lips and cheeks. Perhaps you are affected by something different but you recognise that what you are battling is so much more than just a habit - it feels like you need it to survive.

Why does it always happen when you really need it not to?

This is what takes that powerful woman that you are and reduces her, taking her voice, her ability to perform, her very belief in herself.

When you find yourself in the behaviour, without knowing how you got there, destroying your face, your body, pulling your hair, your eyelashes - this is what robs you of everything you hold dear. Afterwards, bleeding, looking at the bald patches you feel dazed, like you’ve been assaulted.

Then the shame hits, like a sickly wave, and with it the realisation that you’ve done it again. You’ve done this to yourself, and it’s going to take so, so long to heal.

Physically, the damage will fade, or be hidden, but you know that it takes so much longer for you to feel like yourself again, to climb back up. It feels impossible and you feel like you’ve been robbed. Now the ‘you’ that has so bravely taken on the world is crushed and filled with self-loathing. Your edge has gone and you’re barely holding on, imagining that everyone around you sees your humiliation and has lost faith in you.

What then? 

So, you hide. You just can’t step into all you know you have, all you know you are, and so you withdraw. In your career you stop being the change-maker that has been your proud domain, and you try to ignore the puzzled looks on the faces of colleagues as they wonder where you’ve gone. You try not to feel sick when the juicy project, or the promotion, goes to someone else, someone less than you. It doesn’t stop there. At home, when your partner mentions your withdrawal, you can’t say a word. Unable to explain the disgust you feel for yourself and your body, you close off. You expect to be left because that’s how it always goes

What If?

Slowly, as you come back to yourself, you know deep down that this is not something that defines you, but it does feel like it really diminishes you. The shame moves and anger comes in. As you start to see yourself getting up once again and stepping forward, like you always do, back into the best parts of you, you recognise the courage and strength it takes. It’s so unfair!

With compassion comes the realisation that you’ve worked too hard to allow this to continue to limit what you feel is yours to reach for in all the areas you care so deeply about.

You’re tired of looking at the lives of others and feeling like they’re somehow blessed in a way that you are not. You see them able to trust all of the good things in their lives, the beloved career with its achievements, the intimate relationships and the love and respect of those that matter. You know deep down that all this can be yours too, that you can have a life without this compulsion stalking you. You know you have it in you to reach as high as you want, leave this behaviour behind, and to have more.

You feel called to try once more.

Now, almost painful, comes that excitement.

When you are fully the ‘you’ that is out there flying high, blazing a trail for others to follow, you know that every problem can be solved. You’ve done it before in other areas of your life where your own blend of creativity and dogged hard work have found solutions where none seemed possible. You feel sure that you can do it here as well. You just need to find the way.    

You’re a problem solver and you see now that every time you’ve asked for help and then left in frustrated tears adds up to looking in all the wrong places. Professionally, if there was an issue that needed to be solved, you’d get an expert on the team and so, you reason, that’s what is needed here.

How I help when nothing else has worked

I see clients, brave and vulnerable individuals, who have almost lost their bright vision for their future. They have often lived lives deeply affected by their compulsive body focused behaviours and come to me fearing it is too late for them to change and step into a brighter future. They’ve been failed so often when asking for help from professionals, and been met with blank expressions and misdiagnoses. So often they wonder if what they are looking for is impossible to find and are close to feeling hopeless of finding a way forward.

And then we start the work. 

Everyone is different and no two paths are the same but through strength, patience and a willingness to do the work needed, change starts to happen. Sometimes it comes in a rush, an avalanche of insights leading to dramatic change, other times the work brings a softer movement, generalised to all areas of life, not just the behaviour. Always the work is profound and steadily trustworthy, allowing the individual to go forward into their future without the burdens of the past. More than that, we build in a resilience where the very behaviour that brought them to me becomes seen almost as a trusted part, alerting them to additional areas that need further healing. 

I don’t work quite in the way that others do but instead blend clinically effective methods that result in rapid change. Rooted in cutting edge neuroscience, I work with the brain as well as the behaviour. I help you locate not only what the behaviour is but also how it functions for you individually - the purpose it serves. We identify and dismantle all of the elements that originally put it in place and that keep it going in the present.

A huge part of this phase of the work is giving you the resources you need to uncouple from the compulsive behaviours that have haunted you for so long. We work in a highly efficient way, allowing you to access your own deep healing and helping you towards the change you seek.

My work is exclusively tailored to help those seeking to move away from compulsive body focused behaviours as quickly and effectively as is right for the individual. I don’t rely on your willpower, because you need more than that. Our work grants you access to resources you had no idea you had available and helps you to make sustainable changes right where they are needed. My approach is efficient, gentle, deep and leads to a profound shift, not only in the behaviour, but in other areas as well.

I bring both passion and a huge conventional toolkit with me as well as a profound understanding of the challenges that lives led with a compulsive body focused behaviour bring. This is my specialism and the focus of all my training and practice. I recognise that this is a hidden community of individuals who are not understood and whose lives are made so much harder than they need be by this condition and it is my mission to make a difference, where I can.

Primary BFRBs (clinically recognized)

These are the most well-documented and commonly diagnosed:

1. Trichotillomania – Compulsive hair pulling (scalp, eyebrows, eyelashes, etc.).

2. Dermatillomania (Excoriation Disorder) – Compulsive skin picking, often to remove perceived imperfections.

3. Onychophagia – Chronic nail biting.

4. Onychotillomania – Compulsive nail picking or tearing.

5. Morsicatio buccarum – Chronic cheek biting.

6. Morsicatio labiorum – Chronic lip biting.

7. Morsicatio linguarum – Chronic tongue chewing or biting.

Other Recognized or Associated BFRBs

These are less commonly discussed but still fall within the spectrum of BFRBs:

1. Scab picking – Repeatedly picking at scabs to delay healing.

2. Cuticle picking – Repetitive removal of cuticle skin.

3. Foot/heel skin picking – Often linked with callus removal.

4. Hair rubbing or twisting – Includes pulling without detachment or twisting hair around fingers.

5. Eyebrow/eyelash manipulation – Includes pulling, rubbing, or twisting.

6. Nose picking – Especially when habitual and damaging.

7. Ear canal picking – Using fingers or objects to compulsively clean or scratch.

8. Lip plucking or peeling – Using teeth or fingers to peel skin from the lips.

9. Cheek sucking – Sucking or biting the inside of the cheek.

10. Biting the inside of the mouth (other than cheeks) – Often unnoticed until soreness develops.

Emerging or Related Behaviors (less studied)

These may not be officially recognized as distinct disorders but are often reported:

1. Teeth grinding or jaw clenching (bruxism) – Sometimes co-occurs with other BFRBs.

2. Tongue thrusting or pressing – Pressing the tongue against teeth or roof of mouth.

3. Self-biting (non-suicidal) – Biting of arms, fingers, or other parts of the body.

4. Excessive grooming (e.g., tweezing, shaving) – Beyond cosmetic intent, often compulsive.

5. Compulsive pimple popping (beyond dermatillomania) – Using tools or fingers excessively.

6. Cutting calluses or thickened skin – Often seen on feet or hands.

7. Hair ingestion (Trichophagia) – Sometimes follows trichotillomania.

8. Chewing non-food items – Fingernails, hair, pens (sometimes overlaps with pica or oral fixations).

Important Notes

• BFRBs are not habits in the casual sense — they can be clinical disorders, often related to OCD or anxiety spectrum conditions.

• Diagnosis and treatment often involve CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), especially Habit Reversal Training (HRT).

• Many people with BFRBs feel shame or distress, making support and