Eleanor Pai shares about her struggle dealing with a disorder while in school.
In sixth grade, I learned I had a disorder called trichotillomania, or trich for short. Trich is a disorder where you pull out your hair, usually in individual strands. Not even half way through sixth grade, half of my hair was gone. Of course, people have many misconceptions about trich, some people think it’s a form of self-harm – it’s not.
Some people believe that you can control it easily – you can’t, it can become an addiction, and it became an addiction for me very quickly. Trich is something I still struggle with today, and it has become part of my identity, a part of me I’m not proud of. My teachers at the time had never heard of trich, so they were concerned for me. This concern eventually turned into fear, fear that they didn’t know what to do, fear that they didn’t know how to help me.
While this fear wasn’t aimed at me, but not being told the origin of the fear, I started to believe the fear was of me. Fear of my trich. Fear of my identity. Eventually, the teachers asked me what they could do to help me, but I was also scared. To me, I felt like I was patient zero. I’m very grateful for what my teachers ultimately gave me, but if I could go back and say one thing to them it would be something like, “I’m also new to this. I’m also scared.”
This isn’t just about my trich, you can probably find similar issues at any school with any student. I believe everybody has a part of their identity that they aren’t too sure of, a part people stare at, a part people ignore. Teachers may find something similar to this in their students. So, instead of ignoring the unknown, ignoring a part of the student’s identity, I hope teachers can open up about their fears while helping guide the students through their own. With a Perspective, I’m Eleanor Pai.