Transcript | Ep. 126: Untangling Hair Pt. 3: Losing It

Supriya: As a female, so much of your identity is tied to your appearance and specifically your hair. And so watching myself lose my physical identity strand by strand and not having any control over it, not being able to do anything to stop it was so frustrating, devastating looking in the mirror and seeing a face that looked so different than the face that I had gotten used to for the past 30 some years was just an absolute mindfuck.

[theme music]

Caroline: Hey y’all, and welcome to Unladylike. I’m Caroline.

Cristen: I’m Cristen. Today, we're wrapping up our three-part series — Untangling Hair — by talking about losing it.

Caroline: Roughly 40 percent of people who experience hair loss are women. So why do we pretend that balding only happens to men?

Cristen: Because of beauty rules, Caroline! Like, while men can leave the house bald no big deal, women with noticeable hair loss are often perceived as unwell or unfeminine. In the words of our guest Supriya Surender, it is a mindfuck.

Supriya: I remember one day my big milestone was I walked outside of my apartment to get my Uber Eats without a wig on. And my boyfriend was with me. And I was so scared and I made him come with me because I was so nervous.

Caroline: Supriya has alopecia areata, which is an autoimmune condition that, for her, has resulted in total hair loss. Today, she's taking us along for her balding journey and how she came out the other side.

Cristen: Then later, we’re talking with Dorin Azerad. She has a hair-pulling disorder called trichotillomania, or trich. Dorin has lived with trich-related balding since childhood.

Dorin: I would look back at photos of myself when I was 4 or 5 years old and be like, wow, I didn't have any eyelashes or eyebrows and be almost like ashamed to show people my baby photos or like looking at old photos of myself and just seeing a headband or seeing that my hair wasn't right so a bald spot was kind of showing. It's really, really hard in those moments to sort of see yourself and be like, wow, that's not a happy version of myself. And I can look back now and be like, you know, doing the best you can in the moment. You know, you’re still processing through your hair loss.

Caroline: It’s all to find out: What happens when women lose their hair? Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned in this series so far, it’s that it’s never just about hair.

[stinger]

Supriya: OK, so I'm Indian, which means I was born very hairy. I'm pretty sure my mustache appeared, I don't know, right around fourth grade. And I had the hairiest arms ever. I hated my hair in middle school because the texture started to change, and it became frizzy.

Caroline: Supriya Surender grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where the humidity made her hair even frizzier. It drove her nuts.

Supriya: I just spent my whole life wishing I had different hair than I had. I always wanted it to be straighter, longer, thicker, that's been my whole lifetime of my hair. But growing up, I never actually ever liked my hair. I always wanted different hair

Cristen: Supriya still remembers a self-portrait she had to make in first grade

Supriya: And I drew a blond girl with blue eyes. And if you take a look at my pictures, I as an Indian woman, I'm about as far from blond hair, blue eyes as you can get. But I think that kind of spoke volumes as to what I thought like a beautiful girl should be. But I just always imagined that long, sleek, pretty like Kelly Kapowski from Saved by the Bell kind of hair. Like that was goals, you know, I just wanted - you know, because back then everyone wanted to stick straight hair and for it to just be smooth and luscious.

Caroline: Kelly Kapowski wasn’t the only source of Supriya’s hair envy. She was also surrounded by aspirational hair at home.

Supriya: Just looking at my family, so many of my cousins have this immaculate hair, just long, naturally straight, easy to manage, beautiful, so thick, holds curls, does all of that. And you know there's really an association between hair and beauty just in general in life. But then with the Indian culture, that is just escalated from there because that's the expectation. You know, you're supposed to look like this Bollywood star and have this just fabulous, beautiful hair.

Cristen: Hair loss though? It never even crossed Supriya’s mind as a possibility. In fact, before alopecia reared its head in her early 30s, hair was the least of Supriya’s problems.

Supriya: Everything in my life was pretty much a hot mess express at that point. I had moved to Colorado for a relationship. I was in that relationship for three years. It was not a good one. And that had fallen apart and was ending. I was pretty much out here by myself, so I was very alone in my early thirties, kind of just going through a lot of depression and anxiety and you know trying to figure out what the heck I was going to do with my life.

Caroline: It was 2013. Supriya couldn’t decide whether to stay in Colorado, or go back home to Cleveland and regroup. Post breakup, she'd thrown herself into Crossfit as a way to get stronger and make new friends. But when an injury forced her out of the gym, Supriya felt defeated and alone.

Cristen: And around that same time, Supriya made a puzzling discovery.

Supriya: So I was actually in a dressing room at Target and.

Cristen: The worst things happen in dressing rooms.

Supriya: I know. Well Target is so rude because they have all of those mirrors. So you see yourself at all the worst angles, and that day in particular, I just happened to have my hair up in a ponytail, and while I was trying on an outfit, I noticed something on the back of my head kind of near like a little bit behind my ear. And I took my phone, slid back against the mirror and snapped a pic. And I was like, I think that's a bald spot. So I went to my doctor and he agreed and sent me to a dermatologist who confirmed that it matched all of the signs of alopecia areata, which typically when that disease starts, the hair loss looks like little circles of hair loss. So it almost looked like a quarter-sized bald spot on the back of my head. But because it was on the back of my head and because I typically wore my hair down, it was no big deal. They would inject some treatment into it and I would just keep it moving you know and hoping - I hoped it would grow back. But even if it didn't grow back, it didn't bother me because it was so hidden.

Caroline: Initially, Supriya's alopecia was treatable with steroid injections, and later, oral steroids. Those calmed the inflammation in her body enough for some of the hair to grow back.

Cristen: But the further her alopecia progressed, the harder it got to treat. Eventually, Supriya’s body stopped responding to the medication.

Supriya: And so in 2015, when my hair started to fall out by the handful, I was in extreme panic. And so in a matter of about three months, I lost all the hair on the top of my head, and I was just absolutely devastated. It was so difficult. And the hair on my head was one thing, but when I lost my eyebrows, that was almost harder than losing the hair on my head, because you never realize how much your eyebrows change your face until they're gone. And it - I looked like a stranger. When I would look in the mirror, you know I didn't know who this was staring back at me, so that was the hardest part of all of it.

Cristen: Yeah, there was a study we read that described the mental and emotional side effects of female hair loss specifically as, quote, a devastating misery. Does that resonate?

Supriya: Oh, 100 percent accurate. It was just so crazy, so sad. I would wake up every morning and hope that this was it, that my hair was going to stop falling and then I would get up and it would just be immediately falling. And all day long I would feel it on my arms while I was driving, while I was working just this nonstop reminder that it was happening. And they tell you, you know, try not to get too stressed. Stress can make it worse, and it’s just like, OK, I'll try that.

Cristen: The ol’ “just relax” treatment. It always works.

Supriya: Works swimmingly.

Caroline: We’re going to take a quick break. When we come back Supriya buys her first wig, and Baldie Boo is born.

Cristen: Don’t go away!

[stinger]

Cristen: We’re back with Supriya Surender.

Caroline: By 2015, Supriya’s hair was mostly gone. She started exploring her wig options and decided to go with what are called toppers — aka “wiglets” that clip into the hair you have left to make it look thicker. But Supriya's first topper seemed to hurt more than help.

Supriya: It was so uncomfortable. And because I was losing hair, every time I unclipped it, it would pull out more hair, and I hated that thing. But I think before I even delved into that world of buying hair, the most shocking thing was how expensive that world is. I remember I - when the first topper I tried on, I asked her the price, expecting it to be maybe like $200. And she said, I think like 1,100, and I about near died on the spot. Yeah. So that was something I was not prepared for.

Cristen: The price of alternative hair depends on the type of hair used, its density and the way the wig cap is constructed. Medical wigs are among the most expensive because they’re specifically designed with silicone caps to securely grip to fully bald heads. Some synthetic or fashion wigs, on the other hand, might just have an adjustable strap to hold the wig in place.

Caroline: Once Supriya decided to invest in wigs, she sought out a shop that specialized in wigs for people with hair loss.

Supriya: So it was kind of more of a safe haven of a wig shop. And I went there and I met a lovely woman named Hannah, and she helped me pick out my first wig. It was very expensive and very uncomfortable, but it looked like my old hair, which is all I cared about at that time. I wanted to keep my alopecia a secret. So anything I could do to not you know put question marks in people's minds, I was willing to do at that point.

Caroline: But wigs come with their own set of challenges.

Supriya: They might look like your hair, but they don't act like your hair. They do different things. They're weirder, they get heavy. They might cause headaches. They get really hot. So it was a big learning curve to understand how to navigate this new normal.

Cristen: For instance, after Supriya’s Crossfit injury healed, she tried getting back into the swing of things at the gym.

Supriya: Working out with a wig is hard, but cross fitting with a wig, in my opinion, is impossible, especially with that very first wig I had. So I would work out bald, which - I just hated it so much. All I could think about is I'm bald. People are seeing me bald. My head is so sweaty. My - the sweat is dripping into my eyes now because there's nothing to catch it like. That's all I could focus on. So Crossfit became - it went from this thing that I loved and gave me so much life to something that just added to my misery at that point.

Caroline: Surpriya started poking around online and joined a Facebook support group for people dealing with medical hair loss. There, she met a new friend named Hannah (not to be confused with Hannah from the wig shop). Hannah has trichotillomania and makes custom wigs.

Supriya: And so I remember seeing her profile picture and commenting on one of her posting. Is that a wig in your picture? Because if so, I need that wig. And she's like, yeah, I made it. And so I got in touch with her, and it was the best ever. We got on a FaceTime. She took her wig off. That was my first time really interacting with somebody else with hair loss you know face to face like that. We just connected immediately.

Cristen: Supriya had to get her hands on one of Hannah’s gorgeous wigs. Custom-fit and lined with silicone, Supriya’s new wig felt comfortable, secure and made her feel like herself.

Supriya: That wig since then is the first time I felt like, OK, I can do this, I can be happy and these -this is going to work.

Cristen: She had also started therapy and was really working on herself. But her mental health was still very much up and down.

Supriya: You know, I was nearing my 35th birthday, and I was just kind of throwing a lot of pity parties for myself because at that time, 35 was my scary age and you know, I was still single and a bald woman and I just was - felt like I everything in my life was not what I expected it to be.

Caroline: Then came another medical shock. One day at Crossfit, Supriya began experiencing sharp, excruciating pain that she initially tried to power through. She finally took herself to the hospital and learned that she had developed a massive pulmonary embolism, which is a blood clot in the lungs.

Supriya: The doctor said if I had waited much longer, I probably would have died, which was crazy to hear. So immediately after that, I kind of continued my pity party. I was like, “oh, one more thing let's just add it to the list” until I had this moment of, “Oh my God, I am so worried about turning 35 that I didn't even realize I almost didn't make it to 35,” and I just had this aha moment of, “Wow, birthdays are actually a blessing, any one you get to celebrate, because there's so many people that don't get that and would give everything for that.” And so I decided to change my perspective and really focus on living my best life. So the year of 35 was the year of Supriya, and I started having so much fun, going out with my girls, going out for boozy brunches every weekend, just having so much fun. And at the end of that year, I decided that I had a story to tell, and I kind of felt like my life was lacking in something that truly filled my cup. And I wasn't doing much to make the world a better place. So I decided to share my story online with the feeling that if I can help one person, then you know, that's all that matters. And that's where Baldie Boo came from.

Cristen: Baldie Boo is Supriya’s blog where she writes about her alopecia journey. In her ‘about me’ post, Supriya wrote: “I decided to start this blog because Alopecia can really be a shitty experience. I mean if there wasn’t a chance my mom was going to read this, Id say it sucks a bag of d*cks.”

Caroline: That is some real talk. Through Baldie Boo, Supriya started connecting with people in the hair loss community who were thriving. She also started hearing from folks who were in the same mental space she’d been in when she first got alopecia.

Cristen: Those messages inspired Supriya to continue pushing herself out of her comfort zone. So during Alopecia Awareness Month a few years ago, she decided she was going to go to work without her wig on

Supriya: I was shaking in the car before I walked into work. I was sweating, so scared I thought I was going to throw up. I was just terrified because, you know, at work you're supposed to be the strongest, most confident, most independent woman version of yourself. And, you know, I was hiding behind this wig, and taking my wig off, it made me feel so vulnerable and like I was letting everybody into this secret part of my life that some people knew about, but most didn't. And so I was so scared that day.

Caroline: What reactions did you get?

Supriya: It was just amazing, so the night prior, I just shot an email out to a few coworkers and said, by the way, I'm doing this tomorrow. So if you see me without hair, I'm not sick. I'm fine. I just have this condition. And if you want to support me, you can wear blue. That's the color for Alopecia Awareness Month. And when I walked into that office that day, it I, I stumble on my words when I talk about this because it's so hard for me to put it into words, it was like seeing an ocean of blue in front of me. I saw so many people that showed up to support, so many people that stopped by my desk and sent me emails and sent me notes and just said the nicest things. That day will be forever ingrained in my brain. I think a big part of that day is the reason why I have the confidence I have now, because I just received an overwhelming amount of love and support and it was just. I mean, again, I struggle putting it into words because it was just such an amazing experience.

Cristen: So at the beginning of this journey, you were post breakup from a shitty relationship and kind of lost. So when did dating start to factor in? And how did you approach that?

Supriya: So initially I was just adamant I wasn't going to date because I assumed who would want a bald girl. I just assumed nobody will want me. I'm not going to deal with this. How am I going to explain it to somebody? I was so scared of it. I would download an app, I would just swipe and then I will start conversations and just disappear or delete the app. Like I was just too scared of figuring out how to be so vulnerable. Because the thing about hair loss is it's not something you can hide for an extended period of time. If you're going to kiss somebody, it's inevitable that they're going to figure out pretty quickly that you're wearing fake hair. And I just tried to avoid it for a long time. But then after the big 35 where I had my you know “I'm living my best life, you know, I'm just going to be the Oprah version of Supriya,” that's when I decided I would start doing the dating apps again.

Cristen: Supriya went on a couple dates. Her first time out, the guy was cool with Supriya’s alopecia but kept touching her wig. Which. Odd. Also rude. Also, what?!

Supriya: But the second guy, it was even funnier because he was wearing a hat and then he looked at me and said, “So I have to tell you something, I'm actually bald.” And I said, “Well, you know what? So am I.” Yeah, that worked out. But after that, I kind of just got into this weird place where - well not weird place, good place where I just feel like I didn’t need a relationship to be happy, which was a huge milestone for me because for so long happiness was associated with being in a relationship, and that was such a key component of it. And instead I really started focusing on myself and having - enjoying my own life. And through that journey, I met my boyfriend now. It was perfect timing and it's been so good and he's so accepting of everything. Alopecia. The second I walk in the door, it's wig off, bra off with that order of operation.

Caroline: Put that on a T-shirt!

Supriya: Yeah, yeah.

Caroline: So, how is your relationship with baldness now?

Supriya: Honestly I'm at a place where you know I'm I wouldn't say I'm 100 percent good with it. There are definitely days where I wish, you know, I had my eyebrows back. I'll never wish to shave my legs again. I currently have a weird patch of hair growing on my legs, and I think that's just very rude. But yeah, I just feel - I feel good. You know, I, I like to switch up my wigs now, which I would have never done a few years ago. So some days I'm blonde, sometimes brunette, short hair, long hair. I just kind of live my best life as best as I can.

Caroline: What words of wisdom or advice would you give your younger self?

Supriya: I would say, don't let go of hope, that there's always a light at the end of the tunnel, even if you can't see it. I would say that a life is always worth living. And even when you feel like you have the shittiest cards being dealt to you, that it's going to turn around, and keep fighting for a better life, keep fighting for your happiness, that you deserve to be happy and keep chasing that. And also don't date shitty men.

Caroline: Amen, Baldie Boo! That is advice for the ages. We’re gonna take a quick break. When we come back, hairstylist Dorin Azerad tells us about life with trichotillomania.

Cristen: Stick around!

[stinger]

Cristen: We’re back with Dorin Azerad. Dorin was born with brown and wavy hair. But for most of her life, She’s struggled with hair loss caused by trichotillomania.

Dorin: So I you know, I started pulling out my hair when I was 4 years old, so I really don't know a life without it. I was diagnosed with it when I was probably about 6 or 7. But you know not a lot of people knew about it back then. And my pediatrician, when I was really young, actually thought that I just had, like allergies. And that was the reason I was like pulling out my hair. Not the case at all.

Caroline: Doctors don’t know what causes trichotillomania, but they think genetics might play a role. According to the American Psychological Association, a little over 3 percent of Americans have trich.

Cristen: In recent years, trichotillomania has been classified as a body focused repetitive behavior or BFRB. And BFRBs encompass things like skin picking and nail biting — basically compulsive behaviors that can cause some degree of physical damage. Which is not to be confused with intentional self-harm.

Dorin: It's kind of like you have an itch that you need to scratch. It almost feels like I'm finding a hair, like seeking out a hair that maybe has a different texture, maybe like, quote unquote, just like doesn't feel like it's in the right place or doesn't feel right, which I know it sounds a little bit bizarre to hear. But when it comes to pulling, I'm the type of person to sort of like seek out a hair and then pull it out. And it almost - the act of pulling it out almost feels like a release. It's a really like, pleasurable experience. It might hurt a little bit, but it's not a hurt in the same way that, like, anyone without trich would feel it. And actually, it's sort of like speaking of BFRBs and the different body focused repetitive behaviors like nail biting and skin picking hurts me a lot. But pulling out my hair, it just it feels like a release and feels really pleasurable. And it almost it really is a self. It's really self-soothing to sort of sit there and do it.

Cristen: Dorin’s hair pulling first started with her eyelashes and eyebrows. Then moved to her hairline. By the time she was 12, Dorin was wearing a headband every day to cover up the bald spots.

Dorin: in middle school and high school, girls used to invite me over to get themselves hairstyle before parties. And I always said no until they stopped inviting me anymore. So it really affected the relationships that I had with my peers growing up.

Caroline: Anytime hair came up in conversation, Dorin would flinch, turn bright red and quickly change the subject. She avoided roller coasters because of the wind. And swimming was a no-go because getting her hair wet made it look thinner.

Caroline: Dorin and her parents tried everything to stop the hair pulling. She went to therapy. She was medicated. She tried more unconventional tactics like wearing gloves, or trying to occupy her hands with fidget toys.

Dorin: Pretty much anything you can imagine. Even one therapist was like, well, maybe we could find you a doll, you could pull out like the doll's hair, which I mean, sounds, I guess, like a good thought process. But to anyone with trich we're like, that's really not not really how it works.

Cristen: Nothing seemed to stick.

Caroline: In high school, it was getting harder to hide her bald spots, and headbands weren’t really helping anymore. So, Dorin started to wear her hair in a low bun off to the side to cover up the patches of missing hair.

Dorin: And I would wear my hair that way every single day to the point where, like a teacher, I remember once in school sort of said you know “Dorin, hopefully one day we can see your hair not that way one day,” which is a really small sort of like nothing about it I'm sure was ill intentioned. But to me, for her to say that in front of the entire class was devastating for me in the moment because I just wanted to have as little attention on myself as possible because I felt like any amount of attention on me might be attention on my hair, which might lead to questions about why I was missing hair, which might lead to someone figuring out that I had trichotillomania.

Cristen: By the end of high school, Dorin felt hopeless

Dorin: But eventually when I was 18, my therapist at that point was - said to me, like, Dorin, do you even really want to stop pulling out your hair? And that was sort of like a big light bulb moment to me.

Caroline: Dorin realized that, no, she didn’t want to stop pulling her hair! The habit/It was soothing and it’s not like it put her in danger. But she did want to confront the shame and secrecy around her hair pulling. With the help of her therapist, Dorin began taking a new approach to her trich called acceptance and commitment therapy.

Dorin: So at least for me, I needed to get to a place where I was like so accepting of my tric that it was fine if I spent hours pulling my hair throughout the day. I think because I had been programmed for so many years to associate trichotillomania and my hair loss with shame that I need to get to a place where I, like, completely swung the pendulum in the other direction.

Cristen: By 22, Dorin had graduated college and gotten a job at a museum. Some of her natural hair reached her shoulders. She also had some bald spots from pulling her hair every day. So, she wore toppers to cover up those areas.

Caroline: At that point, Dorin was working on trich acceptance privately, but hair pulling was still her most closely guarded secret.

Dorin: I realized that if I didn't work to get to a positive place in my life with some things that I would look back years later and feel - might feel a sense of regret. And - and so it was at that place where I decided, hey, I want to become a hairstylist for people with hair loss. And it was honestly like a really radical idea in the moment. You know at that point, I wasn't telling people about my trichotillomania. But I knew that I didn't want to live the rest of my life being ashamed of my trichotillomania, being ashamed of my hair and being ashamed of myself. And I did not want the same for other people.

Caroline: At cosmetology school, Dorin realized she was far from alone. In one of her classes, she met a fellow student who had tric.

Dorin: For a lot of people with tric, I mean, we don't really talk about it, so we don't know anyone else who has it. So I had gone almost 20 years without meeting anyone else who had or at least openly talked about their trichotillomania.

Cristen: Dorin decided it was time to share her story with people in her life. She started posting about living with trich on Instagram and Facebook.

Dorin: I had so many old classmates of mine and old peers and old friends of mine who reached out to me and were like, “hey, I actually did this for years,” or “hey, my sister does this.” And I had no clue that there were so many other people out there who understood what I was going through and what it was like.

Caroline: How did your feelings about your hair and like social expectations around femininity and hair, how did this change as you got older?

Dorin: The big moment for me when it came to you know my identity and femininity and hair in general was a few years ago when I decided to shave my head. And I think up until that place, I had sort of felt like but just having a sort of like look or being able to have versatility with your hair and sort of be able to do things with it, I think was sort of how I felt like women could be confident with their hair. Having long hair and you had beautiful hair, having really styled meant you have beautiful hair. Being able to experiment with colors meant you had beautiful hair. And a few years ago when I was in cosmetology school, I had a client who told me she had gone through MS, and she said that at one point she ended up shaving her head as part of the process. And she was like, “Every single woman in their life needs to shave their head. And it will make you reevaluate your - the sense of what beauty means when it comes to your hair.” And ultimately I came to a place where I wanted to shave my head because you know for for me, I felt like my trichotillomania had ruled my relationship with my hair for so many years, and being able to shave my head meant that I sort of had control when it came to - to my hair and my hair journey. And so when I ended up shaving my head, I felt like - I honestly felt like more feminine than I had in years, which is really like wild to think about now. I just felt like I had this sense of, like, confidence over me. Like, all of a sudden I no longer had to hide. And I mean, I was you know really exposed I mean I had no hair. I was my entire scalp was exposed, but I just felt really confident.

Cristen: The experience of shaving her hair was a reset for Dorin. Yes, she still pulled her hair, but the shame about it was loosening its grip.

Caroline: Nowadays, some of Dorin’s hair has grown back. There are patchy bald spots in some areas, and hair down to her shoulders in others. Dorin says it’s almost like every hair is on its own journey - growing in at different lengths and with different textures.

Cristen: Dorin has also developed something called traction alopecia. It’s caused by years of hair pulling -- whether from wearing tight ponytails, braids or trich. It damages the follicles, making it hard for hair to regrow. In Dorin’s case her traction alopecia is permanent. But, she’s at peace with her hair and lack of it. She wears wigs pretty much every day -- and she’s totally OK with that.

Dorin: I have about two wigs that I, you know, I like to keep it pretty simple, pretty natural. Not because I don't want people to know, but just because like when I think of like myself, or I envision who I am or when I think about myself in my head, long, dark brown hair is sort of like how I think of myself. So that's sort of what a lot of my wigs look like.

Caroline: Dorin strives to bring the self-confidence she's cultivated to her hair loss clients. At the salon where she works in Houston, most of Dorin’s clients are women who are managing different types of hair loss, including trichotillomania and alopecia.

Cristen: Dorin washes, cuts and styles her clients’ wigs, toppers and bonded hair, which is like extensions.

Dorin: I really want to focus my salon chair to make sure that my clients feel like this is not a place where we need to harp on like the negativity of having hair loss, like, by all means, let's talk about it, let's talk about how we're feeling about it. Let's talk about, you know, oh, it was a really not great month for my hair loss. A lot more came out in the shower. Oh, I pulled a lot more this month. Like, let's talk about all of that. But I don't want to make it a place where we feel like this is like down in the dumps, like why am I here, I don’t want to be in a salon chair. So when they come into my salon chair, I no longer want them to feel like the burden of their hair loss is solely in their hands. I am now in charge of your hair. I'm the one who's sort of taking on not a burden, but I'm the one who's taking on your hair and what your hair styling looks like. And whatever you might feel might be the burden is no longer the case when you're sitting in the salon chair.

Caroline: Has working with hair ever been triggering for you or distressing for you?

Dorin: Actually, it has been the complete opposite, and I did not realize this until I started cosmetology school. But I mean, trichotillomania is almost like a self-soothing thing. And so I'm so used to having, like, my hand in hair for so many years that when I started hairstyling, I was like, oh my gosh, I get to like, have my hand in hair all day long, and it's like professional this is what I'm doing. So, no, it's never been triggering. If anything, it's been very relaxing and I kind of joke with other tric people that, like, we our little superpower is we have like, amazing fine motor skills, like our fingers are unbelievably strong from just like pulling - seeking out hair. So, no, it's been like it honestly has been a blessing for me professionally.

Cristen: So what do you wish people - more people understood about trichotillomania?

Dorin: I mean, basic things, I wish that more people understood that, you know, we don't do this with the intention of harming ourselves. This isn't a form of self-harm. I wish that more people understood that if we could stop, we would. We don't actively do this to to pull out our hair. That's not the intention of what we're doing. I wish that for people with trichotillomania that they understood that you may never stop pulling out your hair and that's OK and that you can still lead a really happy life having had trichotillomania. And the more and more that you feel comfortable talking about it or even the more and more that you feel comfortable just talking about it with yourself in a positive way and not in a negative way, the easier it was for me to get to a place where I am now, where I might pull my hair out and I don't think of myself as destroying my hair or damaging myself or I'm a bad person. I know that there are a lot of different parts of me in my trichotillomania and my hair is just one part of the entire person of who I am.

Cristen: You can keep up with Supriya’s alopecia journey over at her blog BaldieBoo.com or on Instagram @baldieboo. You find find Dorin Azerad over at dorinazerad.com or on Insta @dorinazerad

Caroline: You can find us on instagram, facebook and Twitter @unladylikemedia. You can also support Cristen and me by joining our Patreon; you’ll get our undying love AND weekly ad-free Extra Unladylike bonus episodes, including our recent profile of a Queen that you’ve probably never heard of but should know. Join the party at patreon.com/unladylikemedia.

Cristen: Nora Ritchie is the senior producer of Unladylike. Michele O’Brien is our associate producer. Gianna Palmer is our story editor. Shruti Marathe transcribes our tape. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin. Mixing is by Andi Kristins. Sound design and additional music is by Casey Holford and Andi Kristins. Executive producers are Peter Clowney, Daisy Rosario and Unladylike Media.

Caroline: This podcast was created by your hosts, Caroline Ervin

Cristen: And Cristen Conger of Unladylike Media.

Caroline: Next week it’s the next installment in our Ask Unladylike series and we’re talking moms, daughters and body image. And we’re debuting a new segment called Terrible Advice!

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